Mike Rose is riding a train to this remote railroad
junction in the White Mountains of New Hampshire to track railroad miles. Mr. Rose's journey takes him past steep
cliffs, towering trestles and cascading brooks.
Vitally important is that he is riding over this track for the first
time and can therefore add it to his collection. "I got the mileage—that's all that
counts," says Mr. Rose, a 65-year-old Toledo, Ohio, tool and die
maker. Mr. Rose is a "rare
mileage" collector, one of about 300 in the country. Such collectors strive to ride as much of the
U.S. rail system as they can, often chartering special trains to access routes
ordinarily off-limits to passengers. To qualify, collectors have to travel on steel wheels on
steel rails. Riding along the track in
an automobile or on a bicycle doesn't count.
Collectors mark off the routes they ride on rail maps and record
interesting sights—an unusual bridge or a complicated track layout, for
example. The U.S. railroad system has
nearly 140,000 miles of routes.
Passengers can ride about 26,000 miles of the system aboard Amtrak,
commuter and tourist trains. The rest of
the system is freight only and considered rare by mileage collectors. Mileage collecting isn't new. Some collectors fancy themselves modern-day
followers of rare-mileage pioneer Rogers E.M. Whitaker, the late New Yorker
magazine editor who wrote stories in the 1960s about his rail-riding adventures
under the pen name E.M. Frimbo. Daniel
Machalaba
Read more stories at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444273704577635410254717408.html
Cooperation rather than conflict, civility rather than hostility. Read COOPERATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING: A Guide for Turning Conflicts into Agreements
developed by Search for Common
Ground at: http://www.sfcg.org/resources/training/pdf/cpsguide.pdf Search for Common Ground is an
international non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Washington, DC
that works in partnership with the European Center for Common Ground in
Brussels, Belgium. Search for Common
Ground is dedicated to transforming conflict into cooperative action. Founded in 1982, the organization now operates
in fourteen countries around the world, working with partners on the ground to
strengthen local capacity to deal with conflict.
The quip
"No good deed goes unpunished" was first quoted in print by Clare Booth Luce's social secretary Letitia
Baldrige in Roman Candle (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1956), 129: "When I would entreat her to engage in
resolving a specific case, she replied, 'No good deed goes unpunished, Tish,
remember that.'" Oscar Wilde, Billy
Wilder, and Andrew W. Mellon have also been cited as sources, but without
written evidence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Boothe_Luce
The Harpeth River State Park, a linear park located along the Harpeth River in
Middle Tennessee offers natural, cultural, and recreational day use areas rich
in historic significance and natural beauty.
Canoe access areas are located at all sites (excluding archeological
areas) providing beginner and advanced paddlers opportunities to float this
beautiful class II river. http://www.tn.gov/environment/parks/HarpethRiver/
Note: I first learned of the Harpeth River when
reading the lyrics to one (of six) Tennessee state songs: " . . . Where the Iris grows, where the Harpeth
flows, That is where I long to be . . .
"
The U.S. Justice Department's ebook
price fixing lawsuit against Apple and
two book publishers will head to trial on June 3rd, 2013. That gives both sides plenty of time to build
their case in the antitrust suit, which accuses Apple and five publishers of
colluding to raise ebook prices by moving to a controversial agency model in
2010. Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins
Publishers, and Hachette Book Group have already reached settlements with the
government, leaving Macmillan and Penguin Group to fight the charges alongside
Apple. There's always the possibility
both sides will come to an agreement before entering the courtroom next year,
though Apple
seems resolute in defending itself from
the DOJ's litigation efforts.
Talking on a hand-held cellphone while driving is banned in 10 states (California,
Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon,
Washington, and West Virginia) and the District of Columbia. The use of all cellphones by novice drivers
is restricted in 32 states and the District of Columbia and the use of all
cellphones while driving a school bus is prohibited in 19 states and the
District of Columbia. Text messaging is
banned for all drivers in 39 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, novice drivers are banned from
texting in 5 states (Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas)
and school bus drivers are banned from text messaging in 3 states (Mississippi,
Oklahoma, and Texas). Many localities
have enacted their own bans on cellphones or text messaging. In some but not all states, local
jurisdictions need specific statutory authority to do so. Five states have no texting bans. Six states have partial bans. See map of texting bans at: http://www.iihs.org/laws/maptextingbans.aspx
A.Word.A.Day with
Anu Garg
crow's feet (KROHZ feet) noun: Wrinkles in the skin around the outer corners
of the eyes. From their supposed resemblance to a crow's feet. Earliest documented use: around 1374. Another term coined after a bird's feet: pedigree.
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
In Italian it corresponds to "zampe di gallina" = "hen's feet".
In French, we refer to geese as in "goose's feet" instead of your crow.
Curiously, in Brazil "chicken's feet" has the same meaning.
The Danish term for crow's feet is somewhat more gentle and puts a more positive spin on it. The term is smilerynker, literally smiling wrinkles. Crow's feet, on the other hand, kragetæer, literally crow's toes, is handwriting like mine that is uneven and hard to decipher and looks like the tracks left in the snow by birds hopping about.
In my language - Swedish - this expression is used for handwriting that is almost illegible, a child's (or a doctor's).
Years ago when our granddaughter, Samantha, was about four years old, she sat on my wife's lap and was gently rubbing my wife's face, around her eyes and accompanying crow's feet. Samantha lovingly said, "Grandma, I love your pleats."
A crow's foot is also the mark a carpenter uses to mark his measuring tape, you start the mark at the correct measurement on the tape and angle it slightly to the left and a second mark angles slightly to the right.
Crow's feet (plural of crow's foot) is also a term in the American English tradesman's vernacular for an open-end socket wrench attachment (images) that can get the job done in tight work areas where a regular wrench or socket just won't do!
Within the conventions of comic book lettering, crow's feet describes the marks used to indicate a human sound that accompanies the in-taking or expelling of air. Also called breath marks, they are usually three small dashes stacked vertically (and at slight angles) on each side of the sound that the character is making (such as a whew, gasp!, cough, sputter).
September 7, 2012 The Texas
Transportation Commission last week adopted the 85-mph speed limit for
the soon-to-open segment of toll road Texas 130 from just south of Austin to
Interstate 10 in Seguin. The speed limit
is 80 mph on the existing portion of the toll road, which connects Georgetown
to south Austin. Open for several years,
it's operated by the Texas
Department of Transportation. The
new 41-mile stretch of Texas 130 is the state's first public-private toll road,
built by a private consortium run by Spanish company Cintra and San
Antonio-based Zachry
American Infrastructure. In this
arrangement, TxDOT owns the project and collects a percentage of toll revenue. The rest of the money goes to the consortium,
working under the name SH 130 Concession
Co., which pays to operate and maintain the road for 50 years and collects
most of the toll receipts. Toll rates
for the new road have not yet been adopted. By contract, the road must open by Nov. 11,
but it likely will open sooner, said Chris
Lippincott, spokesman for the SH 130 Concession Co. While TxDOT raised the speed on the toll
road, it has, at least for now, reduced the speed limit from 65 to 55 mph on
the parts of U.S.
183 that parallel the new stretch of Texas 130. Vianna Davila http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Can-t-drive-55-On-Texas-130-you-soon-can-go-at-3845898.php
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. September 5, 2012 Matt
and Keegan Myers built their apparel company on the idea that Michigan's
scenic State Highway M-22 isn't just a road, but a way of life. But
the brothers insist it is also their intellectual property. Now they are scrambling to hold on to it. The Myers brothers grew up along the northern
shore of Lake Michigan where the outdoor lifestyle attracts thousands of
vacationers each summer. Almost 10 years
ago, the brothers had a novel idea: to
trademark the sign for the area's main highway, M-22, as a logo and expand
their niche kite-boarding business into a clothing retailer. "We
needed to create a brand that represents this region," says 33-year-old
Matt Myers, the older of the two. But
their claim that their trademark gave them exclusive rights to all other
state-highway signs seems to have hit a roadblock. This spring, Michigan's attorney general ruled
that all state road signs, including M-22, are in the public domain, and widely
available to citizens to use as they wish—especially in service of the state's
tourist trade. "They didn't build it,"
says Carolyn Sutherland, owner of the Good Hart General Store, who sought the
ruling on behalf of her souvenir shop along Highway M-119 in Good Hart, Mich.,
using a familiar campaign refrain this year. Pointing at her store, she added: "I
built that, and I should be able to sell my own address." The brothers say the attorney general's
decision unfairly threatens a brand they spent $1 million to build and protect,
and they aren't ruling out a lawsuit. "We
will go down fighting," says Matt Myers.
Their lawyer, Enrico Schaefer, says the finding could imperil hundreds
of other businesses in Michigan that employ pieces of the public domain in
their trademarks. Thousands of
businesses and small-time vendors have made money tapping into Americans' love of
the symbols that connote a fun road trip. Federal records show at least 794
registered trademarks on stylized versions of road signs, but it is unclear how
many unadulterated road signs like M-22 have trademark protection, says Brendan
Way, a San Francisco lawyer who specializes in intellectual property. Matthew Dolan Read
much more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444772804577621854058684444.html
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