Different Sameness – 5 September 2015

by Jim on 2025/09/05

Jimbaux feels that there is nobody praying for you or for me.

[This essay was written in September of 2015 shortly after these images were made and is being reposted here because the original article published then was destroyed in a website crash in 2017.  What is presented here is the same essay, saved by Wayback Machine, with only the slightest of editing of style and content.]

Here’s a quick one.  Due to some alterations in my daily schedule and due to a relatively sudden whim, I got out in the heat and humidity and got a few shots this morning.  I am as surprised by this as you are – no matter how surprised you are!

Trains

A quick check of the track revealed the Y305 waiting at NE Tower on the CSX mainline; he soon got permission to pull up to Louisa Street, and once the yard job that was working out of the western end of the yard cleared, the Y305 was able to move forward.

Yeah, I’m not impressed either, as, even though I haven’t shot this train or shot at this location in a long time, it’s still the same old thing, which is a big reason that I don’t much do it anymore.  The closer shot is a little bit better.

Something surprising happened as this train was approaching.  There were quite a few amusing – and somewhat silly – comments over the radio between this crew and the yard job that had just been working out here dragging and then shoving a long cut out of Gentilly Yard.

I wasn’t paying close attention at first, but talk of some person “taking pictures of your train” got my attention, with the Y305 crew apparently asking the other crew if I had photographed the other crew’s train too, with the other crew responding that I had only been in my truck when it passed.  One went on about how the “guy was standing on the roof, not on the hood; on the roof.”  Umm, okay; I guess that that’s supposedly a big deal.  “The Y305 is going to be famous,” and other such comments ensued.

I can only guess that these guys must be new to the Y305, not be the traditional Y305 crews of the last decade, since, as you regular readers of the site know, the Y305 is one of the trains that I most often photograph, but then I realize that it was last October that I last photographed this train!  I don’t foam like I did in the old days, but I photographed the Y305 several times in 2014:

That October 6 set of shots of the Y305 constitutes the last time that I had photographed the train prior to today; I guess that railroaders forget that you exist if you stop taking pictures even for less than a year.

Anyway, moving on, I have something slightly different, a new shot, though a variation on an old one.  Last time, I mentioned the recent changes that have taken place for interchange between the BNSF Railway and the Norfolk Southern Railway in New Orleans.  Today, I got a shot of the BNSF-to-NS train, which is running regularly on the NS Back Belt for the first time since 2013 when the traffic started moving via the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad.

I decided to take advantage of slow automobile traffic to get a shot from this vantage point.

Well, that is different, but I’m not sure that it is worth doing again.  Anyway, that is Franklin Avenue in the front and I-10 in the rear.  You have seen these locations before, but this is just a different view, hence the “different sameness” in the title, though the editorial section will indicate another reason for that title.

That’s all for pictures.  I then went hang out with my favorite Yat for a little while before heading home.

Editorial

On the all-important and all-knowing Twitter, I read that some Syrian refugees are being called “fakers” because they are in possession of cell-phones, as if having a mobile telephone somehow makes you immune to the ravages or war, terrorism, humanitarian crises, etc.  This characterization seems puzzlingly stupid, since it seems to imply that possession of a cellular telephone should insulate one from the ravages of warfare, terrorism, etc., but it immediately brought to mind something very similar that I heard about Hurricane Katrina victims almost exactly 10 years ago very close to home.

You might have seen my retrospective article about Hurricane Katrina evacuees being housed at Nicholls State University.  While all of this was happening, and while I was marooned back home near all of this, I heard a couple of people I knew from the area cynically comment that they wondered how “these people” can be so poor if they have cellular telephones.

Say what?  And you expect them to use their home telephones when their homes are submerged in water and-or inaccessible?  HELLO?!?!??!?  I’m not sure, but I think that these comments might have been made in reference to some of these people acquiring cell phones only once they had been in the local shelter, as if what they had just suffered combined with their status as a poor person should have caused them to resist the urge to spend money on something as apparently frivolous as a cell phone.  These people had just suffered a major life trauma, did not know when or if they would ever be able to return home, had likely lost those homes and any earthly possessions inside of them, likely witnessed death, and likely were unaware of the fate of some of their closest friends and families; of course they would feel a desperate need to communicate!

And, for those who are able and willing to work, how are they going to learn about the status of their existing jobs or get new jobs if they don’t have telephones?  For those who are able and willing to find a new place to live despite the uncertain status of their homes, how are they going to do that without telephones?

So, now, with the situation of Syrian refugees, we have these same stupid, destructive assumption; yes, different sameness indeed.

Poor-shaming and the disgusting assumptions on which they are based are wrong.  Period.  You don’t necessarily need to question the motives when you can so easily – and, probably therefore, more effectively – question the assumptions.

Jimbaux

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

1Sheldon Daitch September 6, 2015 at 21:20

James,

very nice commentary regarding cell phones.

If someone has a cell phone and it isn’t the latest or greatest, the actual phone may not have been very expensive or for that matter, simply a hand-me-down hand set. In many cases, cell phone service for subscribers outside the United States isn’t that expensive, especially if prepaid service is involved.

73
Sheldon

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