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A Fantasy of a Sane Transit System, Part II.

June 29, 2016 by Exangel

by Rustin Wright.

The Daviesville Transit Commission now knows, at least, that they don’t know.

So step one is to start to learn.

Every high school is asked to devote three classes to designing mass transit. One a day of a physics class. Another a day of a social studies class. A third a day of an art class. Four competitions will be held for high school kids. Each is given funding for ten years to come. The four competitions are these: best essay on a past transit system somewhere in the world. Another essay contest on the most forgotten/least appreciated transit system. Another on their personal memories and experiences, which can be about anything from actual riding in a system to a dream to something that they saw in a movie or book wich made an impression on them. And lastly, on in which they, granted magical powers, made the transit system of their dreams.

Colleges are given a similar mandate. Each college is also given a budget to build and maintain a G-scale railroad. G scale being the ones with tracks seven inches apart and cars just about big enough to hold a large St. Barnard. An additional G scale system is to run on tracks through each campus, elevated if needed, to serve as a means of moving packages or, well, whatever use they can find for it. Goofy is good. Experimention is not only encouraged, it is mandated. If they can find a way to build rolling stock out of cafeteria trays and cover them with little toy dinosaurs, then this means that they’re doing it right.

But essential to this is understanding that not all innovation comes from the very young.

Small towns at the outskirts of Davieville are offered aid, not just of money but of things like help with getting permissions from the state legislature, to build their own local trolley systems.

The terms? They must build their own vehicles from scratch and all rights of way, stations, and so forth are to be done by local contractors. The smaller the better. The resulting transit systems must also run at least twenty hours a week and twenty weeks a year, must have at least twenty seats, must have a top speed of at least twenty miles an hour, and must be able to run at least twenty meters without line power. (In other words, must be able to keep running acros a gap in the power if it is too expensive to, say, run wires across one busy intersection.)

Daviesville leases small apartment buildings next to current relevant systems. One in New Orleans, where they have been building and maintaining their own cars for over a hundred years. One in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where they run 1930’s vintage PCC streetcars through Wisconsin freeze thaw-cycles AND Scott Walker/Koch brothers constant harrassment. One in Maine right by the Seashore Trolley Museum. And two apartments in Queens, NY right by the MTA’s maintenance yards. And to these apartments, from the population of Daviesville and of surrounding towns they send a constant procession of machinists, advocates for the disabled, graphic designers, and plain old gearheads. Each sent to volunteer for one of those systems for two months to learn how and why they do what they do.

Locals of every stripe in the Daviesville area are encouraged to build every kind of rail and bus system that they possibly can. Model trains running inside all night diners. Electric buses to transport people across the mall parking lot. Miniature monorail amusement rides of the sort that department stores used to run at Christmas (like the one right inside Portland’s own Meier & Frank.)

For three years this is the focus. To know that nobody knows. So let’s find out. And let’s experiment.

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Summer 2016: I Want the World.

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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