Day: July 13, 2008

No, she’s not dead yet (I thought the same thing). It’s just that the planning stages for her funeral are underway and according to officials it will be a formal state funeral, not seen since the funeral of Winston Churchill. Thatcher, now 82, is said to be in good health but people are getting ready. From the article (so you don’t have to go to Wikipedia):

In the 19th century, four state funerals were granted to “commoners” – Lord Nelson after his death at Trafalgar, the Duke of Wellington, a prime minister as well as victor over Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo, Lord Palmerston and William Gladstone, both popular inhabitants of No 10.

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A remote island in Alaska had to be evacuated by sea after a the volcano Okmok Caldera erupted, sending a plume of ash and smoke nearly 30,000 feet into the air as this Coast Guard photo shows. More info from the Alaska Volcano Observatory .

A fishing vessel had to rescue 10 people from a remote farm after a Coast Guard rescue helicopter had to put down in Dutch Harbor due to ash and smoke in the air.

The Anchorage Newspaper is also covering this story.

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The on again off again love affair with streetcars in DC is back on again, I think.

The Washington Post is reporting that streetcars should be rolling along a stretch of unused railroad track in Anacostia shortly, serving about 1,400 people a day at a cost of $45 million, which is about $32,000 per passenger. The cars have already been built (well, a few at least) but are stuck in the Czech Republic as the tracks are just not ready yet.

There are plenty of areas that could use streetcars in DC, though Anacostia does not immediately jump to mind as one of them. Making it an option for people to get ‘out of their cars’ should be the goal of most public transit programs, not merely taking people from one form of public transit (buses) and placing them in another (expensive street cars).

But that’s another story.

(and yes, that is a picture of a DC street car in the Czech Republic)

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