#took the streetcar from my house to the other end of king street to get film for my new camera

[loverboybitch]

pictures from my day off today.//.

[how-screwed-are-we]

"Everything runs on electricity in this house," she says.

This is the foundation of a zero-carbon world: Electricity that comes from clean sources, mainly the sun and the wind, cheap and increasingly abundant.

Kiliccote quit her job at Stanford University and launched a startup company, eIQ Mobility, helping companies replace their fleets of vehicles, such as delivery vans, with electric-powered versions.

Last year, the world's climate scientists put out a report showing what it will take to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C by the end of this century, averting the worst consequences of climate change. It requires bringing the globe's net greenhouse emissions down to zero by 2050.

It's a giant leap for humankind.

So Sila Kiliccote and I take that leap. Sitting in her kitchen, with solar panels overhead and an electric car parked outside, we pretend that it has happened. It's 2050 and we've stopped climate change.

2050: The first step was electric cars. That was actually pretty easy

"By 2025, battery technology got cheaper," she says. Electric cars were no longer more expensive. "At that point there was a massive shift to electric vehicles, because they were quieter, and cleaner, and [required] less maintenance. No oil change! Yippee! You know?"

Heating and cooling in homes and office buildings have gone electric, too. Gas-burning furnaces have been replaced with electric-power like heat pumps.

We needed more electricity to power all this right when we were shutting down power plants that burned coal and gas. It took a massive increase in power from solar and wind farms. They now cover millions of acres in the U.S., 10 times more land than they did in 2020. Huge electrical transmission lines share electricity between North and South America. Europe is connected to vast solar installations in the Sahara desert, which means that sub-Saharan Africa also has access to cheap power.

"It just changed Africa," Kiliccote says. "It actually fueled the economies of Africa."

We now store electricity so that it's always there when we need it. With batteries, of course, but in lots of other ways, too. For instance, cities are using electricity to heat and chill massive tanks of water, which then heat or cool buildings at any hour of the day or night.

Some big cement and steel plants still are burning coal or natural gas, but they also have to install massive plants to capture carbon dioxide from their smokestacks and put it back underground.

"We just had to kind of bite the bullet and say, 'OK, if you're making cement or steel, you are capturing and sequestering that CO2,'" Benson says. "And in some cases we actually had to say, 'We're not going to make those things here anymore'" because it wasn't economically feasible to capture the CO2 emissions from that factory.

Big, long-distance freight trucks were a problem, too. "They're really heavy, and batteries are really heavy, and if you have to put a whole bunch of batteries on a truck it's really inefficient," Benson says.

Some of my guides see "electric highways" with wires overhead, and trucks tapping into the electric power in those wires the same way trains do. Others see trucks running on hydrogen fuel; we make that hydrogen using solar or hydro power.

It appears that aircraft still are burning jet fuel. When you buy a plane ticket, you're also paying to cancel out that flight's carbon emissions, capturing an equivalent amount of CO2 from the air. This makes air travel expensive. Fortunately, we now have much faster trains. Teleconferencing helps, too.

Sally Benson is absolutely convinced about one thing. The hardest part of this journey wasn't finding technical solutions. They all existed, even back in 2019. The hardest part was navigating the social disruption.

Entire industries died — like oil exploration and gas furnace manufacturing. Others rose to take their place, as the country rebuilt its electrical systems. People didn't know what would happen and they were scared. The changes only moved ahead when people were convinced that they weren't getting ignored and left behind. It was the political struggle of a generation.

Now, in 2050, there's a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

"Are there children who look around at all the old buildings and say, 'What are those things they call chimneys? What were they for?' " I ask.

"They do," Benson says with a chuckle. "You know, it's like a historical artifact, but you know, they find it very touching. They are appreciative, because they're living in a world where they don't need to worry about climate change anymore."

It wasn't easy and it wasn't free, Benson says. But it was absolutely worth it.

The air is so much cleaner. Cities are quieter. And we're no longer heating up the planet.

2019: I'm taking a walk through downtown Toronto, in Canada, with Jennifer Keesmaat, the city's former chief planner.

Two years ago, a new set of traffic rules went into effect here. "Basically, what we've done is, we've limited through-traffic for cars," Keesmaat says. It forced cars away from King Street and launched a whole cascade of changes.

The streetcars that run down the middle of King Street weren't stuck in traffic anymore.

They became the best way to get across town at rush hour. "The volume of people being moved is astronomical!" Keesmaat says, as one rolls by. The streetcars, of course, are powered by electricity, and one passes every two or three minutes.

2050: At this point, Keesmaat and I open up our minds and take a leap into a world that could be. Greenhouse gas emissions have dropped to zero.

The vast majority of streets have been pedestrianized; that's how people get around, by walking down the street," she says.

"What has happened to the sprawling suburbs?" I ask. "Are people living there? How are they getting around?"

"Some of the large homes haven't changed at all," Keesmaat says. They've just been turned into multifamily units." Other free-standing houses that once lined suburban cul-de-sacs have disappeared; each one has been replaced with a building that contains five or six homes. With the local population booming, those neighborhoods also attracted shops and offices. Suburban sprawl morphed into urban density.

Cars have mostly disappeared. "There are cars, but people don't own cars," Keesmaat says. "Because a car is something that you use occasionally when you need it." Streetcars and buses go practically everywhere in the city now, and you rarely have to wait more than a couple of minutes to catch one. Fast buses and trains connect towns. For other destinations, there's car-sharing.

"2050? It's a wonderful life!" says Daniel Hoornweg, another one of my guides to this zero-carbon world.

"So, you want an autonomous vehicle? Bless your heart, but it costs you more to drive that autonomous vehicle on the road by yourself. If you ride-share, it's a little bit less."

The basic recipe — densely populated neighborhoods linked by mass transit —has been the same for cities all over the world, Hoornweg says.

In part, people are forced to share things; cars are scarce and homes are smaller.

But the scale of zero-carbon life also makes it easier to share. We're living closer together and run into neighbors all the time. "We have more acquaintances — somebody we met in our ride pool or car pool or whatever," Hoornweg says. "There's no better way to [meet your neighbors] than sitting in a [shared] car and you can't get away from them for 20 minutes or whatever."

Some people hated losing their yards and their solitary commutes at first. Others loved the changes. Eventually, Hoornweg says, it just became normal. People stopped talking about it.

Life now goes on as it always did. But there's one huge difference. We're no longer heating up the planet.

2019: Jacobo Arango was traveling in a forested part of his country, Colombia, when he ran into one big reason for global warming. He didn't see it, but he could hear it.

"You could hear the chainsaw cutting the forest; and the locals [were] telling us that this is nothing unusual for them, that they were hearing that every day," says Arango.

This was totally illegal. But local farmers didn't dare report it. "They said, if you do that, your life could be in danger," Arango recalls.

Usually, what follows land clearing in the tropics is cattle grazing. It's a careless, destructive form of cattle grazing, and Tim Searchinger, at the World Resources Institute, says it's incredibly common. "Grazing land is about two-thirds of all agricultural land, and about a third of that came right out of clearing forests," he says.

It's a climate disaster. First, cutting down trees and tearing up forest soil releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Then, cattle release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as microbes in their stomach digest grass and leaves.

There are greenhouse emissions from other kinds of farming, too — from plowing and from fertilizer. Add it all up, and growing food accounts for a quarter of the entire climate change problem. That could increase, too, because billions of people around the world are getting richer; they want more beef, too.

"There is no solution to climate change that doesn't dramatically reduce the land use demands and greenhouse emissions of agriculture," Searchinger says.

He and his colleagues at WRI released a report last year that laid out a road map for how to do this. It includes lots of things, from wasting less food to reducing greenhouse emissions from fertilizer.

He's brought me to a farm in the Patía valley, not far from Colombia's Pacific coast.

This pasture is a bovine buffet. The grass is up to my waist. This is not ordinary grass that grows wild in this region. These are varieties with names like Mulato, and Cayman, which researchers at CIAT bred and selected to be top-quality cattle feed.

Angulo Mosquera says that these grasses grow so fast, and they're so nutritious, he can keep four or even six cows on land that used to support just one. He does have to manage the cows more carefully; moving them every few weeks to new pastures when the grass is ready.

"More milk, more meat," he says.

Now, because the animals are growing so much faster, they aren't releasing nearly as much methane per pound of milk or meat.

We're looking at an essential part of a world without climate change.

And as we stand there, Jacobo Arango and I just start imagining it's already happened, and talking as though it's real.

2050: The same way we stopped mining coal to generate electricity, we've stopped mining the soil to grow food.

Farmers aren't letting cows wander across the landscape in search of something to eat. They're treating their pasture like a valuable crop, which it really is.

Another critical change: Americans are eating a lot less beef now �� per person, half what they ate in 2020. "That's a really, really big deal," Searchinger says.

But they've been part of something amazing. It's 2050 and there are almost 10 billion people in the world. They are eating better — yet the Amazon forest is still there. It hasn't been sacrificed to grow food.

[greenbagjosh]

Bunker Hill Monument, Harvard, MIT, Bowdoin, and scrod dinner at Durgin Park

Hi everyone Are you ready for a challenge to match that of Saturday the 26th June 2010?  Have you heard of Bunker Hill, just north of Boston?  Ten years ago today, I climbed all 290+ stairs of that monument.

About 6:30 AM I woke up and took a shower.  Breakfast would not be served until 7 AM.  Breakfast on the ground floor was toast, bread, peanut butter, jam, coffee, orange juice and cold cereal resembling wheat flakes or so.  It was okay.  About 9 AM I left the hostel to walk to the Hynes Convention Center T station.  I had to buy a Charlie Card for $9.00 which would be valid for the entire day on the MBTA system, even as far away as Cambridge.

Because most of the MBTA was constructed in the 1950s, it was not required to be ADA compliant.  The Hynes Convention Center station has two side platforms, and only the westbound platform was ADA compliant in June 2010.  Most of the green line underground stations date back to the late 1890's and have been renovated since.  Only the stations Boylston, Symphony and Hynes Convention Center remain as inaccessible to the physically challenged.  Elsewhere on the MBTA subway, save for intra-station transfers at Downtown Crossing, is accessible.  Within a few years, the ADA compliance renovations are expected to be complete.

I took the green line to North Station to transfer to the orange line for Community College.  North Station is convoluted in the way that it has a side platform for the northbound orange line, an island platform shared by the northbound green line and southbound orange line and another side platform for the southbound green line above the other three tracks.  It is ADA compliant.  I had to go up and down an escalator to get to the northbound orange line platform.  I went only to Community College which had a simple central platform.  From there I walked to the Bunker Hill monument.  It was a fifteen minute walk and just over a half mile / 1 km from Community College station.

I remember visiting the monument in April 1993 but do not remember ever climbing it at all.  I paid the entry fee to the monument, willing enough to climb the 290+ steps to the top.  If the Pilgrim's Monument was hard, this was an even bigger challenge.  However I did not give up.  Once I reached the top, I had a very nice view of downtown Boston and the Boston Harbor.  I remember that the USS Constitution / Old Ironsides was docked somewhere, and I visited with family in April 1993.  I think I spent twenty minutes contemplating the view, before going downstairs.

After walking down from the Bunker Hill monument, I went to a pub on Main Street.  I had a glass or two of Sam Adams.  Then I walked back through City Square Park and New Rutherford Avenue to the Community College station.  I took the Orange line to Downtown Crossing to transfer to the Red line for Harvard.  I knew of an Indian buffet restaurant that offered airline miles, on Eliot Street, not too far from the Harvard station.  The buffet was not much different from the one I had in Hartford, CT.  Around the corner incidentally was a commemoration of the birthplace of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, known as Rama IX, as he was born 5th December 1927 in Cambridge, MA.

Since Cambridge had a trolleybus line, I decided to ride it for a few stops.  At the Harvard station, there is an underground bus stop.  The trolleybusses have doors on the left in addition to the standard two doors on the right.  The left door is used only for places where it would otherwise not be possible to board or alight on the right.  I took line 71 as far west as the Mt. Auburn hospital before heading back.  

I walked about a half hour through the Harvard campus.  Much of it looked similar to that of Yale which I visited Friday 25th June 2010.  The most interesting building I noticed was the science center, which looked like it was made of four step floors, the fourth floor being shorter than the first three floors, the fifth floor being even shorter all the way to the seventh floor.  Then I walked back to the Harvard T station to head two stations southeast for Kendall / MIT.

I spent maybe ten minutes at most at the MIT complex just out of the Kendall / MIT station.  MIT did not seem particularly remarkable, just a complex of what look like office buildings.  If I spent more time there, for example, walked down Vassar Street, I might have found the inner campus, but the campus did not look particularly inviting enough.  So I went on to Park Street to change to the green line and Government Center to change to the blue line, so that I could see Bowdoin station.  Bowdoin is correctly prounounced as "Boh-din" or "Bow-din", the second "o" is not pronounced.  Bowdoin is somewhat north of the State House, and so far is the only station on the blue line, not to have ADA compliance.  Also, the eastbound platform is shorter than the westbound platform so that trains cannot properly fit, and for that reason, trains on that line have push buttons used only in Bowdoin.  While waiting for the eastbound train, I left the station to buy something to drink.  It was about 2 PM and getting very humid.  I walked down to the eastbound platform at Bowdoin and went as far as Government Center before taking the Green line to Park Street.  

At Park Street was the eastern end of Boston Common.  I walked along Beacon Street to Charles Street and Brimmer Street to find the Bull and Finch pub, the location used for the TV show "Cheers".  The actual pub is nothing like what was shown on TV.  The actual front does not have as much room.  Only the rear part resembles something like the show.  I was allowed to sit at the bar (try that ten years on, considering the current situation!) and I ordered a plate of cheese fries.  They were tasty.  I had two craft beers on tap, one from New Hampshire and the other from Vermont.  It was a good experience to see the Cheers location.

After Cheers, I walked up Beacon Street, to see the State House.  The State House is about as big as the one in Hartford, Connecticut.  It is also uphill from the Park Street and also the Bowdoin T stations.  It was closed that day.

I wanted to have a look at the Maverick stations on the Blue line as well as see a station northeast of Airport.  Maverick Station is inclined somewhat like Aquarium, but has a central platform.  Wood Island eastward are pretty much the same, each one having side platforms. 

After seeing Orient Heights, I went back to Quincy Market, had supper at the Durgin Park, ordered the scrod (young cod), with seasonal vegetables and rice, and had a Sam Adams.  My chair was not bumped into as much as I remembered from April 1993 when I visited last.  I still enjoyed my supper.  I took the green line back to the hostel at the Hynes Convention Center but decided to take the "C" branch to Hawes Street and take it back through Kenmore.    

Why is there no "A" branch of the Green line?  There used to be such a branch from Packard's Corner to Watertown prior to the 1960s but it went into disuse.  It was replaced in June 1969 by a bus line.

Why is the Green line so slow between North Station and Boylston?  The Green line was constructed with streetcar operation in mind.  It is difficult given the many sharp corners, for rapid operation as one would expect for the other three lines, would not be possible.  

I went to bed at 10:30 PM.  I had to catch the 8 AM Downeaster train from North Station and transfer to a bus in Portland for Bangor to meet family who were staying there.  Hope you will join me for the final state in New England to be visited.

[macbetha]

What are some of your favorite books of all time?

sorry this took a bit to answer, i took this question prettyseriously because books mean so much to me haha. so, i made a list! thesearen’t all specifically books; there are plays and poems as well, just becausethose have a tendency to have as much of an impact me as novels and such.

D R A M A / P L A Y S

Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire- On a streetcar named Desire, Blanche DuBois travels from the railroad station in New Orleans to a street named Elysian Fields, where her sister, Stella, pregnant and married to Stanley Kowalski, lives in a run-down apartment building in the old French Quarter. Having lost her husband, parents, teaching position, and old family home—Belle Reve in Laurel, Mississippi—Blanche has nowhere to turn but to her one remaining close relative.

William Shakespeare: Macbeth- Macbeth is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatizes the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake.

G R E E K  D R A M A ( C OM E D Y  &  T R A G E D Y ) 

Aristophanes: Lysistrata- Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BCE, it is a comic account of a woman’s extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War by denying all the men sex - and it works. 

Sophocles: Oedipus Rex- Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus accidentally fulfilled a prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby bringing disaster to his city and family.

C L A S S I C S : G R E E K L I T E R A T U R E

Homer: The Iliad- Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states. The Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles’ looming death and the sack of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War.

The Poetry of Sappho- She was one of the few women mentioned in ancient Greek literature and doesnot frequent the topics of other writers of her time, such as politics and war. She writes about compassion and love; her work is really beautiful andheartfelt. 

C L A S S I C S : E N G L I S H/ A M E R I C A N  L I T E R A T U R E

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”This first sentence filled with irony and playfulness. The novel revolves around the necessity of marrying for love, not simply for mercenary reasons despite the social pressures to make a wealthy match.

Emily Brontë: Wuthering HeightsAlthough Wuthering Heights is now widely regarded as a classic of English literature, contemporary reviews for the novel were deeply polarised; it was considered controversial because its depiction of mental and physical cruelty was unusually stark, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals of the day regarding religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby- The best third-wheel story of all time.

P O E T R Y / S H O R T  ST O R I E S

Sylvia Plath: “Lady Lazarus”Out of the ashes / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.

Sylvia Plath: “Poem for a Birthday”“Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth.”

Lucille Clifton: “Homage To My Hips”these hips are mighty hips. these hips are magic hips. i have known them to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top! Maya Angelou: “Phenomenal Woman”It’s the fire in my eyes / And the flash of my teeth, / The swing in my waist,/ And the joy in my feet.  

Warsan Shire:Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth- “later that night / i held an atlas in my lap / ran my fingers across the whole world / and whispered / where does it hurt? / it answered / everywhere / everywhere / everywhere.” - “give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.” - “every mouth you’ve ever kissed / was just practice / all the bodies you’ve ever undressed / and ploughed in to / were preparing you for me. / was it a long journey? / did it take you long to find me? / you’re here now, / welcome home.” -“I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes; on my face they are  still together.” -“I want to make love but my hair smells of war and running and running.”

Maya Angelou: “Still I Rise”Does my sexiness upset you? / Does it come as a surprise / That I dance likeI’ve got diamonds / At the meeting of my thighs? 

Maya Angelou: “Chicken Licken”When she saw a bed / locksclicked / in her brain

Edgar Allan Poe: Murders In The Rue Morgue- i read this in eighth grade and it is a mystery that stuck with me for therest of my life. it is fascinating in the way that poe always is, i so recommend it.

Edgar Allan Poe: “Evening Star”- “I gazed awhile / On her cold smile /Too cold - too cold for me.”

M E M O I R S / B I O G R A P H I E S

Christine Wiltz: The Last Madam: A Life In the New Orleans Underworld- In 1916, at age fifteen, Norma Wallace arrived in New Orleans. Sexy and shrewd, she quickly went from streetwalker to madam and by 1920 had opened what became a legendary house of prostitution. There she entertained a steady stream of governors, gangsters, and movie stars.

Stephen King: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - Shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped King and his work.

Y O U N G  A D U L T / C H I L D R E N ‘ S 

Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments- so, i didn’t finish this series but it’s the memories of reading these books that makes me put it on this list. i remember reading them on the bus rides home from school, in my eighth grade history class, running to the store on their release date and begging my dad for the newest addition. it is a very fascinating universe; i haven’t watched the show shadowhunters, which is based on this series, but the books were good.

Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events- i read ALL OF THESE BOOKS THEY WERE MY LIFE. they were so depressing but i loved these three siblings so much that i refused to leave them alone in that horrible world. haven’t watched the netflix series! 

Rick Riordan: Percy Jackson Series- for me, as a bored thirteen year old, this was one of the things that opened the door to greek mythology, which is now one of my favorite topics to study. 

S O U T H E R N  G O T H I C

Flannery O’Connor: “Good Country People”- Southern Gothic literature is a genre of southern USA writing. While it may include supernatural elements, it mainly focuses on damaged, even delusional, characters. The humor is strange and even when it is finally realized, it might not be all that funny, because humor in Southern Gothic stories is twisted, and usually quite vile. There are consistent grotesque themes of decay, desolation, and supernatural forces that are often credited to lost family honor, ghosts, witches, faeries, or god - but the shit all takes place on an isolated corn farm. It is a very fascinating genre and “good country people” is a prime example of this. (personal note: most of ewoatt chapter one was inspired by the southern gothic genre).   

R E F E R E N C E

Thomas C. Foster: How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines- THIS IS THE BOOK I REFERENCE MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE WHILE WRITING. It’s an introduction to literature and literary basics, including symbols, themes and contexts, that shows you how to make your everyday reading experience more rewarding and enjoyable.

Joseph Bates: The Nighttime Novelist:Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time - Franz Kafka was an insurance agent. William Faulkner was a postmaster. Stephen King taught high school English, John Grisham was an attorney, and Toni Morrison worked in publishing. Though romantic fantasies of the writing life don’t often include a day job, the fact is that most writers have one. Yo, if you’re wanting to write a book or just a big fanfic, please get this book. I give it so much credit. 

Barbara & Allan Pease: The Definitive Book of Body Language: The Hidden Meaning Behind People’s Gestures and Expressions- It is a scientific fact that people’s gestures give away their true intentions. Yet most of us don’t know how to read body language–and don’t realize how our own physical movements speak to others. Now the world’s foremost experts on the subject share their techniques for reading body language signals to achieve success in every area of life. Great writing reference. 

Natalie Goldberg: Writing Down the Bones- This text offers encouragement and advice on many aspects of the writer’s craft, from first thoughts to the use and misuse of adverbs, from where the best places are to write - both public and private.

[irescot]

Edinburgh - Thursday

Today's title is a bit of a misnomer because we spent most of our time either in Glasgow or getting there or getting back. If you remember, we were meeting with Fr. Eamon.

Carol had arranged for a taxi to pick us up at 8:45 because the taxi dispatcher wanted to make sure she took into account rush hour.  When we got there we had to print out our tickets, and had a bit of a problem until Carol realized that she hadn't paid for the tickets, Sharon had provided her credit card.  Once that was sorted, everything went very smoothly and the machine printed out the tickets.  

We had bought return (we say round-trip) tickets and also "any time" tickets, meaning we could take any train to get there and any train to return.  We did that because we were not sure what time we would be finished with our visit with Fr. Eamon. But we had agreed to take the 10:15 train from Waverley Station to Glasgow Queen's Street Station.  Glasgow also has a Central Station.  

An interesting thing is that they didn't post the platform until 7 minutes before the train was scheduled to depart.  Most of the platforms are in one area, but there are several platforms that require a bit of walking; I don't know what those people would do.

The station is named after one of Sir Walter Scott's novels, and throughout the station they have posted quotes from Scott's work.  

We noticed a pigeon boldly walking about, not afraid of people. Is someone came close, it just calmly moved away. When I took his picture, he seemed to stop and pose.  

Carol and I had to use the facilities, and much to our surprise, we had to have 30p in exact change. A woman saw us looking at our change and took pity on me and gave me the extra 10p I needed.  I was so flabbergasted at having to pay for the loo, that I didn't even thank the woman, nor did I ask her if she had another 10p for Carol.  Carol graciously said she'd would use the train's facilities. By the time I was on my way out, I had recovered use of my meager faculties and so I went to a Burger King and asked for change; I must have looked so pitiful that the manager, after telling me that he wasn't supposed to do this, did give me change.  I was then able to give the needed change to Carol. Phew!

Finally the platform was announced and off we went to go through the turnstiles. What you do is insert your ticket in a slot in the front of the machine; the machine reads it and authenticates it, and then spits it back out the top. You grab it and the little gates open up and let you pass.  I had no problem getting through, but Carol and Sharon had to have help, we don't know why.

The train arrived and we got in, found a seat for four and we were off.  The ride takes about 50 minutes, and sure enough, we got there in just that time.  The way to exit from the platform to the main part of the station is the same way we entered. That is, you put your ticket into the front slot, but this time it keeps it and you can go through. It's an interesting system.

Out on the main foyer we stood around for a little while; it was where we had agreed to meet with Fr. Eamon and after a couple of minutes there he was.  Carol and I didn't know him, but Sharon did so she spotted him right away.  Introductions were made all around, and we left the station and went around the corner, where he queued up to get on a Glasgow Hop-On Hop-Off bus. We were doing the full circuit for a total of 1 hour and 20 minutes.  So the four us got on the second bus because it had live commentary rather than just an audio guide, and from experience in Edinburgh, we felt the live commentary was much more interesting and timely.  

The buses leave from and return to George Square, a very lovely plaza.  Hanging from poles around the square were advertisings for The World Badminton Championship, taking place from August 21-27. Wonder who will win.

The tour guide was a lively, artsy guy who obviously loved to sing as we were serenaded several times throghout the tour, and it was clear he had a lot of knowledge about the various sites, and also about the night life and entertainment available in the city.  He was also not afraid to give his opinion about various issues.

I was seated by the left windows of the bus, so there were several locations I couldn't take pictures of because they were on the right side, and the bus itself got in the way of the picture. But I did manage to capture most locations.  Okay, here we go.

Saint Mungo lived from 528 to 614 and he is the patron saint and founder of Glasgow. There are a lot of murals in Glasgow and Sam Bates (called Smug) is one of the best know ones.  He painted a portrait of Saint Mungo as a contemporary person that is very beautiful.  

Glasgow Cathedral is the oldest building in Glasgow, having been built in 1197, which makes it a medieval structure.  

There is a Royal Doulton fountain at the People's Palace in Glasgow Green that has a life size sculpture of Queen Victoria, but she was so petite (in her youth) that it hardly seems to be life size.  It was unveiled in 1888 to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.

The People's Palace contains historical artifacts and various media to tell the story of Glasgow and its people from 1750 to the end of the 20th C.

There is an obelisk that is a tribute to Lord Nelson.

Stan Laurel started a career at age 16 doing a performance at the Britannia Panopticon Theatre and everything he did went wrong, but he had the audience rolling on the aisles, so he decided to do it intentionally, and went to America where he met a partner to do it with.  

We passed The Scotia, the oldest bar in Scotland, and reputed to be haunted by a multitude of ghosts, some of which appear to applaud some performers.  

The Style Mile is the high-end shopping area in Glasgow, with all the exclusive (read expensive) stores being represented.

We passed a statue of the Duke of Wellington in front of GAMO, the Gallery of Modern Art.  If you look closely you'll see that both the Duke and the horse he rode in on both have a traffic cone on their heads.  Apparently some university types did this and the council took them off, then the uni guys did it again, and the council...etc. After a while the council saw the error of its ways and let it stand.

This was not on the tour but we passed a building I really loved, the Union Stree Co-op, so here it is.

The tour guide told us that while Gaelic is spelled the same by the Irish and the Scots, the Irish pronounce it GAY-lic, whereas the Scots pronounce it GAL-ic. The Irish also refer to Gaelic as just Irish, whereas the Scots do not call it Scottish.  

The river Clyde runs through Glasgow; it's a tidal estuary, which means that the water reverses direction with the tide.  There is an 11 ft difference between the level at high and low tides.  There used to be 50 steam ferries that plied the Clyde (I'm a poet and didn't know it).  There used to be no bridges because there were 17 shipbuilders on the Clyde, who employed around 17,000 people, and the ships that were built could not have been sailed to their destination if there were bridges to impede passage.  Now there is only one shipbuilder left.  

Now there is one very modern bridge over the Clyde (I believe there may be other bridges), that is officially called the Clyde Arc, but is called by locals by the name "squinty bridge," referring apparently to the fact that the bridge is at an angle.

The Glasgow Tower is a free-standing tower on the south bank of the River Clyde, and it holds a Guinness World Record for the tallest tower in the world which can rotate 360 degrees.  It has been closed for more than 80% of its life. It reopened in 2014. It is part of the Glasgow Science Center.

A quote from our guide, Peter: "the only difference between summer and winter in Glasgow is the temperature of the rain."

The Hydro is a concert venue.  The Armadillo (formerly called the Clyde Auditorium) is also a concert venue and vaguely looks like the Sydney Opera House. There's a third one called the SEC Centre.  

Not on the tour was a multicolored building that looked interesting. However, they were just renovating the building, but I still liked the look.

Also on the Clyde was the Glen Lee, the last sailing ship built in the Clyde shipyards, in 1895. Glasgow rescued it from its being used as a training ship by Spain's navy, and refurbished it and brought it to this location as an attraction that showed what was being done in the old Clyde shipyards.

There is a spot where to rivers meet, it's easy to see in my photos because I have a pole that bisects the picture.  They are the Clyde and the Kelvin.

Again, not on the tour, I saw the façade of a building that just looked so interesting.  I had to shoot it through the right window, so I only got a piece of it.

The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum was made to look like the church of Santiago de Compostela, the end of the old Pilgrimage Trail in Spain.  It's absolutely beautiful, like so many of the buildings on this tour, and one of the more surprising things about Glasgow.

We passed a bridge over a stream that had nice sculptures on each end and I couldn't resist.

Another amazing building the University of Glasgow that looks gorgeous from all sides.  

The Kelvingrove Museum again, and a strange green mascot or something. Followed by another view of Glasgow Uni.

Not on the tour a lovely clock tower in the middle of nothing.  

The word Sauchy (pronounced "sucky") is in this bar's name and is also part of the street name.

The Royal Conservatory of Scotland.  A poster for A Streetcar Named Desire.  Pretty flowers.

Pictures of Fr. Eamon and us.  Oh, I forgot to mention that Fr. Eamon took us all out to lunch after the tour bus, to this place, which had great food.  And he insisted on treating us, even though we had wanted to pay for it.  He'll get copies of these pictures.  

And finally, back to St George Square, the Glasgow Train Station, and the mural of Saint Munro.

That's it. I'm sorry you can't see the pictures yet, but I promise I'm working on them.