I returned to New Iberia today, Friday 22 March 2024, and it was a great day. I got some excellent health news, the weather was great, and I got a few pictures.
All but three of the images in this episode are cellular-telephone images.
Last time, three days ago, I went to New Iberia and chased the Union Pacific Railroad local train to Jeanerette, getting a good shot of it there before starting to feel quite bad and having a bad experience at Raising Cane’s. The next day, I ate fast food again, a good Taco Bell breakfast, because I still wasn’t feeling well.
I wish to share some insights and thoughts that I had yesterday before I get to today’s pictures.
Yesterday, Thursday, March 21st
I was just thinking about how my breakdown in 2010 stemmed in large part from a desire to … the words aren’t really coming to me now, but I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the year before that breakdown, I went to the high-school graduation of the kids whom I taught in my first year at that school. So, seeing the Class of 2009 graduate and going to Close Up and doing all of that and moving on made me think that I had missed out on plenty, and I did.
I realize what this means now as I see other autistic people talking about this; it’s difficult to explain, but it’s like you want to go back and have a normal childhood, a normal early adulthood, a normal life, and it makes plenty of sense that, a year later, a year after 2010, in early 2011, I was trying to go back to school, back to college, and it also makes sense that it didn’t really work, and it makes sense that all of this happened after an experience that opened up my eyes to the problem of my social whatever. It just makes sense.
Tyler Austin Harper, that guy made an ableist tweet yesterday, then he deleted it, and then he doubled down on it. It’s pretty gross. I am pretty disappointed in that guy.
Once again, even if he comes around to understanding, it’s the problem that we have to spend all of this effort pleading with people for our own humanity, and I say “we” because I myself don’t have much issue with dietary issues, but I have had that experience of having to plead for my own humanity in other situations, like sensory stuff and communication stuff, and, actually, I have realized recently that, actually, much of my issues with dietary stuff is executive-function stuff. So, I do need to look into meal-replacement products.
Jenny talks about wishing that there was a pill that you can take a few times per day in place of eating, and the thing that these “cooking is human” scolds don’t understand is that, at least for people like Jenny and me, it’s not the physical act of chopping and all of that that is the problem; it’s the executive function. It’s not the actual act of pouring stuff into a pan or a pot or whatever. That’s not the issue.
I have to work on shots from April 2023. I have to do the March 31 blog post, and I will feel better once I get that done.
Oh, I read two chapters of Confucius Lives Next Door yesterday. That was good, but something in it made me uncomfortable when I read it before, made me uncomfortable when I read it in 2014, but now I know why it makes me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t know back then that I am autistic, and, even once I learned that I am autistic, it took me a while to understand what that actually means. So, the thing in the book to which I am most referring is the part about just how like the whole employment-is-family and employment-is-your-identity thing, just how big of a deal that was, and the big April 1 ceremonies and rituals. That bothered me back then, and I really see why now.
What did not bother me is a similar rite of passage for young people, a day some time in early January, like a welcome-to-adulthood thing. It’s like, you’re an adult now, you have rights and responsibilities, but it’s not tied to a job. Like, okay, I get that. I don’t have a problem with THAT, with that rite of passage or holiday.
So, this reminds me of why I am bothered by plenty of progressive or socialist or leftist critiques of gig work. To me, gig work is not a problem. The problem is the lack of a solid foundation underneath it. So, like, we need universal healthcare and universal childcare and, possibly, even a sub-basic income. I like the idea of like, “hey, I am doing this task now; it’s going to end at some point. So, I am not controlled by this person or firm. It’s not my whole identity.” So, for that to work, there needs to be a floor underneath you. That is why I was attracted to universal basic income in the first place.
So, I am reading, who is it, Michael Paul Lindsey, that railroader who became famous? He worked for Union Pacific, critiquing the railroad company on TikTok, and is a smart guy.
Well, he is doing like a gig now, like with Nebraska Central or one of the shortline railroads in that area, where it is a 90-day contract, where, at the end of 90 days, he can just renew if he wants or not, and he could return like four or five months later and ask for more work. So, I think that more of us should be able – should be enabled – to do such things.
Another part of Confucius Lives Next Door that I like toward the end is that values are taught in school and by the government with signs in public places, and that that is too important to leave to the private sector in Asian society. It works. Imagine if we tried to do that here. It would backfire, which, in a paradoxical way, is why we need to do it or to have done it here. We have backed ourselves into a corner.
Another story from the book (from the passage that I read today) that struck me is about how the cigarette companies from the United States tried to introduce these cigarettes that were less annoying smokewise, like less annoying to people other than the smoker, the user, and how they didn’t do well in the West because the user experience of smoking them was diminished from regular cigarettes, but they did fine in Japan, because people in Japan actually give a damn about not needlessly annoying their neighbors with smoke. That was interesting, and it felt validating to me about morality with sensory issues and validated the entire book, too.
It’s a very safe society over there in East Asia, even if there is more white-collar crime. It’s that property crime rates are low.
Today: March 22nd
My appointment this morning in New Iberia was at 09:30, and I got there just in time.
For some reason, I got really tired last night, and I guess because I am sick and because I had been up early and didn’t fall asleep at my bedtime the night before, I just started yawning plenty and went to sleep without eating a salad. The plan today was to treat myself to some leisure and exploring in the good weather after the appointment was finished.
On the drive to the appointment, I had the windows of the truck down, even though it’s kind of cold, because I made a mistake. I had a little crack in both driver’s side windows, and there was a deluge last night; so, the inside of my truck is quite wet. That was a hell of a deluge. A regular rain would not have made the inside of this place as wet, but that deluge did. There is some street flooding in New Iberia. Wow.
I thought that I might treat myself to Whataburger food today. My plan was to hang out in New Iberia for a while after the appointment, then mosey my way over to Lafayette. My breakfast, I thought, might be a Whataburger hamburger, though I imagined that it was possible that I will just return to the house and eat breakfast at 5pm, like I have been doing.
So, as I wrote at the end of Tuesday’s essay, it had been a long time since I had done something like I did that day, something like what I did on Tuesday afternoon: chase a train from one town to the next. This is making me think that I need to get a radio scanner again.
Anyway, I got an extremely-clean bill of health! I was told that I had the blood pressure of a teenager and the heart of a 20-year-old! That’s some bragging rights right there!
I then went for a walk in City Park in New Iberia, in parts of the park where I had not been before, but I started the walk in Bouligny Plaza. I visited the war memorial in New Iberia. I had never been there before.
These are cellular-telephone pictures, as are all but three images in this article.
This is the old Missouri Pacific Railroad freight house.
I walked across Bayou Teche.
This is City Park.
I visited the parts of the park next to Bayou Teche and the upstream side of it, and I decided to exit the park before I really wanted to do so because I realized that the best thing for me to do at that point is to return to the truck and hydrate with what I have to drink there. I was otherwise fine.
There had been a Honda CRV parked in front of this house just before I took these images, and it left as I was there, opening up this view!
This is interesting.
I would have walked down some of these side streets and explored more, but I needed to return to the truck to hydrate myself.
Here is where the Mount Carmel Academy was.
I returned to Bayou Teche but used a different bridge than the one that I used to get here.
This is a neat little area. I am passing by this mural from Colette Bernard; I looked her up on Twitter a while back, and I didn’t realize then that this due Shane Bernard whom I follow on Facebook who used to work at Avery Island is her father.
Actually, what I am seeing straight ahead of me is very interesting.
Burke Street reminds me of parts of Old Gretna, where there is a really narrow sidewalk that is much higher than the street below it, like Second Street or Third Street.
So, I went to the truck and hydrated and, with that addressed, I came back down the bayou to take a walk down Church Alley.
That was interesting.
Next, I was by the Louisiana & Delta Railroad interchange yard, and, here, I got my only SLR-camera pictures of the day. There were plenty of cars here as there were Tuesday, probably Monday, too.
Here, we see the LDRR 1846 switching a cut of cars dragged over South Landry Drive. The 1707 is at the eastern end of the yard in one of the tracks, and it is running; so, presumably, it came over here with the 1846, but I don’t know, and the 1703 is further into the yard between some cars.
That’s as good as it’s going to get railroad-picture-wise today!
I couldn’t figure out what to do next. The time was about 11:30, and I was yawning. The weather was beautiful, sunny and clear with Fahrenheit temperatures in the 60s or maybe lower 70s.
Man, compared to last year, I look good and feel good; I just need to lose more weight, but not as much as I have already lost. So, I lost 30 pounds in the last eight months. I don’t need to lose another 30 pounds. I mean, maybe I could, but that’s a little extreme. That would be down to 140, probably not a good idea.
I had been thinking that this L&D job might go to the MoP Branch and that I should then try to set up for a picture that, but that didn’t happen, or, if it did happen, I didn’t stick around to know.
I was trying to decide what to do then, but, eventually, I decided to make my way to Lafayette. I was really hungry.
So, here I was in Lafayette.
I am not telling you what I am doing in this exact spot!
Nobody yet knows about it. After that, I got food from Whataburger and ate it by the BNSF yard, where I saw a BNSF freight train in the bypass track, the first time that I see such a thing. That was strange.
I had the Sweet And Spicy burger.
So, I walked like two miles in New Iberia today, walked in some places where I had not been before, and it was great, but then I realized that I had overextended myself.
Today was a great day, though, with great personal news, even if the news in the rest of the world is awful.
So, I’ll see you next time, I guess, whenever that will be.
Jim
