Congratulations CSX - You Beat Santa Claus

My best writing comes after I have had a nice nap.  Restful sleep is a thing of the past.  This year on Christmas Eve CSX chose to run freight trains continuously all through the night.  It was not St. Nick in his sleigh with Rudolph guiding them with his glowing red nose.  It was CSX exploiting the recent resolution of an impending rail strike marshaled by the White House.  I am a Biden supporter, but respectfully I disagree with the sentiments of "Amtrack Joe."  Amtrack may be special to the Bidens, but south of the Mason/Dixon line America becomes the "Rust Belt."  We don't have catenary stretched above the "Spaghetti Bowl."  We have rumbling, turbo-charged, two-stroke, sixteen cylinder GP locomotives grandfathered in evading the Tier standards of the recently neutered EPA.  SCOTUS decided the Environmental Protection Agency in actuality shouldn't be able to protect American citizens.  That breech of trust began with George W. Bush, but it was predicated by Bill Clinton who licensed our currently used wireless microwave frequencies.  These frequencies were deemed harmful to humans, and the FCC rightly cordoned them off for commercial use.  Bill changed that, and in one fell swoop airborne electricity became the American economy.  Smartphones.  Apps.  (formerly known as applications)  Applepay.  Every conceivable thing you can imagine to accomplish with a smartphone.  I don't have one, and I don't want one.  Control my home's security with a phone?  Please.  There is so much electricity flying around our heads, it is surprising our brains haven't melted.  Or have they?  Melting brain, shooting up a school.  That is farfetched, but I'll put it this way.  The list of personal networks showing up in my computer preferences in my home is long.  I am not happy with all of this airborne energy, because it or something causes interference with amenities I use for enlightenment.  FM radio?  Who even knows what this is?  Fayetteville has a translator for the Classical Station WCPE only a few miles away, and yet radio reception of this indispensable aural pleasure is poor most of the time.  Although my Alexa reception has been acceptable recently, it will drop its signal when she gets angry.  There are all kinds of electrical phenomena happening in our homes.  Batteries run down.  Lights flicker.  The audio from my vintage musical instruments is modulated and distorted.  Their amplitude is quelled.  What is supposed to be stereo sound inexplicably moves from side to side.  These are common occurrences of which I have become familiar over the years.  They are a product of both low frequency sound (infrasound) and airborne electricity of many frequencies.  Some is RF energy, radio frequency energy now mostly in the microwave range, and some is alternating current from AC traction locomotives, the pride and joy of America's rail industry.  This must be the worst, but there is more.  Helicopters, commercial jets, and small private planes all have their own aural and electrical skyprints.  None of it is healthy to human beings, but no one seems to care.  When an ice or wind storm roars knocking out the power, a sudden calm besets our homes.  In the great American way instead of trying to cure disease, we chose to treat symptoms.  It pays better.  Get rid of dangerous antagonists in our environment?  Better to devise some novel way to scrub electricity from the air.  Bueller?  Anyone?  The rail industry likes to tell us our lives would fall apart without them, but my instincts tell me the majority of what they haul isn't for us.  Coal they supply.  If we decided to take a look into some of those thousands of containers stacked on flatcars, it would be surprising.  It's hard to imagine earning 700 million in revenue for one quarter hauling veggies.  And the drug problem persists.  Was it the military using Christmas as a training exercise, or was it corporate America doing its best to upstage the anniversary of the birth of the Baby Jesus?  In any case it was rude, callous, and sacrilegious.  There is no way Santa could compete with that maelstrom.  So congratulations CSX.  You beat Santa Claus.