Welcome to Hobo Rail
You wake in the corner of a boxcar and unwind your fetal-like form from sleep. The shrill of steel wheels on iron rails rattling in your brain. Eyes dust-dry, nose tuned on the odor of dried cow dung and human urine. Welcome to Hobo Rail is chalked on the wall.

Heat rises at noon from the rusting tin roofs of storage sheds on this 90 degree July day as Santa Fe Rail Freight 1299 rolls into the cattle yard in Kansas City. Nine hours ago you heaved myself on-board in Cincinnati, a free-boarder making way cross-country. Six more hours to Omaha, eight to Salt Lake City via Denver. Final destination; Sacramento at six in the morning, where you start your return.

Time and social conventions are misplaced on this diesel-fired iron horse. The toilet is in the corner, just the corner. No food concessions here, just a solo dish of beans and bugs heated over a rusty tuna can fueled by rubbing alcohol. You will finish those day-old hard rolls you bought last week, which was also when you filled the milk jug with drinking water.

Decades ago moving cross-county as a free-boarder on rail evoked a nostalgic image of men, free and civil, enjoying a mutual camaraderie with the vagabond songs of Guthrie on their lips. In the present tense, you have to watch your back all the time. All manner of criminal, destitute runaway, the degenerate, the unstable, frequent the rail yards now.

How you got here, you do not yet quite understand. You spend my days mostly with paper and pen, a chronicle for a forgotten time, documenting this lost place in space. The sun sets just west of Grand Junction. You form yourself fetal-like again to lay the night in that same corner. The shrill of steel wheels on iron rail rattling in your brain. Welcome to Hobo Rail.


My Bean Dip As Caviar Substitute
Caviar, the pasty party jam of choice when the rich and famous gather, is in short supply, world food experts say.

So, serve my bean dip instead: Saute one medium Texas Sweet, or Vidalia onion in olive oil in a deep sauce pan at medium heat until tender.

Sturgeon, the great fish whose raw eggs are harvested to make the black jelly-like cracker spread of high culture, is now hard to find and catch, perhaps even endangered is the conclusion of the World Wide Fund for Nature..

So, serve my bean dip instead: Add one 28 ounce can of Old El Paso Refried Beans and one 3 ounce can of Old El Paso Green Chilies to the sauted onion in the sauce pan and mix thoroughly reducing heat to low

The main cause of this caviar shortage is the over fishing of sturgeon in the Caspian Sea, which provides 90 per centof the world's caviar, especially the Black Beluga. Caspian catches have dropped by 75 percent in the pastten years.

So, serve my bean dip instead: Season the onion, chili and bean mixture with oregano and cumin to taste.Transfer the seasoned bean mix to a serving dish, sprinkle grated Monterey Jack Cheese on top and serve with corn tortilla chips, or your choice of cracker.

Caviar can only be obtained by killing female sturgeon carrying unfertilized eggs. Aggressive trawling by Russian and Iranian fishing vessels is killing other mature sturgeon, depleting thesource of the mature, egg-bearing females.

So, serve my bean dip instead.


Pope Penned Dapper
Dan of the Vatican

As the saying goes, it is the clothes that make the man.

So, those stylishly expensive red Prada loafers that mark the steps Pope Benedict XVI takes may be an example of a Dapper Dan of the Vatican trying to look good whenever he can.

And how about those fashionable Gucci shadesthat protect the Holy Pontiffs eyes from the glaring Mediterranean sun. He will never be late either, keeping time with a wristwatch and reading glasses byCartier of Paris. He has also been spotted wearing baseball caps.

Well, after all, when you dress for success, you always show your best. Besides looking good those red Pradas better taste good, too, now that he has put his foot in his mouth. The leader of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, recently urged the faithful to reject the commercial and material aspects of the holiday season all to putthe Christ back into Christmas.

In his own words: In today's consumer society, this time of the year unfortunately suffers from a sort ofcommercial 'pollution' that threatens to alter its real spirit," the Pope told a crowd in St. Peter's Square. Sober celebrations should be the rule, simple signs like a nativity crib display is the way Christians s ould show their faith, Il Papa parli.

Let us recall here the Vow of Holy Orders taken by all Catholic priests: a solemn pledge to celibacy, povertyand obedience. His defenders this words vs. deeds is not a hypocritical contradiction saying that much of the Popes civilian wardrobe came as gifts, not coveted through the vanityof personal indulgence on his part.

United Press International reported recently the Popeis developing a reputation as a clotheshorse with histaste in shoes and designer sunglasses. The pope has also reportedly turned to another tailor for his vestments,dropping Annabelle Gammarelli, whose firm has been serving the Vatican since 1792.


Uncertain Future Follows Katrina

Hurricane Katrina crashed into the Louisiana Gulf Coast with force never before felt. Registered at the highest rank, Category 5, Katrina shredded, uprooted and, ripped everything in her path.

New Orleans became the anguished witness that man and his creations are no match for the full fury nature can unleash. Federal, state, and local government officials were left stunned and hapless, pointing the finger of blame, while so many needed a hand of help.

Aid came far too slow to the suffering people stranded hungry, thirsty and dirty in the Superdome. The whole world watched in horror and astonishment.

Katrina raged on forhours taking, raking and scattering like none before. Left was the carnage of man and beast, bodies floating bloated in fetid waters. Many of the cities poor left abandoned to forageby any means available. Most of those who could evacuate were shuttled to unfamiliar places, homes gone, jobs lost forever.

Government officials talked full of promise and bravado, ready to spend billions, urging all to return,rebuild the great historic places stronger and better than before. No real plans put forward to increase the fortified walls to withstand another Katrina. The whole world watched puzzled and confused.

A 15-20-foot storm surge sped through the once-protective Mississippi River delta marshlands eroding rapidly over the past decades by the dams and levies that redirected river flow that prevented the rich silt from replenishing and extending the wave-absorbing marsh barriers.

Surge water roared down drainage canals unable to take the volume and into the vast Lake Ponchetrain which by its natural course would unburden its excess through weakened levies to flood large residential wards.The officials began to beat "mea culpa" acknowledging engineering insuffiencies and management oversights, looking toward the future now with hindsight, but no better foresight than before.

The only sure result is voiced by engineers and meteorologists who advise that in time another Hurricane equal to or greater than Katrina will lay waste again to the Gulf Coast. Only time will tell whether all those effected have learned a lesson. In the meantime, the whole world will be watching.


Close Encounters Leave
Memories, Affirm Connection

Those close encounters of a spontaneous kind with Nature and its creatures form satisfying and lasting memories, lift the spirit, and affirm a connection between man and animal. Coming unexpectedly upon wildlife and their life in the wild is an intimate experience.

Rounding a turn on a forest trail and meeting a fawn deer eye-to-eye is an exercise in mutual trust. Many yearling deer have had no contact with man; likewise for many hikers, hunters and other outdoor enthusiasts. So, that first sighting for both man and animal is a time of curious wonder requiring an unspoken assurance from both that this meeting is without malicious intent. The parting is done with a sense of respect and acknowledgement that man and animal can co-exist without threat or worry, if they choose.

Spotting ‘possum feeding on the leaves of a sapling tree under the lush green canopy of an Eastern hardwood forest is a study in eating efficiency. Slowly they turn, leaf by leaf , meticulously examining each specimen with near clinical precision. Slowly they dine, taking small bites, chewing, re-examining, chewing, re-examining. Meal ends, slowly they descend, one hand-hold at a time, calmly sliding through the groundcover, unfettered in their conquest.

Listening to coyotes call to each other as they run almost reckless along the rocky ridge tops of the Western mountains, or observing a Bull Elk unabashedly splash through an alpine meadow while bellowing his distinctive bugle, is a study of contrasts.

At times the coyote sounds what seems a lonesome cry, a hungry howl, waling the woes of a solitary existence. At other times, this wild dog sings with joy for the camaraderie of life with the pack, content with being himself, wild and free.

The massive bull elk is a family man. Enjoying as much the social companionship of the female as obedience to the instinctive drive for continuance that is bourn from the need, and hugh desire, to procreate the species. But it is the breathe and scope of his size that belies the near-hollow whistle of the bull’s bugled note.

For the human, it’s a matter of awareness, that of being attuned to the sounds of nature, widening the eye to catch that faint shadow, flaring the nostrils for a telltale scent, which reveals the wonders of the woods and its inhabitants.