When I first started thinking about blogging, I asked some friends who blog what to do when I am too busy or tired to post anything. They said, “No one expects a blogger to post every day.” “Nonsense,” I replied, “I expect you to post at least six days a week and am very disappointed with you when you skip a day.”
The better answer I got later was to learn the art of recycling.
So, being too tired to write anything after another three and a half hour Neighborhood Network meeting, I am going to take this advice tonight. I have posted in the pages sections two articles on transit I wrote for the Inquirer in 2003 and 2004, “SEPTA and Snidely Whiplash,” and “Put SEPTA on the rails with slots.”
Unfortunately, while the Pennsylvania Transit Coalition succeeded in forcing Governor Rendell to bail SEPTA out by flexing federal highway funds, not much has changed in the long term fiscal outlook for SEPTA. (I previously posted an article, Renewing Coalitions I wrote about the importance of the labor / community coalition that made the PTC possible and successful. )
Aside from still being relevant, these are among some of my favorites of all the pieces I have written in the last few years. I am told that they are even a little humorous, although I think some of the humor people claim to have found in the second piece comes from not taking my proposal to put slot machines on trains seriously.
I have to thank my editor at the Inquirer, Janet McMillan, for her help with these pieces. Over the last few years, Janet has taught me how to reshape my academic prose for a daily newspaper. And, as importantly, she let me keep the double pun in French in the second piece even though she claimed that only three people in the Delaware Valley would get it. I am particularly proud of that pun, especially since I always got bad grades in foreign languages.