“Amtrak Is like a ship without a rudder, drifting toward the rocks,” warns Pierre Loomis in RailGram (January). “Recently, a call to check on the arrival time of #6 (the California Zephyr) brought an interesting response from the ticket agent. In an attempt to explain why the train was 8 hours late (mechanical problems and locomotive failures), the agent drew an analogy between Amtrak locomotives and horses: ‘Look,’ said the frustrated agent, ‘if you were a horse and nobody fed or watered you for weeks on end, how well would you run?’ Amtrak’s failure to maintain equipment properly is causing the near collapse of the entire nationwide system.”

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Bald eagles wintering in downstate Illinois, 1990: 1,539. 1991: 1,864. 1992: 2,025 (Illinois Department of Conservation).

Let’s see, that’s six light bulbs out of every seven…Commonwealth Edison reports that nuclear power produced a record high 83.5 percent of its electricity during 1992.

The attitude that dare not speak its name. A Western-civilization class at Fourth Presbyterian Church’s Center for Older Adults “will trace a certain attitude towards the world held by Western Civilization which distinguishes it from other civilizations.”