Train talks

Union workers at one of Erie County's top employers, Wabtec, have been on strike for a couple weeks now. It's quite unusual to have a large strike in our town, but every once and awhile one gets going. Wabtec is a global provider of equipment and everything else that might be part of the transportation industry. A few years ago they took over the GE plant here and continued to build trains, more specifically, locomotives. Here's a recent brand new one that we saw on their test track, which is only a mile south of the Mount.

The plant is right on the way into Erie for many of us who work there and so we pass the workers, their tents, chairs, placards and their job johnnies every day. One of the things on their agenda, according to the reports in our local newspaper, is for the company to transition to building more green locomotives...in line with climate change issues.

A second thought today: I have found a new author that I love. So I wanted to share some of his work with you, in hopes that if you like it you'll look him up and see what else there is. One hint: he was the US Poet Laureate!

The History Teacher

Trying to protect his students' innocence

he told them the Ice Age was really just

the Chilly Age, a period of a million years

when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,

named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more

than an outbreak of questions such as

"How far is it from here to Madrid?"

"What do you call the matador's hat?"

The War of the Roses took place in a garden,

and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom

on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom

for the playground to torment the weak

and the smart,

mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home

past flower beds and white picket fences,

wondering if they would believe that soldiers

in the Boer War told long, rambling stories

designed to make the enemy nod off.

Billy Collins