How I spent my Thanksgiving…
9 minute read
November 29, 2025, 7:49 PM
This year, I spent my Thanksgiving on the road, volunteering my time and money for Commonwealth Coach & Trolley, a Roanoke-based museum that owns a collection of vintage vehicles, largely transit buses. Along with Elyse, I serve on the museum’s board of directors. On this particular occasion, I was transporting a recent acquisition down to its permanent home in Roanoke. This was a former WMATA unit, bus 6181, a 2006 New Flyer D40LFR, which Metro donated to the museum in February of this year. After the museum received the bus (I had no involvement in the donation process), I helped coordinate and fund a repair on a leaking coolant pipe, and I also took care of titling and registration. Once I got the bus registered, I took it on a quick test drive, running it up Route 1 from the parking lot in College Park where the museum had been keeping it up to Laurel, just to make sure that I was confident in its performance:
I pulled into a bus stop on the side of Route 1 in order to adjust a mirror. I was pleased to see that I was just as proficient as ever at servicing a bus stop, even though it’s been more than nine years since I operated buses regularly.
Continue reading…Categories: Commonwealth Coach & Trolley, Roanoke, Stuarts Draft, Travel, WMATA
Acting in a way that befits your name…
8 minute read
November 16, 2025, 11:52 PM
Recently, District of Columbia delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced a bill to Congress that would change some local officials’ job titles in Washington, DC. Specifically, it would redesignate the mayor as “governor”, redesignate the DC Council as the “Legislative Assembly”, redesignate the members of the DC Council as “representatives”, and redesignate the chair of the council as “speaker”. This bill was introduced to show that the DC government is “prepared to make the transition from district to state.” Here is the press release that Norton’s office put out:
Categories: DC area local news, State and local politics, Washington DC
If you’ve been looking for me on Flickr…
8 minute read
November 4, 2025, 10:22 PM
If you’ve been looking for me on Flickr lately, you’re not going to find me there anymore. My account was recently removed from the platform for alleged violations of their terms of service and/or community guidelines. I found out while I was out on Halloween, and spotted this in my email:
!["Notice of Account Termination [Terms of Use Violation]"](https://files.schuminweb.com/journal/2025/full-size/flickr-closed-01.png "\"Notice of Account Termination [Terms of Use Violation]\"")
Categories: Copyright infringement, Netculture, Photography