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Amtrak Pass #4: NOLA and Sunset Limited back to Los Angeles

Video, as well. Scroll down.

My final visit on this month-long trip with the train was to see my sister Kate and brother-in-law Dave Maleckar in New Orleans. It was a pretty quiet week – didn’t do too much, as I’ve been in NOLA a number of times and have pretty much maxed out the usual tourist sites – with the exception of seeing a plantation, which we did do.

The Laura Plantation is out on the River Road and a very interesting example of a Creole business plantation. An excellent tour, heavy on the history of Louisiana including the part before the USA got the Louisiana purchase, finally explaining to me what Creole really means. Highly recommended if you go down there and want to see one of the old places.

Other than that, just hung out and did a lot of walking around my sister’s neighborhood of Uptown (see photos, video) and visited with them. It’s been a very hard year for all, hard to believe it’s already 8 months since their daughter’s death (Alma Maleckar Bear). It was great to see them, as well as Alma’s husband David Bear. I took the Sunset Limited home to L.A.

And now, for the pros and cons of the train pass and Amtrak travel:

PROS

  • economical way to go: my 30-day pass cost $649.
  • Very relaxed way to travel – there’s no TSA. You don’t have to disrobe at the train station and there’s no groping. They actually do have food on the train (though you buy it, and it’s not cheap). There’s no traffic jams getting to an Amtrak station.
  • On time departures: every train I took left on time.
  • Clean and well-stocked restrooms: No train restroom I was in ever ran out of TP, soap, or towels, so unlike, for instance, the horrid and bitter end of a cross country flight where the restrooms resemble the final night of a decadent county fair.
  • Diversity: Face to face with your fellow man, any race, any age, any size and disposition. For a writer this is like filling up a dry well.
  • Helpful phone reservations: I had great experiences talking to actual booking agents on Amtrak, and it was speedy.
  • You see fascinating parts of cities and the countryside you would never see if you were driving (and, if you were driving, you should have your eyes on the road anyway!)

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“Living standards improve, despite tough economy” – Oh, Really?

Living standards improve, despite tough economy – USATODAY.com.

USA Today has finally abandoned even the pretension of journalistic credibility with this “article” in today’s paper.
I glanced at the headline while in Starbux earlier, and, eager to find out about my increasing fortunes, looked it up online.

What planet are these people on? Where to begin?

“The average annual income was $24,079 per person in 1980 in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data. Last year, it was $40,454 per person.”

Ummm yeah, but I assume these averages take in everybody’s income, then divide it out by population. So it’s a big fat lie to say the average person makes $40,454! Income in the U.S. has been flowing to the top brackets since 1980, so the rich are much richer but the middle and working classes have been stagnant.

“Not only has income grown, what’s less obvious is how much better a lifestyle can be bought for the same amount of money whether it’s $25,000 or $100,000.”

They go on to say how much less computer memory costs in 2011 vs. 1980 (reminder: personal computers weren’t generally available until 1984 or so, before that it was industry mainframes mainly) and to say that we own more cars and take more flights.

Let’s talk to those commuters in places like L.A. and Dallas who spend hours more in traffic jams than would have been thinkable in 1980. Let’s talk to anyone who has to go to an airport and get felt up by a TSA goon, then sit in a cramped, tiny seat and get basically dehydrated and starved before we wax jubilant about the improved standards of air travel. Continue reading

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