I’ve been reading the news pretty much every day for a while now and I’m pretty amazed at some of the stories I see. Most interesting lately was the one about a 28-year-old conductor who fell to her death from the Royal Gorge Railroad in  Colorado. Two things about this story interested me.

One was, well, she fell off the train. I’ve never heard of a conductor falling off a train. Ever. I’m sure it has happened, but apparently wasn’t noteworthy for the new I read. It’s sad that this young lady lost her life in an incident like this and I’m left unfulfilled because I don’t know how it happened. There’s got to be a reason, but none was given. So, left to my own devices, I can only conclude that she was chasing a bandit from car to car and had him cornered in the dining area when from no where a monkey jumped from under a table and became entangled in her long hair. In its effort to get free, the monkey managed to wrap the hair around her face, blinding her and causing her much concern. As she turned and twisted, trying to help the monkey get free, she stumbled onto the platform between cars and tumbled from the train onto the rocky shores of the Arkansas River. That’s what the new said, she “tumbled” from the train. The NTSB, as a consequence of this event, have made it mandatory for all conductors, henceforth, to be bald to eliminate the possibility of this ever happening again. Some wonder if it might have been a better decision is they just made it illegal to bring a monkey aboard a train. Any train. But, no, all conductors must now be bald either by choice, or by nature. This make believe summary is in no way meant to diminish the sad loss of this young lady.

The second point of interest is that the Royal Gorge in Colorado was carved out by the Arkansas River. Huh. Turns out there’s two of them. Who knew? I wonder if anyone in Arkansas knows about this. If they do, do you think they’re proud that another state is using their name for a river in Colorado, or upset because of it. We’ll only know if someone speaks up.

Then there’s that ‘thing’ going on with North and South Carolina. The states decided to use GPS technology to check their common border and discovered that 19 families have been living in the wrong states. The lines drawn 200 years ago were deemed to be hundreds of feet off from where they were supposed to be. As a result of this change, 16 SC families were moved to NC, and 3 NC families were moved to SC. All that with no one actually moving at all. Now lots of work must start to figure out which schools all those kids will go to, what their new phone numbers will be, new zip codes, street addresses, tax liability, etc. What a mess. Perhaps they should have just left it all alone. But, hey, North Carolina saw a net gain of 13 new families that they can tax at will.

Did you see where Gary Johnson is the Libertarian nomination for president? Did anyone hear that on the national news? So, we have a third choice for president and, perhaps, a better choice. Who knows? Will it be Bernie, Hillary, Gary, or Donald? Should be interesting once it’s all decided.

And, finally, there’s a UFO floating around over Ohio with such brazen indifference that more than one person was able to video it. What do you think of that?