Tag Archives: Infrastructure

My Car Let Me Down

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I was looking forward to Wednesday night. Not because I was planning a night on the town, nor was it a high-end date night at one of Portland’s finer restaurants, either.

Wednesday wasn’t even my “day off”; that happens to be Tuesday nowadays—me with my five variant shades of work. After knocking out six hours of financial coordination at the credit union, I was off to umpire in South Portland, at SMCC. The night was comfortable, especially with the school’s ball field situated, overlooking Casco Bay.

What was the source of my anticipation? A night when I wouldn’t be beckoned while being on-call at the funeral home. I’d finally have a night where I could finish my game, drive home, eat dinner, have a beer or two, and somewhat approximate the normal end-of-the-day experience of most Americans.

Instead, JBE1, aka my 2008 Ford Taurus, had other plans. He would choose Wednesday night to shed his serpentine belt and offer a glimpse of the night ahead.This was foreshadowed while we were tooling along Broadway in South Portland, headed towards the college. A red battery icon began glowing, while a message of “check charging system” commenced flashing across the car’s instrument panel. Continue reading →

Drinking Dirty Water in Flint

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Water is an essential element of life.  We require it for drinking, cooking, and bathing—as well as other household functions common to civilized life in the U.S. Biologically, humans are 60 percent water, including a higher composition in vital organs like the brain, heart, and lungs. So when a major municipality’s water supply is compromised, it becomes a serious issue and even a domestic threat.

In Flint, Michigan, a depressed Midwestern city in the heart of America’s Rust Belt, city officials—in an effort to save money due to a shrinking tax base—switched the source of the city’s water supply in April 2014, from city of Detroit’s, whose source was Lake Huron—to the Flint River. Incidentally, residents of Flint recognized the river as a filthy tributary where a host of industrial chemicals and solvents had been dumped for decades. As soon as the switch was made, residents started complaining that the water looked, smelled and tasted funny. They said it often “looked dirty.”

The Flint River-just one of the sources of the city's water disaster.

The Flint River-just one of the sources of the city’s water disaster.

But it gets worse, for those living in economically-ravaged Flint. The local water treatment plant (with the approval of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality) failed to mix chemicals to the river water that would have lowered its corrosive nature. This resulted in lead from the ageing service lines leeching into the water. Lead levels spiked, exposing thousands of children to lead poisoning. Continue reading →

Baseball Eye Candy

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I’ve been talking and writing (at least on this blog) about infrastructure because it seems obvious to me that rebuilding and upgrading our nation’s structural foundation is essential—economically for sure—but also to stave off literal collapse and disaster.

I’m not in the business of reading tea leaves. Occasionally, however, something happens that lends an air of prescience to some posts—like when a train goes off the rails on one of our busiest rail routes between Washington, DC and New York City.

As a writer, my hope was to parlay some of this interest and research into paying gigs on the topic. Alas, like the lack of spring rain, my freelancing has hit a dry patch.

It’s always disappointing when you think you have something to say about an issue, but instead, editors only seem interested in the same old claptrap re-purposed with new ribbons and colorful bows—offering nothing new about politics, economics, and the way the world works.

The local news used to be a morning ritual. Lately, however, as soon as I get my weather forecast, I’m tuning into last night’s baseball highlights via MLB Network’s Quick Pitch with old Boston friend, Heidi Watney. It’s less stressful than being fed lies, obfuscation, and outright propaganda about the world.

Baseball highlights, Heidi-style.

Baseball highlights, Heidi-style.

Continue reading →

Games of Chance

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Driving Maine’s roadways is challenging. With all the bumps in the road and potholes, it’s a bit of an art form avoiding throwing your front-end out, or snapping a tie-rod, while not smashing into one of your fellow travelers passing from the other direction.  Austerity is a beautiful thing.

Bump sign

Speaking of austerity, our allies across the pond have opted for more of it, in resounding fashion, as David Cameron and the Conservatives were victorious in the British general election, securing an overall majority in Parliament. Listening to the BBC, while dodging potholes on my way to the Bath Y for my Friday morning swim, I heard a host of political “experts” prattling on about the vote. Listening to talk about “shy Tories” and confounded pollsters reveals that their pundits are just as clueless as are our own in the U.S. God save the Queen! Continue reading →

Building Bridges

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Political dialogue of the binary type, common in these late days of empire, usually centers on a small set of topics: taxes, government size—big for liberals, small for conservatives—military spending, entitlements (like social security), and a few others (maybe). Like a feedback loop, once begun, it continues without variety.

Also, the race to become the new occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2016 has begun. Establishment candidates—Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, maybe Chris Christie—will be opposed by more marginal candidates on both the right and the left. They’ll debate the issues, or at least create the aura that a debate is actually taking place. Then, the party bosses will demand that everyone line up behind whoever they deem most electable, and the sham we participate in every four years will again occur a year from November.

Do you really believe that 73-year-old socialist, Bernie Sanders, has a snowball’s chance to get the Democratic nomination? And if you say that his role is to push Hillary to the left on issues, then I fear you might be giving our current political process far too much credit as means for necessary change. Continue reading →

Crumbling Down

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It’s tempting to look at the world, at least the world as it gets filtered through our digital imagery, and feel like the globe we’re sitting atop is spinning out of control. I’m sure part of this is by design—people in the midst of fear—rational or irrational—are much easier to corral and control.

At the same time, there is a corresponding tendency on the part of 21st century humans to believe (irrationally, I would add) that technology, that amorphous term that gets tossed around willy-nilly at every turn, will bail us out of every single one of our problem patches. I’m a contrarian when it comes to this technological salvation app.

America’s infrastructure and the upkeep required to maintain it is trending in the wrong direction—to borrow a term from a popular series that curried favor with the Tee Vee watchers out there—it’s “breaking bad” and has been for decades. When the American Society of Civil Engineers released their report card on the condition of the nation’s infrastructure, the overall grade was a D+. This was relative to our roads, bridges, dams, waste water facilities, airports, and includes the electrical grid. Continue reading →

Getting the power back on

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Linemen in New Jersey repairing damage from Hurricane Sandy and the Election Day Northeaster.

Electricity is a marvel of modern life. An argument could be made that having an available flow of electric current is one of several essential elements sustaining our 21st century lifestyles. It’s also something that you never think about until the availability of and access to the power supply is compromised and no longer available at the flip of a light switch, or the powering on of one of our multitudinous electronic devices.

Since last Tuesday, large swaths of the northeastern population corridor, mainly near New York City and sections of New Jersey, have been suffering without electricity. I use the term “suffering” because absence of electricity removes the ease and convenience of daily  life quicker than almost anything else, and sets those without power back into a time warp reminiscent of the 18th and 19th centuries. Of course, people back then were better prepared to survive without present day “essentials” requiring electricity. Continue reading →