First Impressions We bought our house on Barters Island in Boothbay, Maine in August 2016. We closed on the 12th and the 17th, the third Wednesday of the month, as regular as the tide, the Barters Island Community Association held its monthly Potluck. We were newbies, but we decided to go and introduce ourselves., Read More

Key to Success   Key West is good weather and good food. It’s also good people. Kathy and I have been fortunate to visit her aunt and uncle here on many occasions. Coming here in February is a treat not just for the tropical heat and humidity, scurrying iguanas, free-range chickens, and randy roosters,, Read More

A rail yard is a place where work gets done. It’s a place where big, heavy, dangerous objects roll around sometimes without attachment and often without expectation. Big things happen in a rail yard, and you have to be alert. So, on any given day operating craft employees do their best to stay sharp, Read More

If you want to know your animal neighbors, let it snow. A fresh coating of pure powder is a perfect, unspoiled canvas on which critters paint time-lapse landscapes of their comings and goings. We were in Maine for the recent deep freeze, and while the below-zero cold was great for our nighttime star and, Read More

New York City is a magical place for bewitch-able people. I’m not one of them. My wife is, however, and the lure of the Great White Way, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, shopping, and knifing through its impenetrable social medium is her forte. It makes her happy. So, she was elated when she got, Read More

Please know that this is a true account of events as confirmed by a representative of Grover’s Hardware in Boothbay Harbor. The prominent characters in this abridged tale are Maine and Mainers. Some would say that’s redundant but humor the notion just for the moment. Change is challenging especially when community consensus is a, Read More

The Fairfax Library Foundation supports twenty-three branches of the Fairfax County Public Library which in turn serve the 1.1 million citizens of its Northern Virginia jurisdiction. Both the Foundation and the Library are wonderful organizations. I was honored that Rails of War could play a small part in the Foundation’s Jubilee annual fundraiser. I, Read More

I’m proud to share this interview with my former employer the International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers, a modern and sophisticated labor organization. The ‘Machinists Union’ was founded in 1888 by nineteen determined railroaders in a grimy locomotive drop pit in Atlanta, Georgia. Today, with 600,000 members in diverse industries and government agencies,, Read More

How much Googling of oneself or one’s book is permissible before it becomes a problem? Or, is there a gray area before a problem overtakes you? And, when is that? How much is too much? Once a week? Daily? Hourly? I hadn’t Googled for a month or two and what I found surprised me., Read More

Did you know that beer can pop-top openers weren’t invented until the 1960s? I didn’t nor did my copy editor whose otherwise excellent review of my manuscript was greatly appreciated. But, leave it to a polite and kindly soul to discreetly bring the church-key verse pop-top reference in a Rails of War vignette to, Read More