The following is quoted from an e-mail to the All_Aboard list by L.H. [nawdry@gmail.com]

Susan Pantell, a research associate with the Light Rail Now Project, has just completed an analysis of worldwide terrorist incidents in transportation spanning the past 40 years (1967-2007). Here's a quick breakdown of the percentage of total incidents by mode (rounded to 1 decimal):

Private Motor Vehicles 73.7%
Buses and Stations/Stops 9.5%
Aircraft and Air Facilities 8.6%
Rail Transit Trains 3.6%
Intercity Rail Trains 3.0%
Boats, Ships, and Maritime 0.9%
Other Transport Vehicles or Facilities 0.6%
   more »

I'd prayed for an answer to what should give my life motivation and meaning, since I've been a bit low in that department, what with all the disappointments in people and reasons to be grumpy at God.

OK, so this is what I realized . . .   more »

Acceptance is what Eastern spiritual traditions suggest to alleviate suffering. This directly contradicts the world I grew up in, which was based on expectations.

As a teacher and leader, I know that expectations have their place – they spur us on towards something better. At the same time, I know I suffered from expectations that were other people’s notions of “normal” or some other box they wanted to keep me from expanding out of. And now, in my thirties, I find myself disillusioned because I had unrealistic expectations of human community. So I’m sorting this out for myself.

I’m grateful for the lesson of acceptance. I’ve become calmer and more accepting of how other people present themselves.

And yet . . .

I realize that I’m really unhappy because my expectations are not met. In fact, I’m really angry. I feel like somehow I was promised a better world than I find myself in.

So this is my spiritual crisis of the moment.   more »

The inner drama was like a switch changing from 'content' to 'I want' and quickly, 'I lack'. Not even that I did want very much, but once the switch was thrown all the repressed wanting was activated for every thing I've ever been denied. And that force seems stronger than my will. I can't choose 'abundance' then, no matter how many self-help books I've read in my life. So I was watching that inner drama with more awareness than before. And I didn't feel very good about it, or myself.

So I've been thinking about how I relate to people. I want to relate to everyone with love, but SO OFTEN there is some situation of wanting. Basically wanting love in some form. Wanting to fit in, wanting to be liked, wanting to be approved of, successful. I shoot myself in the foot that way, because then I get in my own way and am no service to others. I'm really grieving this. I want to find my power - in situations where it matters. I like being in situations where I am the leader or the teacher or the hero somehow - then people give me power and I feel approved of and it's all good. But I want to be able to feel my power in confrontive situations, when people don't like me. That is when things can be transformed (and also when you can go acting like a fool and hurt others). I want that for myself and instead I run up against my limits.

And so I've been living out the same drama that drives people to their God. 'I want' equals materialism, but it also equals thirst for God. 'I lack' calls for God to fill the space. But not even God can fill 'I lack.' Instead, we have to throw that switch back over to 'abundance.'

I have some power over that switch with myself. If I remain conscious, I can remember the that I can indeed always choose how I respond to situations, which keeps me away from the 'I lack' setting. But I have even more power with other people. So long as my own tangles don't wrap me up, I can set up an emotional climate with the people around me that help them remember they are secure. So I pray for help to do that as a leader.   more »

Friend Sarah Pullman has a post on Howard Kunstler how has warned darkly about Peak Oil -- and a number of other sceneries in which he predicts a catastrophic currency devaluation, global flue epidemic, stock market collapse war with china, between India and Pakistan . . . et. al. It's the peak-oil scenario that is getting the most attention around me right now. There's two parts - the cause of trouble and then the prediction of collapse, the end of the automobile, suburbs, are nice comfy lifestyle, political order, domestic peace and the Republican party.

Sarah's post has a list complied by her reader Tom about all the predictions made (and passed without much effect). It reminds me to just take life a little more lightly and not to worry so much.

Which isn't to say that all those things aren't a worry.   more »

Terrorism is miniscule when put in context.
The real threat to our national security is ourselves . . . and our tools.



Terrorism isn’t a big deal. There. Somebody had to say it. Republicans have desperately been spreading fear, bringing up terrorism at every chance. But when you look at the numbers, it looks very minor compared with other threats to our national security that we have gotten used to. You can see for yourself, in the accompanying list of all the major risks faced by Americans.

In fact, since 1995, the average number of Americans killed by terrorism at home or abroad is 286 a year. Now look what else kills! More Americans are killed by law enforcement than by terrorists! 470 people are electrocuted every year and 776 people are shot accidentally. 16,692 were murdered last year.

In 9/11 four planes when down and there were many deaths in the towers. Yet that many people die on American highways every couple of months and there is no outcry, no threat to our civil liberties, no invading of small countries half way around the world. Even more die because of pollution from autos and power plants and politicians are busy trying to dismantle what imperfect environmental protections we do have. And deaths due to smoking and poor diet and lack of exercise dwarf all of these threats, and nobody is sending in the national guard to shut down McDonalds or Phillip-Morris.

So what is different about terrorism?   more »

An article I wrote for the Vermont Guardian:



The first use of the word “hitchhiking” is reported to have come from a Sept. 19, 1923, article in The Nation about three young women traveling through Vermont.

Many people put hitchhiking on the other side of an invisible line that divides “safe” from unknown. Yet, the practice continues, and Vermont has a good reputation among hitchhikers, who say people are friendly here.

Hitchhiking is legal in most places in Vermont, but it is illegal to solicit rides on interstates and on highway entrances past the “no hitchhiking” signs. It is also illegal to stand in the roadway.

“I have amazing luck hitchhiking,” reports Brattleboro resident Ian Bigelow, 23. “I have been able to get there time after time. Not all the time.”

“Most of the media teaches us to be afraid of each other, and one thing in my time hitchhiking, is that it really gave me faith in people,” said Serene, a 20-something at Brattleboro’s Common Ground who didn’t want her last name used.

The hitchhikers contacted for this article said meeting people was the most positive aspect of hitchhiking.

“I believe that hitchhiking is on a rise back up,” said Bigelow. “There’s more and more young people who believe that those old wives tales aren’t so true and are willing to risk it,” he said. “I think that in Vermont, with gas prices rising and we don’t have a good minimum wage and a shortage of good housing, there’s a lot of people hitchhiking because they just have to. It’s not always easy to repair your car.”

Read the entire article on the Vermont Guardian web site   more »