So far, this has been a strange year. My plan was to get out more, then I tore my left meniscus, then I got a nasty winter cold. While this was going on, Michele’s cousin, Fred Hilsenrath, died and her step-fathers best friend died. In the background, it is raining and raining and raining. Before my meniscus tore and the rains settled in, I did get out.

Like a lot of kids my age, I had a Lionel toy train set. As I got older, that morphed into pretty large HO scale model railroad that took over much of the end wall of my bedroom and an interest in real trains. I think that Railroads represented freedom when I was young, probably about nine or ten, and first took the train to San Francisco on my own. For a couple of years, probably when I was 13 and 14, a friend and I took the train, alone, to the State Fair in Sacramento as part of a trip that included taking a steam ferry, the Eureka, across the Bay to Oakland, a train to Sacramento, and a streetcar to the Fair (where we would always look at the huge model railroad among other delights). Fortuitously, I think, railroads completed the switch from glorious steam to boring diesel at about the same time I lost interest because I had discovered cars and girls.

Last month, the end of January, actually, I went to Sacramento with Burt Kuhlman to see The California State Railroad Museum. I had not been there since the opening week and it didn’t seem much different than it was in my memories. The problem with railroad museums is that engines are so big, so heavy and hard to move, that it is hard to have more than a couple of them and no museum is going to have a large collection. In the whole country, there are only 45 full-size steam locomotives built prior to 1880, this Museum has eight of these but that is still not very much. One of my favorites is the Governor Stanford. The Governor Stanford built in Philadelphia 1862, disassembled, put in crates, and shipped around the horn to San Francisco. The engine was then put in service hauling freight over the Sierras when they were building the Transcontinental Railroad. It went back and forth between Sacramento and, eventually, Promontory Summit in Utah where an actual Golden Spike was driven in to mark the connection of California to the East 1869.

Looking at the Governor Stanford, it just seems so small and open to go the 750 miles, over the Sierras, through Nevada, and across Western Utah in all kinds of weather. Only forty years later, behemoths, like the one below at 266 tons, started hauling long trains over the same route (and over the Tehachapis some 350 miles, or so, to the south). This particular locomotive was delivered to Southern Pacific in 1944 and was the last steam locomotive they bought. The world was changing, steam engines were sold for scrap and the world changed to diesel.

What struck me most about the difference between the two locomotives is how similar they are. Each generation of locomotives was built with the rules and thinking of the last generation. There is no sense of thinking out of the box, at looking at the problem with fresh eyes. They are stunning human artifacts and they infer that it is very hard to change a way of doing something.

We are going to the mountains for a weekend without computers and I know we will miss at least five major stories that nobody will remember by Wednesday. Watching Cohen’s appearance at the House Oversight Committee has left me in a good mood and so has a major article in Rolling Stone which I highly recommend.

It is a fascinating article (for that matter, you could spend an hour just looking at the body language in the picture above). The article layout is a little strange – for me, at least – in that, there is a main interview with Nancy Pelosi and separate, but connected, interviews with each of the other women that didn’t have links that I found. All the interviews are worth ready, this is a group of amazing people who are shaping the future as the article points out. Below are some sample quotes but, really, click through to the article if only to see the short promo video if nothing else. Here are a couple of samples, from AOC, AOC, Ilhan, and Nancy Pelosi.

In your ability to galvanize your supporters through social media, you have been compared to Donald Trump.
Well, I think that there’s this rush to make that comparison, but any time media fundamentally changes, the first movers to recognize that change — and to learn it and to adapt to it — tend to have that first-move advantage. So this is less about personality, less about Trump, and more about who has had the first-mover advantage. But there are similarities. People who succeed in social media follow similar tenets. In order to resonate with people, you have to tell them what you mean, you have to be willing to make mistakes, you have to be willing to be vulnerable and learn as you go.

How much of what you’re talking about is trying to move the Overton window [the range of ideas accepted in public discourse] so that Democrats can compete with the way Republicans have moved it?
A huge part of my agenda is to move the Overton window, because it’s a strategic position. I’m a first-term freshman in an institution that works by seniority. Procedurally, it is kind of like high school. You’re the new kid on the block. So, as a freshman, you have to look at the tools available to you, and in my first term, if we have the opportunity to frame the debate, then that is one of the ways to have the most power. If I’m here for four days, then the most powerful thing I can do is to create a national debate on marginal tax rates on the rich.

In a tweeted apology, you wrote you were grateful to ‘Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating [you] on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes.’ What do you think you still have to learn about the Jewish faith or Jewish culture to avoid repeating such mistakes?

I know what intolerance looks like and one thing that has been painful about this whole process is knowing that I used language that caused hurt to others. My hope is that as much as I hold others accountable and help them learn, that people will also hold me accountable. I work every day to make sure we are living in a more tolerant world. And I hope people understand how deeply I care about creating that world. That’s why one of the first things I did as a member-elect was to speak about the rise of anti-Semitism — and one of the first bills I cosponsored as a new member was legislation to elevate the position of a Special Envoy to combat anti-Semitism. I’m an organizer at heart. I’ve given an earful to others who traffic in bigotry, so I need to listen and learn. Listening and working with communities directly impacted is what will make me a better public servant. Speaker Pelosi has been a mentor throughout this whole process and I look forward to working with her in furthering the people’s agenda.

Beatles, Stones, Dylan? Where are you on the three greats of the Sixties and the Seventies?
I probably know the words to more Beatles songs, if that means anything. I love Dylan, and I love the Stones. I’ve been to many of their concerts. I was at one concert in Argentina. I was down there for a security visit. On the street, they had the banners: the Rolling Stones with Bob Dylan. Oh, my God! We had to go, right? So we had to rearrange everything. And we go, and there is Bob Dylan singing “Like a Rolling Stone”! It was just incredible. And at that concert — this is having nothing to do with anything — [Rep.] Nita Lowey, who’s [Appropriations] chair now, she’d never been to a concert. I said, “Look, Nita. We’re concertgoers. You may smell things you don’t recognize, but we are concertgoers. If you go, you have to stay.”

From Donald J. Trump…Crazy Bernie

From BernieSanders…Trump is TERRIFIED

For a political junkie like me, this election is already fascinating, which makes me feel a little guilty because it isn’t a game for me to enjoy but a life and death struggle between the Democratic Establishment and the upstart Progressives for the soul of the Party. And, let’s face it, the future of the world as we know it. My issue, increasingly my only issue, is Climate Change. Real, big, Climate Change is coming towards us with all the realness and finality of World War II. How we react to that, the amount of urgency and energy we put into dealing with what is quickly becoming an emergency will make a difference to the future of our planet.

There are an astounding number of Democrats running. Somebody, I don’t remember who, said that the field could be broken into two groups, those who are running on the issues like Warren and Sanders, and those who are running on who they are like Booker and Harris. That rings true to me. I think that almost everybody has signed on to the Green New Deal but I don’t really know what that means, when I go to Kamala Harris’ website, it says TOUGH. PRINCIPLED. FEARLESS. and that is pretty much the depth of the information I’m going to get. After reading a very complimentary article in the Washington Post on South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, I went to his website and all it said is It’s time for a generation of American Leadership. That’s it. I have no idea where he stands on the political spectrum, which is too bad since he is the kind of young person I would like to see emerge as a contender.

I would think that anyone running for President would have spent some time reflecting on what issues they find important but, if’s that that’s the case, they don’t want to tell us. Maybe they know what they want but are afraid to say it out loud or, maybe, and this is my fear, they do not want to offend big donors. I’ve read that the two people Wall Street hates are Elisabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and they are the two whom we know the most about their policies. It seems to me that a lot of money is going to go to candidates who aren’t Warren or Sanders.

As an aside, I’m not sure how to, shorthand, refer to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Bernie seems right but Elizabeth doesn’t, Elizabeth does not seem to connote her seriousness as well as Warren, but Bernie and Warren seems not quite right either. End aside.

The divide in the Democratic Party worries me. I’m afraid my side, the Progressive side, will lose because the other side knows how to play the game. But, maybe, it is a new game. When Dianne Feinstein, not at her best, went viral and she couldn’t even understand how it happened and then, two days later, I see this picture of AOC, Ayanne Pressly, and Rashida Tlaib and I think; This is a new game. 

Michele and I have both had winter colds that just want to hang on. Outside, it’s been cold and rainy, inside it’s warm and dry, so we have only gone out for necessary chores. Returning, coughing and wheezing. Today it was almost 60 and dry so I wandered out on the deck – earbuds in, listening to Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 1 – to just sit and soak in the early spring. Near me, was a small pile of birdseed left over from our birdfeeder’s spring cleaning and I watched the birds trying to eat it. They would dash in, get close, and then dash out empty handed, getting closer each time. The bravest were the Chickadees followed by Juncos; all of them afraid but hungry. To me, it was adorable, for them it was a lot more serious. Finally, one Chickadee got some seed, then another, and the world seemed a little brighter.

In the face of 37 indictments, the President’s continued actions to undermine the Special Counsel investigation raise the questions: what does Putin have on the President, politically, personally or financially?  part of a statement released by Speaker Pelosi’s office on Saturday.

I’ve had a lousy winter cold and the last two weeks have faded into a grey haze of not much but sleep, blowing my nose, watching TV, and reading tweets so I feel out of it. Before my cold, I read that Nancy Pelosi was going to run for Speaker again, and I was disappointed. She is, after all, 78 years old and definitely old school at a time when I think new blood and new ideas are needed. But, between naps, as I watched the shutdown drone on, I began to think that she is the perfect foil for Trump. When Trump blinked and ended the shutdown with what seemed like no resolution, I was sure she was the right person. I’ve read that Pelosi won this round (but I think it is more accurate to say that everybody lost and that Trump lost the most). That’s not surprising to me. For a woman to rise to the office of Speaker of the House, she has to be better than any man around (after all, the default position is always White Male).

Right after the shutdown, which seems a long time ago now, I was thrilled to read the line at the top of the page, which I saw on a retweet from Ilhan Omar @IlhanMN, then I was incredulous, and finally, a little scared. Oh my God! The Speaker of the House or, Nancy, as Trump says he calls her, is going after the President and that is scary because Trump, himself, is scary crazy. He is usually the craziest guy in the room and he could do anything if pushed into a corner. I’ve calmed down now by thinking that if I had to make a bet between Speaker Pelosi and President Trump, I would take Pelosi, every time.

I guess that bet is a no-brainer though, women have to be better to make the team, let alone be the captain of the team, just like anybody of color. The average woman in Congress is much smarter and more capable than the average guy, she has to be. The amount of work that it took Trump to get where he is not even in the same ballpark as the amount of work it took Pelosi. As a woman in what has been a man’s game for most of her life, she has overcome more pain and rejection than any imagined by Trump. Pelosi’s rise to power has made her thick-skinned, while Trump’s waltz has, paradoxically, left him even more thin-skinned and isolated.