Robin Grupper April 4, 1971 – November 3, 2018

Robin would be 48 years old today. She was my daughter, my friend, my ally, my confidant, my heart. She died peacefully in her sleep early on November 3, 2018. Today I’m in Louisville, KY where she was born and raised, spending her birthday with my son and their dad.

Robin was born on the third anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.   April 4 is also the anniversary of Dr. King’s powerful speech Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence delivered one year to the day before he died. Every year I read that speech. It resonates with Robin’s own commitment to peace, justice, compassion and reconciliation. On the 50th anniversary of the speech in 2017, Robin and I went to a public reading in Corvallis.

For years Robin struggled with mental illness. There were good days and bad days, good years and bad years. Wild manic episodes and searing depressions. She worked when she could, did a lot of volunteer work, and finished in 2014 the college degree that was interrupted years before. At Oregon State University she focused on peace studies and learning about other cultures, about people’s struggles to survive and thrive. Deeply compassionate, she felt all the world’s wounds. If you asked her what she wanted, for Christmas or her birthday or even at a restaurant or coffee shop, often she would answer, “A little world peace.”

Robin wanted to teach peace and had been part of a local group teaching and practicing Non Violent Communication in the Oregon state prison and the Salem community. She taught me to be more careful in communicating, more full of care.

I wanted with all my heart for Robin to find peace and joy in her own mind, her own life. I think at times she did. I loved to hear her laugh. I long to hear her laugh again.

The photo above was taken in Zena Forest on the outskirts of Salem, owned and sustainably managed by my friend Sarah Deumling and her family.  Sarah cut a piece of madrone, a beautiful tree native to the Pacific Northwest, for a walking stick for Robin. Another friend carved Robin’s name, some symbols she liked, and “Peace is every step” – a quote from the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

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Thanksgiving Day Nov 24, 2016

Growing up in the Boston, Massachusetts area I was surrounded by the foundational history and mythology of the United States.  After living away from there for over two decades, I moved back in middle age for another 20 years with a greater understanding of how much brutality and tragedy that history entailed – and still does– and how damaging the mythology is.

Today is the 47^th Annual Day of Mourning in Plymouth, MA held on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Harbor by the United American Indians of New England.

“We Are Not Vanishing.  We Are Not Conquered.  We Are As Strong As Ever.”
—United American Indians of New England  http://www.uaine.org/

Text of Plaque on Cole’s Hill
 Since 1970, Native Americans and our supporters have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US thanksgiving holiday. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. Thanksgiving day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands, and the relentless assault on Native culture. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience.”

—

THANKSGIVING: A Day of Mourning
By Roy Cook   http://americanindiansource.com/mourningday.html
This essay describes the reality of Native American experience with European traders and Puritan settlers in 17th century New England.
—

I went to the Day of Mourning in Plymouth one year and thought about going other times while living in Massachusetts, but it was 40 some miles way and there was cooking and eating and some remnant of family tradition to attend to – my son and daughter and I always share our “thankfuls.”  But I always think about the Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving and  how it marks the betrayal of Native Americans, betrayal that preceded the arrival of the Mayflower in Plymouth when European trading ships kidnapped and enslaved many Native people and left behind devastating epidemics; and betrayal that followed soon after the Puritans arrived with broken treaties, massacres and desecration of Native villages, and wars upon wars.  I’m thinking about it especially today when the water protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation (http://standingrock.org/) are standing so courageously against the predatory fossil fuel industry and attacks by a militarized police force. http://sacredstonecamp.org/

Today’s ceremony and march in Plymouth expressed solidarity with Standing Rock. And today, thanks to the internet (and streaming video, thank you, Tina Bee) I was able to attend part of the National Day of Mourning virtually here: https://www.facebook.com/harleychic247/videos/vb.1488669323/10207537179616128/?type=2&theater
That one is interrupted but continues in Part 2:
https://www.facebook.com/harleychic247/videos/vb.1488669323/10207537718949611/?type=2&theater
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I Stand with Standing Rock – Mni Wiconii Water is Life
I am thankful for all those who stand together in solidarity.

This Tweet and photo posted today is from Tara Houska of Honor the Earth http://www.honorearth.org/
tara houska ‏@zhaabowekwe  #Thanksgiving happy pilgrims & Indians is a lie. We underwent genocide, our struggle goes on. Think of #StandingRock. #WaterIsLife #NoDAPL

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SHELL NO – PDX vs SHELL

At the end of July I spent several days in Portland to support the courageous resistance against Shell’s Arctic oil drilling venture.  So much fossil fuel has burned that Arctic Ice is shrinking. Shell wants to exploit the now-open water to find more oil, creating more global warming.  It’s surreal. We have truly  gone somewhere  through the looking glass into a warped world run by out-of-control corporations.

(Check out this article from Willamette Week with interviews with Greenpeace and PDX activists “Spirit in the Sky”, and this article in Salem Weekly for which I was interviewed via email “Salem environmentalists support historic ‘Shellno’ blockade”)

President Obama says he wants to curb climate change. He’s been all over the news lately touting the final version of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) to reduce carbon emissions from power plants.  The CPP is a good, long-overdue initiative; but it’s being undermined by drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean, fracking natural gas all over, fracking shale oil in North Dakota, and tar sands oil in Canada and Utah (yes, there is a tar sands mine now in Utah).  A lot of this is happening on public lands or is otherwise subject to government regulation. We have to keep telling the President to to stop Arctic drilling, to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, to stop auctioning off coal mining leases on public land, to keep these unconventional fuels in the ground.

After staging its drill rigs in Seattle and other parts of Washington, and facing opposition from Native American and climate activists in a kayak flotilla and street blockade, Shell’s fleet moved toward the Arctic.  One of the icebreakers, MSV Fennica, tore a hole in its hull in Dutch Harbor, AK.  After getting it patched up, Shell sent the Fennica to Portland,OR for permanent repair.

 350 PDX, Portland Rising Tide and other climate action organizations began to mobilize, holding rallies and symbolic kayak flotillas before and after the ship arrived. The Fennica is mission-critical because it’s carrying the well cap that Shell would have to deploy in case of a blow out (like the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico).  Shell can’t drill to oil-nearing depth without it

 

 

As the week went on, Portland organizers made preparations for a full-fledged mobilization and kayaktivist action from the boat ramp in Cathedral Park at St. John’s Bridge on the Willamette River,  blocking the Fennica’s only route from dry dock to the Columbia river and the Pacific Ocean.  People from 350 Seattle and the Seattle-based Backbone Campaign, who in June faced Shell’s huge drill rig being outfitted there, arrived in PDX with a truck-full of kayaks and banners.

 

I went to Portland Tuesday afternoon July 28. For the next couple of days I did some small tasks – checking kayaktivists in and helping them launch – but mostly I watched in awe and admiration. It was brutally hot, getting up to 100 degrees each afternoon.

The Fennica was scheduled to get underway at 4 am Wednesday July 29.  The plan was to start getting the kayaks in the water around 2 am. I had a sleeping bag and pad and got a couple of hours of sleep in the park. As we were getting the kayak flotilla ready, suddenly lights dropped down from the bridge and people began cheering. I don’t remember when I realized that the lights were attached to people – climbers from Greenpeace who rapelled down from the bridge and suspended themselves in ship space. At dawn I went to a nearby fishing dock to watch as the climbers gradually became visible in the morning light, arrayed over the line of kayaks in the water.

At some point word went around that the Fennica was no longer on the departure schedule for the Port of Portland. I wanted to charge my phone and didn’t want to use the scarce resource of electricity from the portable generators that the organizers were using (and don’t yet have a workable small solar charger, which a couple of people had – I do have one but it’s an old type and not very effective). I went up the long steep hill to a café in the St. John’s neighborhood.  Walking back down I could see that the Greenpeace climbers were flying red and yellow banners over the river in the breeze – a thrilling and majestic sight. Shell’s colors never looked so good.

All day Wednesday, nothing happened.  Shell flinched.  I took a turn at the sign-in table as kayakers came and went to practice, to take trainings, and to spend time on the water. That night I was able to stay in the guest bedroom of a woman from 350 PDX who lived nearby.

We awakened on Thursday morning to text messages from the organizers saying that the Fennica was moving toward the bridge.  We hurried down, found the parking lot at the boat ramp closed and had to walk into the park.  (Lawyers soon got the lot reopened.) I started helping to launch kayaks; then went to help at the sign-in table where the view under the bridge was blocked by trees.  The climbers and the kayaktivists held strong and brave and we soon heard that the Fennica turned around and backed off.

 

 

 

 

Again – all quiet on the Fennica Front – for a while.

Early Thursday afternoon I went up to St. John’s to charge my phone again and splurge on a spicy bean burger and Walla Walla onion rings at Burgerville.  The Burgerville was a block from the bridge and from where I sat I had a clear view of traffic coming and going. Suddenly things began to happen: cops closed the bridge to all traffic and police and police cars and other law enforcement vehicles started gathering.  When I went outside I saw Coast Guard personnel and a TV camera with the police.  Helicopters started flying around. I called down to the boat ramp to tell the organizers that the police were getting ready to make a move.

I hurried back down to the riverbank and found a place by the bridge with some shade and some rocks to sit on. I watched while Coast Guard and Multnomah County Sherriff’s boats and a couple of maniacs on jet skis chased and detained kayaktivists. Some of the kayaktivists maneuvered brilliantly, keeping the cops and coasties busy for hours before they finally cleared the river. I only saw later on video that one kayak was run over by a Sheriff’s Department boat.  Thankfully, no one was hurt.

 

 

 

 

 

Police and fire department high incident teams lowered one of the Greenpeace climbers off the bridge into a waiting boat and two others lowered themselves under threat of being taken down. I was so intent on watching the action on the water that I didn’t see this happening nearer to the opposite shore until someone told me.

I watched to see how it was done, but suddenly realized they weren’t going to bring
any more climbers down; they only wanted to open a gap wide enough to drive the ship through. The rest of the Greenpeace climbers stayed in place until it was over.

 

At 5:55 pm the Fennica passed under the St. John’s Bridge on the way to the Arctic.

A reporter for Salem Weekly asked me if I thought it was worth it.  Yes, it was worth it – for almost 40 hours Shell did not have its way.

It was worth it because it was a powerful moment in the growing convergence of climate activists here in the Pacific Northwest. Fossil fuel companies have their filthy profits. The right-wing has its snarling hate. We have each other. We have courage, know-how, creativity and beauty on our side.

It was worth it to me in a very personal way because Thursday July 30th was my 70th birthday, and I was there.

AS FAR AS THE EYE COULD SEE

Up and down Central Park West and along many a side street, as far as the eye could see, we lined up waiting to walk in the People’s Climate March in New York City on September 21, 2014. 400,000 people in the streets of Manhattan and hundreds of thousands more in solidarity events around the world marched to sound the alarm about climate change on the Sunday before world leaders gathered at the United Nations Climate Summit called by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon – who marched with us on Sunday.

Before the march, I posted my reasons for going on the the Oregon Hub at the PCM website. Those reasons hold true and here they are:

As soon as I heard about the People’s Climate March and read Bill McKibben’s “A Call to Arms – an Invitation to Demand Action on Climate Change” in Rolling Stone, I wanted to go. I wanted to be in New York again, to be part of the grandeur of the event, part of the pageantry that comes not from formality or ritual or rank, but from the creative vision and voices of concerned, committed people.

There is nothing like it – being among throngs of people, “every kinda people,” young and old and in between, of every race, ethnicity, color, creed, gender, sexual identity and ability level. Little kids with homemade signs, people of faith with the strength of moral clarity, young activists with the fresh wisdom of enthusiasm and still unbroken dreams, elders who never will give up.

It’s a guilty pleasure, that such terrible causes – war, injustice, looming climate disaster – call forth such a beautiful spirit of unity and resolve. To be there nourishes the soul, renews hope for our humanity, and invigorates our efforts to keep moving forward, to keep creating that better world we know is possible.

Most of all I wanted to go because the climate change movement really does have the potential to change everything. Climate change affects all of us in all the dimensions of our lives. The movement is becoming more and more centered in that knowledge, in the call for climate justice, in the commitment to solidarity.

With climate justice as a fundamental insight, this movement asks the hard questions and strives to do the hard and necessary things:
• How do we share resources equitably without depleting them?
• How do we have work and livelihoods that do not destroy our ability to survive on Earth?
• How can developed countries manage a just transition to a fair, sustainable economy when reducing consumption and energy use will cause economic dislocation?
• How can developing countries overcome energy poverty, income poverty and wealth poverty without massive increases in greenhouse gas emissions?
• How do we stop the juggernaut that is the fossil fuel industry?

The great diversity of over 1500 organizations that supported the People’s Climate March proclaimed that this really was a People’s Climate March.

And I was there!

Eastbound to Boston May 2014

Saturday May 17, 2014

On the train again, on a train since Wednesday. Somewhere between Rochester and Syracuse – near Seneca Falls according to phone GPS, an iconic place for women’s rights because (Google -> Wikipedia) it was the location of the first women’s rights convention in 1848.

 

According to news this area east of Rochester has experienced flooding from heavy rains this week. Lots of water in stands of trees and in fields and long puddles beside the tracks. The Erie Canal is over its banks in places. Onandaga Lake at Syracuse looks very high.

 

 

 

 

 

Really depressing and overwhelming amount of oil moving by rail – hundreds of oil tank cars in rail yards, on sidings and moving on the rails everywhere. Williston, ND in the heart of the Bakken Shale oil fields is out of control – building roads, building housing. There’s a rail yard west of town, filled with log oil tank cars that seems twice as big as one I saw before – same one? new one? – there’s also a rail yard east of town filled with oil tank cars. Not sure which one I saw before.

 

There’s a huge Hess Company natural gas plant at Tioga and found online news about an LNG plant to be built also in Tioga by North Dakota LNG.

 

 

Amtrak changed its schedule on the Empire Builder route because of so many delays due mainly to huge increase in oil freight traffic. Leaves Portland at 1:40, three hours and five minutes earlier than before. So now goes through Glacier National Park, the most beautiful part of the trip at the crack of dawn (this time of year; in much of the year it would be pitch dark. I think the return trip would be in darkness much of the year also. Ironic because the park and the railroad are closely linked. JJ Hill who built the Great Northern Railroad (a precursor of BNSF) was influential in getting National Park designation for Glacier so he could attract the tourist trade to his RR. I saw a bit of Glacier as we came through and caught a glimpse of the obelisk at the Continental Divide – still a lot of snow on the ground in the mountains.

Did see the Columbia River Gorge in all its glory with beautiful views of Mt. Hood. Sunset over the Palouse, the rolling wheat and grasslands in eastern Washington, with huge orange full moon rising in the east. The next night the sunset amid complex dark clouds over the prairie east of Minot, ND.

 

  

 

David will be happy to know I didn’t get into any arguments with oil field roughnecks this time, but did meet some interesting people. One guy I met at breakfast, George from Seattle, Asian-American, is a world traveler. On his way to NYC this trip – just to do culture, museums and the like but no theater. He’s planning a trip to Eastern Europe later this year. Said he’s been to 77 countries. Had his dream trip to Africa last year. He likes animals better than people. Camped out rather than staying in tourist resorts. Saw zebras (his favorite), elephants, apes and big cats. Seeing baby animals brought him to tears. But now he’s retired and “money is tight” so he won’t be traveling so much anymore.

So George had an attitude about what he called 7-11 people. Funny thing is, at lunch I met a couple from a rural area of Pennsylvania who grow hay and own a butcher store and – a convenience store. Also met a young couple from near Philadelphia who went across country to Seattle for a day and were on the way back – the cross country journey being the point of it all. He’s an EMT and she’s a Presbyterian minister of a small church in a small town. They were very worried about making their connection in Chicago because her confirmation class is having some kind of ceremony at the Sunday service and she can’t miss it. We were almost three hours late into Chicago but plenty of time to make the Lake Shore Limited eastbound, one segment to Boston, the other to NYC, separating at Albany, NY.

Met Ies (I think that’s how he spelled it, a young computer engineer from Taiwan who is spending a month on a grand tour of the US by plane and train. Also a guy from Germany who has been living in Salt Lake City and is traveling by train to see some of the places he hasn’t seen yet before going back to Germany. And a young woman from Japan who has been studying business at BU for a year and took a trip (with some others I think but I didn’t meet them) to Niagara Falls before going back to Japan.

Then there’s the cowboy. Older gentleman, dressed in an elegant dark business suit, white shirt and tie the whole trip – with cowboy boots. No one dresses in a suit and tie on a cross country train. He got on in Montana and headed to Boston. Seems he’s originally from Wellesley, MA but wants to move to Havre, MT. Said he was branding cattle just a few days ago. He’s been going to Havre for years and likes the people there and wants to buy a place in town. Havre could be right out of a western movie set. The square, spare one and two story buildings with the bank, saloon, feed store, café and what all else is needed to service the farmers and ranchers and railroad workers who come to town.

At Utica, still water water everywhere in fields and woodlands, streams bursting their banks. Now coming into part of upstate NY that was heavily flooded in 2011 & 2012 by remnant hurricanes that swept up the coast and the Hudson Valley. Meanwhile California is suffering from heat and drought and fires.

National Train Day

[I wrote a long comment to a post about National Train Day on the Salem Breakfast on Bikes Blog (http://breakfastonbikes.blogspot.com/2014/05/train-day-and-draft-oregon-rail-plan.html) and decided to some of it here as well because I haven’t posted here in a while, not since reporting on my last trip back from Boston and now here I go again.]

I’ll be traveling across country on Amtrak in a few days to visit my son in Boston. The Portland to Chicago segment travels on Warren Buffet’s Fossil Fuel Express with oil trains from North Dakota, coal trains from Wyoming and now in Wisconsin they are mining sand for fracking. I’ve seen a long train filled with frac sand in a rail yard; and sand being loaded at a railroad siding in Sparta, WI just past a sign that read “Bicycling Capital of America.”  Aldo Leopold would weep.

It’s a beautiful trip – along the Columbia River Gorge, through Glacier National Park, the prairie, down and then across the Mississippi River, skirting the Great Lakes, passing by the old mill towns along the Erie Canal. One of my guilty pleasures is going through the gritty industrial backsides of cities, fascinated with how things get done, trying to get my head around the question of how do produce what we need and have adequate livelihoods without destroying our own habitat? The train goes right next to the steel mills in Gary, Indiana which are mind blowing and still in operation but with only a fraction of the former labor force.

If I had gone to Boston a little earlier this month, today I’d be going on the 6th Annual National Train Day Bike Ride. Dick Bauer, a bicyclist and history buff takes a group out from Boston on the commuter rail and then they bike back tracing old rail lines and stopping at old depots, some abandoned, some repurposed. It’s really amazing how much passenger rail there used to be and how many railroad companies. Something I learned on a train day ride: the reason so many stations are called Union Station (Portland, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, others?) is because at some point competing rail companies realized the value of being able to offer customers a way to connect between them – ergo union stations.

The commuter rail in eastern Massachusetts has a few cars fitted out with bike racks the length of the car on one side. They use them in the summer on routes to the beach towns outside the city. On National Train Day, they put one of the cars on the route Dick uses for his history tour. http://baystatebikeweek.org/events/6th-annual-national-train-day-ride/

Concatenation

[This is one of several posts about my trip from Oregon to Massachusetts and back to visit my son for Thanksgiving.  Mostly written during or shortly after the trip, I’m just getting around to finishing and posting them.]

Westbound on the Amtrak Empire Builder at night on December 12, 2013, running about 15-16 hours late.  We were supposed to arrive in Portland around 10 that morning.  I know we were east of Spokane because I was talking in the observation car with people headed both to Seattle and to Portland; and at Spokane the train splits up with some cars going to Portland and some to Seattle. I know we were west of Glacier National Park because we came through Glacier in daylight with spectacular views of glaciers, of forests covered with new snow, and of ice on rivers and streams. Everyone was glued to the windows until dark. 

 

So it was after dark and I was sitting at a table writing on my laptop when I heard someone at another table say “Brookline.”  Brookline, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, is where I lived for several years before moving to Oregon.  So I joined them to find out why they were talking about Brookline.

The person I overheard, an older man named Bert, had been born in Brookline and lived there for a few years as a child.  He was talking to a young man named Jim who was going back to Washington after visiting the Greek Orthodox seminary in Brookline.  I believe Jim had once studied there, but he was not ordained because he was not married and, he said, marriage is a requirement for ordination to the Greek Orthodox priesthood. (I knew Greek Orthodox priests could marry, but didn’t know they were required to be married.) According to Jim, marriage enables priests to be better able to understand and counsel parishioners.

Bert, the older man, was on his way back from a religious conference of some sort. He had put a copy of the Catholic Worker on the table and at some point mentioned Dorothy Day.  Another person heard him say that and joined the conversation because as a young child he had known Dorothy Day.  His uncle, Father John Hugo, for whom he said he was named, was a good friend of Dorothy Day’s and an influential spiritual guide to her and the early Catholic Worker movement.

I had been watching John Hugo throughout the trip because I thought I had met him before. When he joined the conversation, I finally got up the nerve to ask him.  Sure enough, I had met him a year before on the same train in the same observation car among a group of people watching the sunrise over the Columbia River Gorge (something we missed on this trip which was running so late).  I remember being really intrigued by his job: climbing very tall trees for the National Forest Service to harvest seed for preservation of forest biodiversity.  This time he seemed more interested in talking about religion than talking about his job.  When we finally arrived in Portland, he got off using cane or walking stick.  I hope he didn’t have a bad accident in the trees. Both trips we were each returning from visiting family for Thanksgiving.

Another person in this conversation was a middle aged man named Kai (I think). I had talked with him briefly in the station in Chicago during the long wait for our train to set out and I saw him several times in the observation car sitting quietly, apparently meditating. Someone mentioned that he was a practitioner of an eastern spiritual tradition, but I wasn’t familiar with it and don’t remember what it was. He was on his way from Michigan to Seattle without any real plan, wanting to see what prospects were available there. He said he did some trading in antiques, specializing in audio equipment. Earlier in the trip he had mentioned that he had lost his cell phone and I loaned it to him to call his mother to have her check on his online endeavors. He seemed somehow lost in the world but centered in himself.

Following on discussion of the Catholic Worker, the conversation turned at some point to Gandhi and nonviolence and a book, Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment With Truth, by Jim Douglass a Catholic Worker member in Alabama. The book looks into the factors involved with Gandhi’s assassination.  Douglass had also written a book on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, JFK and the Unspeakable. (I had to look up some of these details later as I didn’t catch all of this conversation).  John Hugo mentioned an article in Rolling Stone by Robert Kennedy, Jr. which referenced Douglass’s book and speaks to JFK’s efforts to avoid nuclear war, de-escalate the Cold War, reduce US involvement in Vietnam, and come to peaceable terms with the Soviet Union.  These efforts brought JFK into conflict with the US military and intelligence community, conflicts which some think were involved with his assassination. Bert had a copy of the Rolling Stone article, “John F. Kennedy’s Vision of Peace” with him.  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/john-f-kennedys-vision-of-peace-20131120

During this discussion points were made about Gandhian principles of nonviolence which extend to loving and embracing even those who oppose us.  This is something I struggle with, even more so now that I have begun meditating with the River Sangha which follows the way of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Han and calls its practitioners to  forego anger.  I do not wish anyone any harm and I do not seek vengeance for harm done, but there are people who make me angry and people whom I find it very hard to love.  Trying articulate this during the discussion of loving and embracing everyone, I asked if this included Mitch McConnell (who embodies for me the harm done by right–wing policies to workers, minorities, and poor and powerless people in general).  John Hugo said, with a dramatic gesture, that when Jesus encountered those who were doing wrong (the money changers in the Temple are one example) Jesus said “Whoa!” That “Whoa!” really resonated with me.  It put so clearly and emphatically the need to stop those who do harm.  Just stop them – not attack them or harm them or wish them harm – just stop them.

At some point, wanting to introduce more earthly political concerns, since we were traveling along the rail route used to carry oil from North Dakota and coal from the Powder River Basin, I unzipped my fleece jacket to show the bright red Beyond Coal Exports t-shirt underneath.  Then Bert pulled down his top layer to show the same bright red Beyond Coal Exports t-shirt he was wearing.  We talked some about how to talk with people who favor fossil fuels – like the many people on this train who work in the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota.

After a while the train crew sent us back to our seats to be sure that those going to Seattle arrived in Seattle and those going to Portland arrived in Portland. So, what does this strange and interesting concatenation of people and experiences mean?  I have no clue, but it was fun and thought-provoking and a great example of why I love traveling by train.

Amtrak Travels Second Class – Especially on the BNSF Hi Line

[This is one of several posts about my trip from Oregon to Massachusetts and back to visit my son for Thanksgiving.  Mostly written during or shortly after the trip, I’m just getting around to finishing and posting them.]

 

Westbound Amtrak Empire Builder coming into Fargo on a winter’s day

I love riding trains, but Amtrak is forever running late (so am I, but this is not about me, it’s about trains).  Coming back to Oregon in December on the Empire Builder, the train west from Chicago to Portland and Seattle,* we arrived 16 hours behind schedule.  Left Chicago four hours late due to engine trouble.   We approached Fargo, ND just after dawn of a clear, very cold day. Once there I started to wonder if Fargo was as FAR as we would Go.  Sat there for about four hours. We were about four and a half hours late leaving Chicago.and lost more time along the way.  C’est l vie en Amtrak. 

There are many, many BNSF locomotives scattered in all the small towns along the northern route called the Hi Line. While waiting in Fargo, outside my window there was a small shed connected to a very tall radio tower. The shed had this sign on it:

While we were waiting, I saw several BNSF engines moving along a parallel track. Maybe someone was playing with the remote? Probably not much excitement in Fargo – not that day anyway.  A few weeks later, on December 30 an oil train wrecked on another BNSF rail line just west of Fargo and several cars exploded. The town of Casselton was evacuated, and according to reports, Amtrak Empire Builder service between Fargo and Grand Forks was disrupted.

 

Back to why we were running so late.  Turned out that the eastbound Empire Builder was stuck with engine trouble somewhere beyond Fargo.  They sent a BNSF locomotive out to pull it into Fargo.  We had to wait in the train yard until they cleared the single track.  After the disabled eastbound train got pulled in we got moving, going backwards to switch tracks to go forward, westward, many hours after we should have left Fargo, headed toward the oil fields (but that’s for another post).

I saw two trucks go by with what looked like wind turbine blades.   And near Shelby, Montana a big wind farm, much bigger than this photo indicates, but I like the dramatic sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had to wait on sidings for freight train after freight train. Sometimes, the train crew said, they had to stop the train to operate switches. This happened before on a trip I took during below zero weather – the switches freeze and have to be operated manually.   A couple of times (that I know of) the train crew hit their 12 hour limit and we had to wait in the middle of nowhere for relief crews to be brought in. Normally these crew changes are built into the schedule and happen at regular stops, but with the schedule so out of whack, they had to bring the crews to the train.  Looking at the Amtrak app that tracks train status, I saw that several trains in both directions on the Empire Builder were hours late that week.

In fact after our train left Chicago, Amtrak cancelled several trains on this route in both directions for the next few days. They wanted to get their crews unscrambled and their schedule back together. Amtrak blamed increased freight traffic, specifically mentioning North Dakota oil. I can testify to the hundreds of tank cars passing by or sitting in train yards on this route. Some are marked ethanol, but most probably carry oil. Not only are they wreaking havoc with schedules, they are dangerous – in the last few months several trains carrying crude oil have had explosive wrecks. BNSF attributed delays to oil and grain freight (did see a whole lot of grain cars too) and cold weather “that slows everything down.”

I take Amtrak’s delays more or less in stride; I’ve been on many cross country train trips and been late more than not (once stayed overnight in Chicago on Amtrak’s nickel because I missed a connection.)  The train ride is part of the whole experience for me.  Most people are pretty laid back about it all, but a few people have time sensitive things to do and it’s a problem for them.  On the other hand, it’s one more negative impact to add to the many negative impacts of the North Dakota oil boom and fossil fuels in general. It’s a vicious circle – as far as fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions go rail travel is better than flying or most driving, but if it’s so unreliable, people will stop taking trains generating more demand for fossil fuels and more emissions.  And Warren Buffett (whose company owns BNSF) gets richer and richer. 

There’s another vicious circle – if fewer people take the train, there will be less and less support for public investment in passenger rail. Even on the Northeast Corridor (Boston-NYC-DC) where demand is high and significant improvements have been made to the track, the power system and equipment; even with Vice President Biden as a long-time passenger, Amtrak does not come close to standards set in Europe and Japan.

 * They split the Portland and Seattle segments in Spokane going west and join them going east. 

 

Riding the Rails of the Fossil Fuel Express

[This is one of several posts about my trip from Oregon to Massachusetts and back to visit my son for Thanksgiving.  Mostly written during or shortly after the trip, I’m just getting around to finishing and posting them.]

 

The BNSF (Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railroad) route from Minneapolis to Spokane is called the Hi Line. I call it Warren Buffet’s Fossil Fuel Express.  On the same Buffett-owned BNSF tracks that Amtrak uses – that I traveled on – coal goes mainly east from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana to power plants in the Midwest. Some coal also goes west to the few remaining coal-fired power plants in the Pacific NW or up to British Columbia for export to Asia.  Powder River coal companies want to export millions of tons more coal to Asia, transporting it by rail west on the Hi Line and through the Columbia River Gorge, to ports in the Pacific Northwest.  They want to build two huge export terminals in Washington and a smaller one in Oregon which together would bring 100 million tons of coal a year by rail (or rail and barge) to be loaded onto ocean-going ships.

 

These proposals face massive resistance from environmental and community-based organizations (three other proposals have been taken off the able) and lengthy environmental review from federal, state and local agencies. Even before I moved to Oregon, I knew about these plans and was very glad to find a well-organized regional anti-coal-export coalition, Power Past Coal.  There wasn’t much awareness in Salem when I first arrived, but the Sierra Club got a group together as part of its Beyond Coal agenda. We have spent many, many hours gathering petitions, submitting comments, and attending city council meetings and public hearings.  The organizers have done a tremendous job building public awareness in communities all along the rail route; generating hundreds of thousands of comments to permitting agencies; and bringing thousands of people to hearings.

 

As if coal weren’t bad enough, there’s oil from the Bakken Shale oil fields in North, what the Sightline Institute in Seattle calls the Oil Pipeline on Rails. I began writing this post in North Dakota, approaching the oil fields where rigs are visible from the train, gas flaring off like torches in the night.  Lots of people who ride this train work in the Bakken fields or in some job related to the oil boom. Last year, taking the same trip, I talked to some people who worked in the oil fields (got into a heated argument with a couple of guys, then decided to settle down and listen to people’s stories). Also met an older couple who live in Williston, at the heart of the oil boom, and who talked about how tight and expensive the housing market was; people renting out property for exorbitant prices; kids who grew up there can’t afford to live there. 

 This year many of the people I’ve met who are taking the train to or from Williston are working in residential construction or some other kind of work related to the housing boom that’s trying to keep up with the oil boom. One guy drives a truck for a construction company, two kids – looked no older than 18 – were apprentice electricians working for a residential builder.  One young woman has lived and worked in New Orleans, Seward, Alaska, maybe other places too.  Has an anthropology degree from University of Minnesota. Goes with friends where they hear about available work.  She’s working in Williston now making $17/hour running a vacuum cleaner for a housing rental agency in Williston.  Vagabond kids – following the money.  

 Older people too, following the money or chasing some idea of opportunity.  Met a guy in the train station in Chicago who is going to Seattle with no idea of what to do when he gets there, except a little trading in antiques – audio equipment his specialty. Says he might camp his way down the west coast, or, after hearing me and other people talk about the oil boom, says he might get back on the train and try to find work around Williston.

 This North Dakota oil is the same oil that blew up in a train wreck and devastated the town of Lac Megantic, Quebec, killing dozens of people, in July, 2013, a wreck so serious and terrible it has its own Wikipedia entry.  Another train carrying ND oil wrecked in Alabama in November and the oil exploded fouling a remote wetland. Another explosive train wreck involving ND oil caused the evacuation of Casselton, ND at the end of December. In early January 2014 a train carrying oil from western Canada wrecked and oil burned causing the evacuation of a small town in New Brunswick.

    Taken from my seat on the train. Way too close for comfort. 

Although oil companies would love to do it, and are beginning to agitate for it, it’s against the law to export US produced oil – energy independence and all that.  But the increase in production from North Dakota and the potential for rail-shipping Alberta tar sands oil if the KXL Pipeline is not built has the oil companies trying to expand refinery and transportation capacity all up and down the west coast. They want to build a 360,000 barrel/day terminal in Vancouver, WA just across the Columbia River from Portland.  This would receive oil transported by rail from North Dakota and load it onto barges and ships going to west coast refineries.  We’re fighting that too.  Even the ILWU local in Vancouver, WA is opposed to this one.  The local president says it’s too dangerous – an accident could close the river. It’s not worth the few jobs it would provide.

I only saw a few coal trains during this trip, but saw hundreds of oil tank cars.  Also saw some cars that said they were carrying ethanol. The oil freight traffic was also partly responsible for the fact that Chicago-Portland leg of my return trip arrived 16 hours late.  While we were en route, Amtrak announced it was cancelling several trips on that route because its schedules were so out of whack, with crews and equipment in the wrong places at the wrong times. Along with very cold weather and snow, Amtrak named the increase in rail shipments of North Dakota oil as a big factor in delays and cancellations on the route.

And if coal and oil are not bad enough, mining sand for fracking (frac sand) is now a booming industry in Wisconsin.  A lot of the sand is positioned to be carried by rail.  Last year I saw a long train, all cars filled with sand, in a rail yard near Minneapolis/St. Paul. Someone told me it was sand for fracking.  This year I saw some sand mines in Wisconsin and found a map online of dozens of frac sand operations in the state.  

This one is in Sparta, WI.   

 

Aldo Leopold would weep to see his beloved sand counties exploited this way.  

 

 

 

 

 

Warren Buffet is laughing all the way to the bank. There’s a reason they call it filthy rich.  It’s filthy stuff he’s trafficking in.

 

Going back to Oregon

 [This is one of several posts about my trip from Oregon to Massachusetts and back to visit my son for Thanksgiving.  Mostly written during or shortly after the trip, I’m just getting around to finishing and posting them.]

 

 David’s photo of Boston Common & the State House – taken after I left

 It was a great trip, good to be back in Boston, seeing old friends and old familiar places.  Boston is my hometown. Not always my home, but always my hometown.  Had good times, good food, good conversation and watched good (and bad) movies with David.  Took a long walk on Coast Guard Beach on the Cape and went to the Hot Chocolate Sparrow in Orleans with David and his friend Jill.

  David & Jill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also went to the Frederick Law Olmsted house/studio in Brookline with David and his friend Rebecca.  I had wanted to go there for a long time, but it was closed for renovations for a few years while I lived there. They still have some of the studio equipment, including an early, still working electrical system in the studio. And they still have thousands of photos and original project plans, not open to the public but archived for scholarly research.  Rebecca is an Olmsted fan, as am I.  The impact Olmsted and his firm and colleagues had is astounding. Truly visionary, not just in envisioning beautiful and diverse landscapes but in understanding, articulating and shaping the relationship of place to human society and habitat.  

Left Boston December 9 in a rain and sleet storm that left a frozen crust on top of light snow from the night before. It snowed more after I left and David sent me the photo at the top of this post of Boston Common and the State House in the evening.    Snow on the ground all the way across country.  Light dusting of snow and overcast in western Massachusetts and beyond with low clouds drifting through the Berkshires.

 Off the topic of snow, there are always Amish people on long distance trains, traveling in large groups, whole families with kids and adults of all ages. Saw several groups of Amish getting on the train to Chicago at Erie, PA and at stops in Ohio & Indiana.  A large group in Chicago boarded the train west.  Some of the teenage boys were playing cards in the café car one night.  Didn’t know they were allowed to do that.

Clear skies through the Midwest and snow on the ground ever so gradually becoming deeper.  A few inches in Fargo with below zero temperatures on a sparkling winter day. Had a long delay in Fargo, but that’s in another post.

Sunrise over the prairie near Fargo, ND

Luckily with all the delays we had on this trip (described in another post), we went through Glacier National Park in daylight with spectacular views of snow-covered mountains and icy streams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the wee hours of the morning, 16 hours late, we finally arrived on Portland.  Since we had missed all connections, Amtrak hired a van to take those of us going on to Salem & Eugene and put others up in a hotel who needed to catch the Coast Starlight going farther south.  Got into Salem at 3 am, so glad to see Robin at the station!