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so a while back my dad got put on the Terrorist Watchlist.
That’s a good story opener, yeah? Sounds pretty badass? I’ve told it before, though, it’s a really dumb story. Thing is, he’s got a really common name; currently, about seven thousand adult men are living in the US and have his identical first and last name. (Including a very prominent government figure up until last year, as it happens. Fuck that guy.) Anyway, one of these seven thousand guys did something, and is on the list, and that’s the entire level of detail anyone is able to surmise; there’s no court of appeals, there’s no process, for the Terrorist Watchlist. As it happens, my dad was in the Army for approximately ever, and has retained Top Secret clearance, and this did not help him. The TSA was going to strip-search him every time he flew, and that’s that. There is, let me state again, no way to be given any kind of information about the Terrorist Watchlist, and no way to appeal to be removed from it if you are not in fact the correct person with that name, and so on. It’s a hellscape and that’s not what this post is about but do think about that. (I do think we’ve moved beyond the point in our collective Discourse where any of us thinks there’s any good reason for the government to keep any kind of lists about any of us at all for any reason, haven’t we? I suppose that’s a nice side effect of the tire fire of politics of late; last time I talked about this was because people including my Senator were theorizing that some kind of watchlist was a good idea, which was horrifying. So, live and learn.)
Anyway.
My dad’s on the Terrorist Watchlist. Thing is, my parents are retired now, and they’re at an age where they want to travel. Went my whole life basically never going anywhere and then I moved out and now they’re going to see the world. I mean, they deserve it, fine. Also my dang sister had a bunch of babies and lives halfway down the coast, so if they want to see grandkids they’ve got to go hundreds of miles. (Used to be a thousand, now it’s down to like 300, an improvement, but still.)
But now that they’re flying a lot, my dad’s getting real tired of being enhancedly secure. They drove everywhere for a while, but they’re old, and that got old.
So now they take trains a lot. Amtrak is great if you’re not in a super hurry to get where you’re going.
One of their biggest travel things every year is that Dad’s Vietnam unit has an annual reunion. It’s extra interesting because it’s just a generic reunion and now there’s suddenly a bunch of much younger guys who are veterans of other wars, now.
Anyhow this year the reunion’s in Florida, so Mom and Dad are presently on the… I think it’s the Silver Meteor, that goes from New York on down? Not sure.
That’s the other thing about the old Amtrak lines– most of them have wonderful poetic names. The Empire takes you across New York State; the Lakeshore Limited has never once been on time but will take you from New York to Chicago. The City of New Orleans, famous for the song, takes you from Chicago to New Orleans. And the Silver Meteor, I just looked it up, takes you from New York to Miami.
I wish I had the kind of lifestyle where I took trains more. I wish America had high-speed trains, any kind of trains. I wish I could take the train back and forth to the farm instead of the Thruway. (I usually get to do it about once a season, and it’s such a treat. The route runs right along the Mohawk River for a goodly portion of it, with fantastic views of my favorite bit– Big Nose and Little Nose– and some lovely marsh views near the Montezuma Bird Refuge area, and a really neat peek into the back of Schenectady, and the whole time you don’t have to get cut off by anyone with Jersey plates or boxed out by oblivious Ontarians who don’t know why there are two different lanes, and you can read a book or embroider or sew and nobody bugs you and maybe the state worker across the aisle can give you tips about getting around Albany once you get there, as if you’d ever go into Albany in your life.)
Anyway that was kind of what I liked so much about the Green New Deal, which I only skimmed a summary of– the idea of excitement, the idea of proactive changes we could make, none of this “Welp the world’s ending so we gotta give up fun entirely” stuff, but rather “We could make something else, we could change how it works and have so much more than we have now, we could have high speed trains”, and it was so exciting.
Please, I want high speed trains.
so a while back my dad got put on the Terrorist Watchlist.
That’s a good story opener, yeah? Sounds pretty badass? I’ve told it before, though, it’s a really dumb story. Thing is, he’s got a really common name; currently, about seven thousand adult men are living in the US and have his identical first and last name. (Including a very prominent government figure up until last year, as it happens. Fuck that guy.) Anyway, one of these seven thousand guys did something, and is on the list, and that’s the entire level of detail anyone is able to surmise; there’s no court of appeals, there’s no process, for the Terrorist Watchlist. As it happens, my dad was in the Army for approximately ever, and has retained Top Secret clearance, and this did not help him. The TSA was going to strip-search him every time he flew, and that’s that. There is, let me state again, no way to be given any kind of information about the Terrorist Watchlist, and no way to appeal to be removed from it if you are not in fact the correct person with that name, and so on. It’s a hellscape and that’s not what this post is about but do think about that. (I do think we’ve moved beyond the point in our collective Discourse where any of us thinks there’s any good reason for the government to keep any kind of lists about any of us at all for any reason, haven’t we? I suppose that’s a nice side effect of the tire fire of politics of late; last time I talked about this was because people including my Senator were theorizing that some kind of watchlist was a good idea, which was horrifying. So, live and learn.)
Anyway.
My dad’s on the Terrorist Watchlist. Thing is, my parents are retired now, and they’re at an age where they want to travel. Went my whole life basically never going anywhere and then I moved out and now they’re going to see the world. I mean, they deserve it, fine. Also my dang sister had a bunch of babies and lives halfway down the coast, so if they want to see grandkids they’ve got to go hundreds of miles. (Used to be a thousand, now it’s down to like 300, an improvement, but still.)
But now that they’re flying a lot, my dad’s getting real tired of being enhancedly secure. They drove everywhere for a while, but they’re old, and that got old.
So now they take trains a lot. Amtrak is great if you’re not in a super hurry to get where you’re going.
One of their biggest travel things every year is that Dad’s Vietnam unit has an annual reunion. It’s extra interesting because it’s just a generic reunion and now there’s suddenly a bunch of much younger guys who are veterans of other wars, now.
Anyhow this year the reunion’s in Florida, so Mom and Dad are presently on the… I think it’s the Silver Meteor, that goes from New York on down? Not sure.
That’s the other thing about the old Amtrak lines– most of them have wonderful poetic names. The Empire takes you across New York State; the Lakeshore Limited has never once been on time but will take you from New York to Chicago. The City of New Orleans, famous for the song, takes you from Chicago to New Orleans. And the Silver Meteor, I just looked it up, takes you from New York to Miami.
I wish I had the kind of lifestyle where I took trains more. I wish America had high-speed trains, any kind of trains. I wish I could take the train back and forth to the farm instead of the Thruway. (I usually get to do it about once a season, and it’s such a treat. The route runs right along the Mohawk River for a goodly portion of it, with fantastic views of my favorite bit– Big Nose and Little Nose– and some lovely marsh views near the Montezuma Bird Refuge area, and a really neat peek into the back of Schenectady, and the whole time you don’t have to get cut off by anyone with Jersey plates or boxed out by oblivious Ontarians who don’t know why there are two different lanes, and you can read a book or embroider or sew and nobody bugs you and maybe the state worker across the aisle can give you tips about getting around Albany once you get there, as if you’d ever go into Albany in your life.)
Anyway that was kind of what I liked so much about the Green New Deal, which I only skimmed a summary of– the idea of excitement, the idea of proactive changes we could make, none of this “Welp the world’s ending so we gotta give up fun entirely” stuff, but rather “We could make something else, we could change how it works and have so much more than we have now, we could have high speed trains”, and it was so exciting.
Please, I want high speed trains.
