A Good Day, A Bad Day

It's a good day for the United States Marine Corps: Happy 231st Birthday to our USMC fighting men! Marine Commandant Mike Hagee writes here about this day and what the Marines mean to a free United States.

It was a bad day for moviegoers: Jack Palance died today at the age of 85. His family said he was actually 87.

Palance, a wonderful "bad guy" in the movies, kept me enthralled with his work and was one of the most down-to-earth actors around. He received his Oscar for 1991's "City Slickers" and, besides being a WWII veteran, was a heavyweight boxer.

Anyone remember the '91 Oscars when Palance dropped to the floor and whipped out a number of one-armed push-ups in front of millions of television viewers?

It was a bad day for my area where, not more than five miles from my house in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a train derailment occurred yesterday in which eight persons were injured and one man was killed.

Today, a second man feared missing, was found dead in the wreckage. The first man was crushed horribly; the second was burned beyond recognition in the ensuing fire.

The train was not a standard Union Pacific freight train, nor an Amtrak passenger train -- the sights usually seen on the rails adjacent my house.

Instead, it was a Harsco Track Technologies rail grinding train, on contract to the Union Pacific Railroad. A rail grinding train usually consists of two custom diesel-electric locomotives on either end, with various cars in the middle to include a water car, fuel car, two cars for the crew and the actual grinding cars. Six of the ten cars derailed and chewed up over 1,400 feet of track.

A Placer County Sheriff's Department representative, Lt. Chal DeCecco, said "If you look at the crash site, it looks like excessive speed was a factor."

The yin and yang of Life.

BZ