Return Of The Track
Hi. I am “back,” I guess. Today, Wednesday 30 September 2020, I took my first train pictures and my first DSLR-camera pictures in more than three months.
I have not had any new posts with new material here in a long time, I know. If you want to know what is up with me lately, you should read the three updates that I published on Patreon in the last few months.
First, see my “Summer 2020 Update” article.
Second, see my brief update after Hurricane Laura.
Third, see my “Early Autumn 2020 Update” article published yesterday.
Decisions, Decisions
I also would like to tell you what I have decided about the next-year-or-so future of Jimbaux’s Journal, which is to say what I have decided to do about my 2020, all of which except for today’s pictures remain unpublished, pictures and my 2011 pictures, which is to say, whether to full blog the pictures of every day in 2011 in which I took pictures or just continue doing my “sampler” essays.
However, this decision has now been complicated due not only to delays incurred by Hurricane Laura but also by, as per what I wrote in the “Early Autumn 2020 Update” linked above, computer problems, specifically, whether I will be able to use Adobe Photoshop CS3 again after my trial of my own copy of the program that I have reinstalled on my repaired laptop expire.
My pre-Laura-and-pre-computer-problem decision was that, despite the onerous amount of time that processing the early 2020 pictures would take, I should still do it now, since it represents a continuation of the 2019 pictures that I am almost done, the story of my life that it tells, largely broken earlier this year after I moved out of New Orleans and after the Planters Rice Mill in Abbeville closed and that I would do “sampler” articles for 2011, gearing myself up to really knock out all 2012 shots for 2022, something that might be difficult to do if I insisted on doing all 2011 pictures.
Doom And Gloom
So, that is that, and the world still burns.
Things are just going nuts in the world, and it totally doesn’t have to be that way, but some people are just too into social dominance.
I am in a constant state of dread in understanding that most of humanity is just violent and sadistic.
There are signs of hope here and there, but there is so much work to do.
Is there hope?
Resurrection
So, especially with the cool weather that we got last week, I had planned for a long time to come by the track in New Iberia today to break the photographic dry spell and get my first pictures of the fall season, first train pictures in more than three months.
It happened at 15:20 CDT by the park, as this westbound BNSF Railway manifest train passed me.
Yeah, it’s not some glorious return for me. My best picture-taking days are behind me.
I guess that, assuming that train consists still are like they were when I knew better, this is the westbound train that carries all of the non-CSX interchange traffic out of New Orleans, and I like those gondolas with the coiled steel, but it’s too bad that that car with the increasingly rare BN logo is tagged.
Coil cars are neat.
This is about as good as it gets around here anymore.
I would later learn that, about 20 minutes before I took that picture, one of my early childhood influences in my railroad enthusiast died in an automobile accident.
Interlude
Okay, with that train passed, it’s time to chill. I brought a book to read, but it’s slightly warm around here, I am antsy, and the world is on fire; so, I need to doomscroll on social media.
There are terrorists among us.
Familiar Faces
Anyway, CV and Peartree arrive at the depot with the LDRR 1717 and another locomotive to tie up after working at ARA.
They are good dudes.
I learned that there is a tank car for Coastal Chemical at Elks right now and that it might be brought to Abbeville next week; that’s the first one since June or late May! That is somewhat exciting, but I almost lament if that’s another thing to occupy my time and, including giving me more shots in the process.
I still know nothing about the fate of the rice mill there.
A Soiled Experience Of A Good Train
So, the Union Pacific Railroad local, the UP New Iberia Turn, was coming, westbound, and that is why I wanted to stick around, to get a shot of it here, recreating a shot that I did a little more than a year ago of an L&D train, but, in the meantime, I had to deal with some dirtbaggishness, and probably not of the Trump-supporting variety.
I had a problem with some dirtbags near where I was taking pictures at Corinne Street just west of the depot. The pounding of the bass from somebody’s truck parked in the driveway and was painful for me. I had to go ask for him to turn it down. The man did at first, saying nothing as I told him that it was painful and shaking me, but, then, after I got back to my position, they just turned it back up, all while they were just standing almost in the street staring at me, basically until I left after the last train, the Union Pacific local, passed.
I hate that the world’s people are horrible. I have a headache now, which may partly be due to that but also due to dehydration.
Then, finally, as I hoped to do, I photographed the UP New Iberia Turn arriving in town. It had one locomotive, the up 1532, and 10 cars, as those dirtbags with their obnoxious Earth-shaking watched me.
The conductor had to go to the depot, I guess to hand over the manifest or something, hence his riding the platform above, and the below image was made six minutes later, after he reboarded the train and it resumed its journey to the yard.
That is all for pictures today, and it’s a damned shame that I can’t look at those pictures without thinking of the dirtbaggery that accompanies them.
I went to the interchange yard to watch them shoving the train into the yard, and then I left and went to the homestead.
Epilogue
That presidential debate was last night. I didn’t watch it, but almost everybody said that it was ugly, extraordinarily and shamefully ugly.
Anyway, there’re just some dirt bags in this town. I hate saying that, but it’s true. It looks like some construction debris or something like it has been dumped into that open field that is a park by the track just east of where the old Missouri Pacific railroad crossing is or was.
It’s a damn shame that so many of my Countryman, including people I have known for a long time, are revealing themselves to be fascist I am horrified and tomorrow I. It makes me feel that there is no hope for the world, even if we rid of the Trump and the GOP from the White House and the Senate. I don’t have one.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
We are being held hostage by thugs, as is the theme today.
I wish that I were more of a fighter.
I wish, as a white male person who suffers from racism and misogyny, that we could defeat white supremacy.
Like a typical man, I like pickup trucks and power tools – and trains – and such things, but it’s the whole intermale hierarchy with which I cannot deal.
We need to be putting solar panels everywhere and planting plenty of trees.
The bullies are here. They are powerful and want to maintain power. They do not want peace.
There are signs of hope, though.
With Biden being a centrist stooge, though, our work will only begin if he becomes President.
We have so much work to do.
But much of our society is a cancer on much of the rest of it – and on the concept of society itself.
What are the “we’re a republic, not a democracy” dudes going to do if we’re no longer a republic, either?
The most heartbreaking and infuriating thing to know is that people who are my neighbors and people who share DNA with me have voted to harm me.
I was never a “burn it all down” guy at all, but the fascists surrounding me are tempting me with such.
Why do people do this?
What is the point of society – and of living – if people are going to be needlessly cruel to each other?
That’s all for now.
Jim
