How many folks here knew that Durham used to have a trolley system? There are some photos here: https://www.opendurham.org/buildings/607-611-east-main-street-streetcar-and-bus-garage

Closest to where I live, in Duke Forest, there was a line which ended at Lakewood -- which, at the time, was a wooded lake with an amusement park and other amenities. It was apparently a wonderful place for kids and families to hang out. https://www.opendurham.org/buildings/lakewood-shopping-center

It's a shopping center now, almost entirely paved over for car parking. (Nothing against the shops there; it did go into a decline for awhile, but between Food Lion on one end and the crafting and thrift shops on the other, we go there quite often now.)

When they were repaving the streets near there about 15 years ago, I remember noticing a patch where you could see the old street -- rails set into paving stones. (Shortly before that, on Kent Street where it runs through Morehead Cemetery, there was a pothole which revealed one of the rails.) I know it must have been a while back because I never took any photos; if I'd had a smartphone, I'm pretty sure I would have made a point of doing that.

If this is the kind of "great" that we want to make America be again, then I'm all for it. ...but I think a lot of us are worried that we'll be going the other way.

#DurhamNC #Nextdoor #crosspost #publicTransit #trolley #carCulture #whatIsGreatAnyway

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#metapol #nextdoor #crosspost

Time to introduce "Dear Red America"!

This group is an experiment. It may fail, but it seems worth trying. Maybe we'll learn something, even if we end up not being able to agree on anything.

A watershed election has occurred, and Republicans now dominate the field (to say the least). A lot of folks are very happy about this, while a lot of us are somewhere between "not looking forward to" and "terrified of" the next four years.

So, there are a lot of strong feels in play here! Some negative, some positive. I think we can talk honestly about those feelings, be straightforward about them, without having to bash each other over the head with accusations or gloating. I'm not here to take away anyone's joy or deny anyone's fears.

We do need to talk about why we're having such different reactions, though. We need to dig into the facts -- and how we decide what is fact and what is fiction, because that has clearly been the source of the overwhelming majority of disagreements between Left and Right.

My hope is that the differences between us, as voters, are far less than the differences between the political parties we'd prefer to represent us and the pundits and news-outlets we choose to listen to -- and that what appears to separate us is largely the product of media spin and echo-chamber silos, rather than simply emerging from mutually incompatible views of the future we want.

...and yes, a lot of the more mainstream news outlets (often inaccurately described as "left-leaning") distort and mislead too -- especially the ones owned by billionaires -- although they tend to take a more delicate approach than right-wing media. Both "sides" of the media talk about the problems we face in terms that keep us from addressing the real, underlying issues -- by starting proxy-wars over talking-point issues and bumper-sticker politics.

On a more personal note, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write this intro post after setting up the group; I had a migraine for most of the weekend, and the work that had piled up to be done stayed piled up and I only started to cut through it in the last couple of days and get my head to a place where I could figure out what I wanted to say here. I hope it makes sense.

Anyway, having written that, hopefully some of the other ideas I wanted to discuss will start allowing themselves to be processed into words as well.

ad astra per aspera,

Woozle