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Keeping sparks alive in a marriage can be hard once the honeymoon period has gone by.  At times, it can even feel like you and your spouse has nothing in common. So in order to avoid that kind of thinking, it is best for you to try to find a hobby that can be shared between you and your spouse.

My husband and I share quite a few hobbies together. Back in the day, when we were still just friends, he and I have always liked the same kind of music. So we would often listen to music together. That is something that we still do up until today.

After we have entered into our marriage, hubby and I started to get into some other favorite pastimes together.  For instance, we started performing renovated Vietnamese opera—cai luong—together. That required us to go to music lessons together.  It also meant spending many hours rehearsing our lines with each other. 

Music is not the only type of hobby that we share as a couple.  Together, we have also developed a love for outdoorsy fun.  When the weather is really nice outside, we enjoy going for long hikes wherever there is a trail. In the summer, we like to rent a jet ski for some fun in the water.  And throughout the year, we run together—training for races that we have decided to enter. 

All of the activities that my husband and I do together help to keep us close to each other. The shared experiences help to strengthen our bond. So that as time goes on, our marriage can continue to keep going strong. 

Above pic by Frazer Irving

If you get the opportunity, DC just released a Masters of the Universe: Origin of Skeletor one-shot and it was pretty dang good. It was written by Joshua Hale Fialkov who has been doing some pretty solid work over on I, Vampire, and the gorgeous art is by Frazer Irving. Well worth checking if you are a He-Man fan, and maybe a little esoteric for non-fans but I still found it to be an intriguing read.

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By Dave Rapoza

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By Nathan Rosario

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By Dave Wilkins

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By Joel Gomez

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By Nelson Daniel

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By Adam C Moore

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By Matt Kaufenberg

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By Stjepan Sejic

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By Eve Orozco

Canadian Pacific 4-6-4 Hudson 2816 –pictured here charging through Loretto, Minnesota, on September 8^th, 2007- might not roll for its owner today were it not for F. Nelson Blount.  A millionaire railfan who purchased it for his growing collection of steam locomotives he ultimately dubbed “Steamtown,” a museum that moved from North Walpole, New Hampshire, to neighboring Bellows Falls, Vermont, and finally, all the way south to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where it passed from private operation to public when the National Park Service assumed operation and from which the 2816 returned to CP ownership in 1999 and today pulls excursions like that pictured above.   

Alas, starting in 1986, Blount’s museum (which he did not live to see move to Scranton due to his untimely death when his private plane ran out of fuel and crashed on a day in 1967) became a center of controversy when Congress authorized the Steamtown National Historic Site in October of that year.

This was thanks to then-Congressman Joseph McDade, who represented the Scranton area and had been approached by local officials seeking help for Steamtown, which was in danger of folding before it could get started in its new home.   McDade approached then-NPS director William Mott about taking on Steamtown.   Mott, who had experience with public-funded museums via his involvement in helping establish the renowned California State Railway Museum, liked what he saw in Steamtown and lobbied Congress with McDade to see it become part of the Park Service.   And boy oh boy did the “pork barrel” charges start to fly once federal money began to flow slowly but surely to the new Historic Site.

I first learned of the controversy when I read Dan Cupper's article in the August 1995 issue of Trains about Steamtown NHS. Mr. Cupper's article started on a positive note but then ended with a list of negative points about the museum.  A later editorial by the Trains staff in their October issue further muddied the waters by labeling the collection as having more "basket cases than bona fide prizes." A reflection of how most critics of Steamtown liked to harp about how most of the engines for the National Historic Site were "unrelated" to Scranton, PA, and the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western.   In essence, Nelson Blount’s dream had become a waste of public money to many pundits both railroad and political, though the fact that main line steam excursions could be operated from the site was the one thing that both Cupper’s article and the Trains editorial gave a thumbs-up to.

I do not believe Steamtown NHS is a “pork barrel” project or that the collection is a bad one. In addition, I believe the latter argument is invalid, for all steam engines are precious and must be kept safe, not cut up like, say, the late Dick Jensen’s Burlington Route 4-8-4 Northern 5632 and Grand Trunk Western Pacific 4-6-2 (scrapped in 1969 and 1987 respectively), and, more recently, a steam engine in Florida, all three of which seemed to have cheated fate after the end of steam on US main line railroads in 1960. What would Trains' editors and the critics at large have rather seen happen, Steamtown fold into bankruptcy and sell the steam engines off for scrap just because they were "unrelated" to the site they were displayed at? Come on.

Dan Cupper's article noted that it was hard to see the 80 million dollars’ worth of money put into the site.   I think this critcisim is easily refued by this quote from current Steamtown superintendent Kip Hagen: "We've got millions buried in the ground in essential infrastructure, but from now on, the investments should be a lot more visible." Hagen explained to the late Jim Boyd in Boyd’s foreword to his 2010 book Steamtown: In Color, so it's not like they planned Steamtown NHS to be frozen in time but, rather, to grow and evolve.

Also, wasn't a reconstructed roundhouse, back shop, etc. enough of a visible investment for critics back in 1995? Talk about "you can't please everyone."

Finally, Dan Cupper's Trains article quoted Smithsonian historian John H. White as claiming there were other railroad museums such as the Baltimore & Ohio Museum and the East Broad Top that were more worthy than Steamtown of federal funding, and then went so far as to write a letter to the editor of Trains which appeared in their October issue that, in closing, called Steamtown "the scarlet woman of railroad preservation." Well Mr. White, those two groups are still going strong almost twenty years after Steamtown's grand opening, so it was not like they were on the verge of closing in 1995, and watch that "scarlet woman" talk, sir, because it is an incontestable fact that if any museum truly needed saving, it was the one Nelson Blount started but, alas, did not live to have more influence on due to his untimely death in August of 1967; by 1987, Steamtown USA was 2.2 million in debt with bankruptcy looming. Again, what would you rather have happened, Mr. White, seen all the engines Blount and others saved and brought into the collection scrapped where they sat in the former Lackawanna yards in Scranton?

White and others imply that a blank check was given to Steamtown USA. Not true: as noted above, the Park Service was not permitted to pay so much as one red cent for the collection. The city of Scranton and the Lackawanna County Rail Authority paid off Steamtown's debt and donated the collection to the NHS. Only then did federal money start to roll in earnest; up until then, the only federal money spent had been eight million dollars on a study of the collection for the NHS.
 

In closing, I believe it is time to stop the negative speculation about Steamtown NHS and, instead, start positive speculation as to the roles it could play in furthering the cause of rail preservation.

It's an election, not your child's little league game – not everyone goes home with a trophy. In the real world, there are winners and losers. I choose to keep politics off my personal social media most of the time. My reasons are two-fold: I don't see the point in starting fights with family and friends that disagree, and I don't want to see those I care about making fools of themselves. Yet, biting my tongue last night took every ounce of strength I possess.

As the Obama votes rolled in, my husband and I rejoiced. Sure, we are realists and don't expect any big changes. Yet, I also honestly believe a Romney vote would be a vote backward. I wasn't always anti-Republican and I may not be in the future, but in recent years the red party has become increasingly conservative and religious. As a student of history, I know that is a recipe for disaster.

Perhaps the saddest thing I have witnessed is the failure of our public schools. So many woe-is-me posts about how our votes don't count flooded Twitter and Facebook yesterday evening. So few understood the basic working of our electoral process and the electoral college. Suffice it to say your vote does matter.

Even fewer understood basic mathematics, wondering how states could be called without all the popular votes in. Seriously? If 55 percent of the voters chose Obama, and only 20 percent of the ballots remained to be counted, it was mathematically impossible for Romney to win. Even the arguments that Obama would ruin the country in various ways showed a distinct lack of education in how our government, and the world, operates.

So yes, I voted Obama. Yes, I voted for marriage equality (fingers crossed that it passes in Washington state), and yes, I voted for charter schools and more educational opportunities for our youth. Last night's election chatter shows we need it, and the ignorance stemmed from both sides of the political divide. The vote was too close, and the amount of poorly educated and plain ignorant comments clogging my newsfeeds shows that nothing in our country can improve until we dedicate ourselves to turning out a well-educated society.