Fear and Loathing at Union Station

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UNION STATION, Washington, D.C.
My son-in-law dropped me off here about 1 a.m. My train leaves at 3:15 a.m.  So I’ve got a few minutes to do a quick blog post before I board the train and head off to Worcester and thence to New Hampshire.

We’re trying to get Dan Collins of Piece of Work in Progress, who lives in Vermont, to come over to Manchester, N.H., for Monday’s Tea Party Express Rally with Sarah Palin. Go hit Dan’s tip jar.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, Sarah Palin met Friday with a couple hundred supporters at a restaurant in a Des Moines suburb, and managed to make news:

As former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin walked in the front door of The Machine Shed restaurant in Urbandale, Iowa, this evening, a reporter asked Palin what she thought about the current field of GOP presidential candidates.
“Happy with the field of candidates. I always think that there’s room for more, though, because spirited debate and more competition will allow an even better discourse and a more rigorous discourse that the public deserves,” Palin said.

So, yeah, she’s not ruling anything out. Just keepin’ everybody on their toes. You betcha.

This station is spooky in the wee hours. Dark and quiet. Here’s video:

All aboard! Time to go. Please hit the tip jar.

19 comments

  2. I’ve already told Dan that if he can get across Vermont and into New Hampshire, or at least reasonably close, I’ll get him the rest of the way. And back. I’m volunteering myself as Native Guide for Monday, and I even found my own fedora.

    J.

  3. If I had known, we could have had a major meet-up.  I’m somewhere close to Dan, hunkered down in the Green Mountains.

  4. It’s not too late for me, Dell. I’m in the Lebanon, NH area. In fact, Dan would HAVE to pass within a quarter mile of my home to get to Manchester. That’s what made it so easy.

    J.

  5. It’s mighty tempting, Jay, but we aren’t cleaned up from Hurricane Irene yet and now we’ve got another major flood watch in effect from Sunday through Tuesday (like Vermont needs more flooding!), so I guess I’d better cool my jets.  It was a nice thought, though.

  6. If your return trip happens to take you through southeastern NY State (Hudson Valley), I am here and ready to feed you. 😉
    I love New Hampshire. If I can ever convince hubs to get out of our horrible state, that’s where I want to be!

  7. Help, help! Somebody call homeland security!! There’s a guy in Union Station in Washington DC videotaping the place at one in the morning! And he is REALLY focused on the sentinels/security that watch over the place! Get ‘im, get ‘im!!!!

  12. Good plan. The Granite State needs more conservatives to balance out all the liberal scum who moved up from Taxachusetts and brought their socialist baggage with them.

  13. I spent a lot of time in deserted airports and train stations taking the Red-Eye. Wrote this poem about it.

    I paint the silence of the night
    With brush strokes broad and free
    On canvas weaved of solitude
    In colors others may not see

    The sleeping world is mine alone
    To fashion as I’m wont to try
    But comes the creeping steady dawn
    In ribbons on a waking sky

    Then as the slumb’ring land bestirs
    I set my paint brush out of sight
    And wait until it sleeps again
    To paint the silence of the night

  14. In March 2007 the concrete construction company I used to work for rented Union Station for it’s 60Th anniversary celebration. Every employee with five or more years of continuous service, about 1300 plus one guest each attended. For every five years of service of ten years and up each employee received $500 dollars, I had 24 years at that time. 2006 was a banner year for us with $498 million in contracts making us the number one Concrete subcontractor in the nation according to ENR magazine and 2007 was almost as good. Renting Union Station seemed adequate to the occasion.

    As for time spent in DC, while I moved to NC in 2000 to work in our division there, I grew up in Arlington. I worked in concrete construction as a form carpenter, a carpenter foreman and site superintendent starting in 1973. I worked on many projects in DC and the DC area including the two buildings on either side of Union Station and the Clarendon Metro Station in Arlington. Like any sensible person I’ve avoided going to DC as much as possible, alas from 1973 to 2000 I spent a great many of my waking moments in DC. There are few more depressing scenes than driving up 14Th street from Virginia to go to work at six in the morning circa 1980.

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