Somerville's finest

I just called up the Somerville (MA) police department to ask them if their ticket book included a way to ticket bicyclists (for riding on the sidewalk, specifically). All I needed to know was if the standard ticket book had a blank space to to write in any municipal violation number. The woman who answered the phone said that she had no idea and that no one else there could find out right now (and to call back tomorrow). This seemed odd, because you would think that a police department would have some sort of access to their own ticket books.

I haven't had a good bicycle story to bitch about in a while so I'll tell you what happened to David and myself yesterday on a trip out to the middle of nowhere Massachusetts. (We had to pick up a pile of his stuff from his previous home, and we were in a CAR!) While coming back into civilization on route 117, I think, we got behind a bicyclist. The road was a very narrow, one-lane-in-each-direction rural road with a very respectable speed limit of something like 30 mph. There was a ton of oncoming traffic and the road was windier than a tangled Slinky toy. So we were driving patiently behind the cyclist. After a whole 30 seconds, the moron motorist behind us laid on his horn. David ignored him. The guy laid on the horn again, and managed to get a few other morons behind him to join him in the choir, too. David again ignored him. Eventually, David did squeeze by the biker, when there was a bit more lane width to work with. And about two minutes later we all caught up to the traffic that had been ahead of us at a red light (is this the punchline to every stupid motorist trick?). The grumpy moron passed us on the right and sped ahead. Yay for him. He was lucky I wasn't driving. I told David that he was far too patient, as I would have slammed on the brakes and actually gotten out of the car to present the moron with the asshole of the year award...

Speaking of David (as you may have guessed, he's the man. That man, I mean.) we are now looking for a nice two bedroom (or a large one bedroom) in Somerville. If ya know of anything...

Coming down to earth for a visit

Talk about life being a blur. I was in Portland, Oregon for the Bicycle Leadership Conference last week. I had two, count 'em, two presentations. Both were low key, and I don't think I offended or completely bored anyone during them, so I'm taking that as a success. The conference was on the whole, ok. And I learned a thing or two, but the most useful aspect of the trip, advocacywise, was getting to experience the "bicycling nirvana" that Portland has been dubbed. I was a little shocked at some of the stuff I saw there - for all the nirvana, there were very few cyclists on the roads at all. Nothing like what I'm used to in the Boston area. Odly enough, I saw more cyclists NOT on the road than on the road - they seemed to flock to the public transportation "light rail" trains, and also seemed more intersted in using the sidewalks to get their bikes from one place to another. The few local cyclists I spoke with expressed doubt at the safety of the streets. And looking at the bizarre and incredibly prevalent substandard bike lanes that speckled the roads I'm not too surprised. (They seemed to have caught Cambridgitis, and had tons of 4 foot bike lanes scrunched up next to extremely narrow parking lanes and shared travel lanes, squeezing lots of vehicles into a very small space.) However, despite all the evidence against the nirvana notion, riding a bike was, in fact, absolutely wonderful compared to Boston. The key was the ability of motorists (and pedestrians) to actually OBEY THE LAW! People actually stopped at stop lights! People actually moved into another lane before passing me at a reasonable speed and distance! No one honked or yelled! Traffic honestly stopped BEFORE the crosswalks at intersections (I witnessed two motorists actually BACK UP when they accidentally stopped a bit into the crosswalk)! No one was in a hurry! People were nice!

I was thinking that Boston drivers should have a little exchance program with Oregon. We can send a few of our road ragers out for a little TLC and/or toughlove and straighten them out. What is it about Eastern Massachusetts that births such insanity on the streets? It can't be the cold, because Texas and Florida are just as bad, from what I've heard. And we've got one of the most extensive public transportation systems anywhere in the Americas (though Bogota, Columbia puts us to shame), so it's not like people don't have a choice. It is the fact that we're so frustrated at the rest of the country for being so insane that we just can't contain our anger any longer? (Nope, see Texas and Florida again.)

Anyway, the Portland trip was interesting and I mostly enjoyed myself. You can check out just a few of the photos I took out there by clicking here. They're pretty random, so if you're looking at them and think to yourself "what the heck was on her mind when she took this one", it's perfectly understandable. The transportation geek's mind works in mysterious ways. One note that I'll point out is that the pictures of the street art are some very poor documentation of some street reclaiming efforts a la David Engwicht's book of that same name (mentioned previously in my blog). I'm going to be getting more involved in this type of community building in the future I hope, and I even got a nice, supportive e-mail from the man himself the other day. You can also see more pictures and info about the street I saw in Portland at City Repair, the group who organized the street reclaiming.

Finally, before I hit the submit button and get back to the real work, I have to update everyone on my newfound lovelife. It's good, really really good. Like about as good as it can get. Like I'm really in need of finding a better term for "lifemate". Rich Mackin suggested sweetheart, and I liked it at first, but have decided that it's still not quite right. But it's better than most of the alternatives, e.g. husband, partner, lover, mate, boyfriend...

my mom thinks it's fate

I just think it was pretty good timing, and a lot of persistance.

Yes, folks, I found a man. And not the one I thought I was looking for. But it turns out that he's the guy I SHOULD have been looking for. Thankfully, he's much more observant than I :-)

To top it off, dear readers, you may be happy to hear that this here blog was one of the main contributing factors to said kind and generous gentleman's interest in one Turtle.

More info will, I'm quite sure, trickle into future updates, but for now, all I have to say is life is not only looking up these days, but it is looking at the stars, and the clouds, and the birds, and all that really up stuff. Now we just need to find a spot of sea to dock a houseboat alongside some land where we can plant a garden...

Bluntwoman!

Heh. Big double en tendre inside joke to me*!

What is it about humans that requires us to be so afraid of being honest? Why do we feel the need to beat around the bush? (It's not like we're really interested in trying to beat the poor bush in the first place, not literally anyway.) This culture of fakeness (Oh, your new hairdo is FABULOUS!!!) isn't doing anyone any good, in fact it reinforces the bad. Misunderstandings are common enough without people intentionally spewing them out into the world, right? So why is it that even me, who is a card carrying member of the bluntness club, has a hard time just saying what's on my mind sometimes? (I'm sure you're all reading this and wondering what exactly I'm not saying about you. Well, you can all rest assured that it very unlikely that it's you I'm talking about right now. Really.) Thank goddess, a kind an generous third party made it very uncomfortable for me to be all running around the proverbial shrubbery with my baseball bat. I'm now so much better off than I was before the whacking of the landscape, and I think that my actions will go on to do even more good (not so much curing cancer, but you know). So what was I afraid of? What are any of us afraid of that makes us keep our mouth shut? (Oooh, I could turn this personal rant around into a sociopolitical one in a second, but that just seems too predictable...)

So, take my advice, knock off the mamby pamby indirectness and saccharine pleasantries and just out with it. What do you really think? What do you want to know? No need to be mean, just be honest.

* Note to self (in case I'm re-reading this in 10 years and wondering what the hell I'm talking about), and to the rest of you, since you're here anyway: I had a dream the other night that I wandered into a Kevin Smith movie set while they were making a Bluntman and Chronic movie. I caught the co-producer's eye and he decided that I would be great in the film as Bluntman's evil ex girlfriend. They gave me a makover that turned me into a super villian dominatrix. Who hoo! Unfortunately most of the dream involved me wandering around a forest full of broken dishes looking for a cast party. And I never did get to work with Kevin, as I was on the second unit's set. But it was clearly the most memorable dream I've had in a while. And I thought it was a particularly entertaining way for my Freudian brain to tell me to act more bluntly in my waking life.

Wait, last minute update. After you've read all you can take here, go to this guy's blog and get the other stuff that I'd have written if I'd thought of it.

despite it all

Despite some incredibly gloomy weather (quite possibly record setting), and some frustrating crap with the roommates (I talked to the landlord and he says he never agreed to kick me out) and a bit of panic about presenting at two workshops at the Bicycle Educator's Leadership Conference in Oregon in a week, I'm in a pretty good mood right now. I spent the weekend with a friend, and had fun, even if I am probably frustrating the heck out of him (sorry!). I decided not to push myself to ride on the SCUL mission on Saturday night in the cold rain. And I'm actually glad. I'm sure I had just as much fun, and I got to observe the Somerville police and fire departments as they wandered around hopelessly for and hour and a half looking for a fire somewhere in my neighborhood. I can't imagine that the fire did much damage, since literally no one could find it, even though it was burning for almost two hours or so. My friend and I might even have seen the kids who set the fire (yes, I called the police and reposted the suspicious kids). I can't wait until Thursday to see what our little Somerville Journal has to say about the whole thing.

I haven't decided what to do about my roommates and my home. I still have to talk to the landlord again and see what he's thinking. But I know that the rent is going to go up, since property taxes are shooting through the roof these days. And I think I can find a better deal, and a place where there aren't quite so many people (reducing the chance of insane people). So, I'm keeping my options open.

I've been blissfully out of touch with most of the news outlets, so I don't have much to complain about politically :-) Though the FCC is doing an amazingly job convincing me to get rid of cable tv, and stop watching much tv at all. (Also, Buffy is done, so tv is significantly less appealing anyway!) But, you should all be watching NOW with Bill Moyers on Friday night on PBS. It's about the only decent news show, along with Democracy Now and the Daily show. (The last two I will sorely miss if I give up cable...)

Finally, I now have a reason to look forward to going out to the Portland, Oregon bicycle conference, even with the daunting task of speaking in front of a whole bunch of real education professionals (who luckily don't know that I don't have any credentials whatsoever!). I'm happy I'm going now because I can hang out with my friend Rich Mackin who recently moved out there. He's always entertaining and an excellent source for creative political activist type inspiration. Plus, I'm curious to see what type of place could convince a die hard Bostonian to up and leave!

Oh, and I'm slowly cleaning my room. Yay for me.

homeless

It was a cold and rainy bike week, but it wasn't too bad. I, sadly, couldn't bike to work, since my bike doesn't fit in the space between my bed and the computer. But I did bike to a few events, and they were fun.

My birthday was very mellow, as was the SCUL ride. I did bring my first official Maggot (a new recruit) on the ride (Hi Pywacket!), and I built my first ship (chopper bike). So I'm just way cool now.

On Sunday, my grandmother (the other one!) took the big family to an herbal farm and restaurant in NH for lunch, ostensibly as a surprize birthday party for my aunt who's birthday was a while ago. The rest of the family pretty much used the party to celebrate everyone's birthday who was born any time in the spring, and I got presents (Yay!). It was nice, and, as a bonus, I bought a very cute wire model of an English 3-Speed bike as a present for myself. (No, Smasher you can't have it!)

The rides in my grandmother's and aunt's cars was less than pleasant, though. Both of them terrify me, and at least a couple of times we swerved into another lane and nearly hit other vehicles. Eeek.

Finally, as I suggested in the title of this entry, my favorite little band of misfit roommates have finally succeeded in their obsessive quest to make my life miserable, and they have apparently convinced the landlord to kick me out when the lease runs out at the end of August. I'm half thinking of asking several of my next door neighbors (who are good friends) to write letters to the landlord letting him know how good a neighbor I am, and how he is making a mistake. I was even considering asking my friends at the Office for Housing and Community Development to talk to the landlord. I'll see how I feel in a few days. But, in the meantime, I'm going to start packing (3 months might be just enough time!), and looking for a place near Davis or Union Square, in Somerville of course. This time, no lame roomates. The weird thing is, I always mention that I want to live with politically and/or environmentally active people in the roommate ads, but somehow I keep ending up with an astoundingly large percentage of uncaring, unstable, and sometimes just plain mean people who have nothing better to do than bitch and moan (and watch cartoons on tv, and play horribly violent video games, and drown themselves in alcohol!). Is there some definition of "activist" that I've just not heard of (activist: n. person who likes videogames a lot [1983 < English, dirived from product named Activision])? But seriously, I don't really expect much from roommates (people in general, really), just a little respect and some ability to act rationally...

visuals

How's this for a nice, random thought...

You know how men are supposed to be especially visually oriented? Well, I have a hard time buying it ('cept for the sexual part). Almost every guy I've ever met has has shown absolutely no interest in what his environment looks like. You walk into a man's bedroom and chances are that there just isn't anything interesting to look at, unless someone else put it there. I'm not talking expecting something out of a designer magazine or anything, but I just can't understand how these guys live without at least some sort of visual stimulation in their lives. I've thought about this for a long time, but only just recently, after having visited a bunch of artist's studios/homes, did it really stike me as being ironic. (You know I've been thinking too much about this when I was watching Dawson's Creek reruns and complained that the set designers had given one of the (straight) male characters a really stylish apartment that I just didn't believe someone like him would have in real life.) So, what is it about men that makes them not notice anything about their surroundings, yet be so good at the other visual concepts?

as per request

Someone I didn't know was reading my blog told me to update it, so here's two week synopsis of the chaos that's been my life...

I went up to Maine to be with my mom for my grandmother's funeral, and spent most of that week in South Portland. We stayed in my grammie's room in an old folk's home while my mom dealth with everything and got ready for the funeral and wake. It was all very, very odd, and my mother was sort of freaking out the whole time, but she's ok. Lots and lots of people appeared out of the woodwork to tell us how great a woman my grandmother was and how much she loved my mom and me. I had a ton of guilt at not having visited her in a very long time (2 years, my mom seemed to think). I was never all that close to my grandparents, and was always just a little disappointed with my grandmother's passivity. She was definitely a product of her time, and I had wanted a bit more for her. But she was nonetheless seen as an absolutely wonderful person by everyone who knew her. And the other people who spoke at her funeral made me realize how much she was appreciated by everyone around her. So it made me proud.

Several years ago, my grandmother wrote and collected a pile of her childhood stories and put them into a handmade book for all of her close friends and family. The local newspaper even published a few of them and made my grandmother into a real writer - somethng that she'd always wanted to be. She wasn't the greatest writer in the world, but she did have some wonderful stories and I'm so happy to have them now. I may put one or two on the web to share with you all (the three of you, that is!).

Anyway, the funeral and wake were interesting and made me think a lot about family and friends. I can only hope that I have one tenth as many loving people surrounding me in my old age.

When I got back home at the end of the week I worked a lot, hung out with the gang, and got an infected tooth. The tooth got progressively worse over the weekend (I never get teeth problems on a Monday...) and by Sunday night I was double dosing on the Excedrin (Acetominophin, Asprin, and caffine). By Monday morning the combination of lack of sleep, pain, OD of caffine, no food, and a bit of panic let me to collapsing in the T station just a couple of blocks away from the dentist. An ambulance with the coolest EMT ever (I decided that if I wasn't about to pass out I'd have been in love!) carted me the three blocks to the hospital where the entire staff spent the morning poking and prodding me with needles, pee cups, and electrodes before finally agreeing with my diagnosis of too much of some stuff and too little of the rest. They then abandoned me in the wacko room to bore myself back to health. By the time they released me the dentist's emergency hours were over and I had to suffer for another day. Packing my office stuff, and then a visit from a friend made the day go by pretty quickly. (In a completely different, annoying story, MassBike is now homeless, and who knows when we'll get into another office. For now 1/3 of MassBike is officially in my bedroom where my laundry used to be.) Next morning had me on the dentist's emergency patient list with no sireny detours thankfully. The extraction process was worse than usual and after the dentist kicked me out of the chair I decided to sit patiently in the waiting room looking miserable and crying a bit for about three hours until someone took pity on me and handed me a perscription for some real painkillers. Eventually I got home, took some Vicoden (sp?) and slept. Two days later I was voraciously eating bags of potato chips from Building 19, and I feel much better.

There's a ton of other stuff I could talk about. But I really should start dealing with some of the things I need to get to this weekend. So, I'll leave you with a parting note:

My grandmother left me the majority of her money. Weird. (No, I'm not rich or anything, she was about to run out of money in another 6 months or so,a but it's more money than I've ever had at once. Weird.)

all good things are wild and free

Henry David Thoreau

My grandmother died a few hours ago. It was a little sudden. But she'd been fading for a while. She went very peacefully, in my mother's arms. My mother was telling her it was ok to go, that everything was allright. She missed her favorite holiday by one day.

It's been a bad year for relatives of the people in my neighborhood. My neighbor across the street lost his father a couple of months ago, and my backyard neighbor also lost her grandmother this week. So much loss, so close to home.

I feel sorry that my grandmother didn't get to see the spring this year. She was always so happy to see the birds, flowers, and trees come back to life in the warming sun. She wasn't a big explorer, but she enthusiastically enjoyed the simple act of sitting on her porch and watching her small world of nature go about it's business. Her other passion, besides nature, was poetry. She loved the simple, sweet, honest words. She had a tough life. She grew up with lots of rough and tumble siblings on a farm in coastal Maine and not a whole lot of anything else. But even as a child, she loved to read. And write. Not too many years ago, my mother, grandmother, and I published a few issues of a zine together. Probably the only three-generation zine ever created.

Oh, and she voted for Nader in 2000. She was definitely no political activist, but she knew what was good for her family and friends.

She will be missed by many. Her quiet, but happy soul was always there, watching the birds and flowers in the yard. And in my memory, she'll always be there, even now that she's left us.

aha!

It turns out that Blogger lost my layout template for my blog. They didn't bother to tell me, though. So, I could post to my heart's content, and Blogger said that the posts were uploaded, but because the template didn't exist, the new page information could never be generated. It's better now, but I have to figure out how to get all my little customizations back in.

Anything?

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

nada

If anyone can read this let me know (e-mail address on the left). I haven't seen any of my last three posts.

tap...tap...tap...

Is this thing on? I posted yesterday and it still hasn't shown up. Let's see if the snak machine technique works here and this post will push the last one out...

marriage counselling

The whole world could use some serious "marriage counselling". No one is happy. But instead of trying to deal with their problems, people would rather just be pissed off and take out their frustrations on others, usually unwitting bystanders who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Its easier to lash out than to do the hard work that's required for real problem solving. This is true on both a personal and a political level. The fight or flight response still has a hard grip on our species, even after thousands of years of attempts at civilization.

Now we know where King George gets his ideas...

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country."

- Herman Goering (good pal of Hitler) at the Nuremberg trials

Six degrees of seperation from a monopoly

Apparently, if you do a search on Microsoft's search engine for "Iraqi satelite photos" this site shows up at #8. On the surface this seems impossible. But it turns out that I spelled "satellite" wrong, so it's not as impressive as I thought.

I really will put up some photos of the protests/marches I've been going on. Maybe today...

the US military breeds crazy people

One ex-Army guy has managed to accomplish more disruption of business as usual in the nation's capital than 200,000 peace activists. He's driven his tractor into a manmade pond in the National Mall and refuses to leave, threatening the use of explosives (which he probably doesn't have). What's even more ironic, is that the police are treating him with the utmost respect, compared to the non-violent peace activists in NYC and DC in recent months. The police are going so far as to say "It's time, patience and lots of communication that is key to having a safe resolution". Hmmm, maybe they could say that a little louder so that King George might hear it...

The peace movement could learn a thing or two from this guy. (Just without any actual explosives.) We're huge, but almost completely impotent. We need to change that. (Again, in a peacful way, obviously.) I'd like to see more lawsuits, more aggressive media demands for fair and accurate reporting, more pressure on our locally elected officials, and a heck of a lot more boycotts/worker walkouts.

hope

It's only going to get worse.

But I have the slightest bit of hope that things won't be as bad as they could. I saw two programs on television last night that gave me a glimmer of something. CSPAN showed Iraqi satelite news and one of the chief Iraqi statesmen indicated that he realized that most US and British citizens were against their dictatorial leaders. At least someone is paying attention...

Also, on CSPAN, I caught a debate about violence in Iraq that was rebroadcast from Saturday. There were two extremely well spoken journalist/professors who made an excellent case against violence, there was one guy who was on the fence, but generally supported a war, and there was one guy almost literally foaming at the mouth who spent his time degrading pretty much everyone, demanding the destruction of an entire country, and twitching a lot. Oh, and the moderator was doing a wonderful job mocking Bush, Blair, and the rabid vulture guy. It showed me that there are some powerful intellects proposing rational foreign relations.

One thing that keeps popping up, which I've never seen addressed, is the bizarre claim by the pro-violence crowd that "We've tried everything else! War is our last option!" Well, firstly, we need to identify what the actual problem is, before we can look at solutions. Unfortunately, the Bush Regime has yet to come up with a definitive problem in Iraq. They keep changing their story, and making up random lies to defend their position. We didn't start with a problem with Iraq - we started with a desire to start a war and then tried to justify our actions.

Secondly, lets look at what sort of solutions we've fully tried in a general effort to make Iraq a less hostile place:

1. War
2. Sanctions

That's it? Yup.

(We've also tried to conduct US inspections, but both times we've done so, no weapons of mass destruction were found, and, more importantly, both times the diplomatic inspections were abruptly halted by the US president.)

So we've tried two things. How can anyone in their right mind say that "we've tried everything"? All we've done so far is extreme violence and severe punishment. (War didn't work the first time, why do we thing it'll be any different this time?) What about trying one of the other thousand possibly solutions? How about legal action (through the World Court, or within the Iraqi legal system)? How about flooding peaceful Iraqi organizations with money, food, and other non-violent resources to give them strength to stand up to their dictator? How about just generally not acting like a big red white and blue asshole to people of a different race? Or, how about just ignoring them? (That's usually the preferred tactic with people who are acting up to get attention. Giving them attention generally just encourages them.) And, finally, have we even bothered to respect Iraqi citizens as human beings? (Heck the Bush administration doesn't even respect US citizens as human beings...)

Finally, for the sake of argument, let's pretend that Saddam is actually committing mass murder of the Kurds as we speak (as opposed to 15 years ago) and he's just made an appearance on tv to announced that he's figured out a way of combining nuclear weapons with biological weapons. And he's planning on attacking the US with nuclear germs no matter what we do. If this was the case, then, would we really be able to accomplish anything by attacking the country? Would it stop Saddam from wanting to use his weapons? Wouldn't it give him the excuse to use even more of them? A threatened, scared creature who feels cornered is a hell of a lot more dangerous than a puffed up creature who is angry but has a clear escape route.

Where's Waldo

King George is rumored to have declared that lovable red-striped sneak, Waldo, a terrorist spy. Children everywhere are being instructed to loot around in their parents' closets and drawers, find the guns and ammo, hunt down Waldo, and shoot to kill.

Oh, and some Brit named Terry Jones had this to say about Bush's foriegn policy.

bored?

Lists of things to do make my life a little better. When I get frustrated, overwhelmed, or just plain bored, I make lists of things I'd like to do (and some things I have to do). Writing the list alone makes me feel good about myself, and crossing stuff off the list is even better. Here is, for your reading pleasure, the latest list I've compiled for myself (an "x" means I've done it!):

x Enter Bicycling Mag contest
x Post rant about 69 year old crossing guard being hit by a car and the fact that the police aren't charging the driver with anything (on "Somerville Bikes" discussion list)
- Finish Somerville Bicycle Committee Guidelines
- Reprint "Bike City" zine and/or make new one for Boston zine festival
- Write a "slow is sexy" article for SCUL zine
x E-mail Commuter Biking course description to Boston Skillshare organizer
- Order/scavenge parts for making more recycled bike part jewelry
- Finish Bike Lane Dilemmas paper for Bicycle Power.net site
- Join the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals
- Upload peace march/bike pictures from 3/1/03
- Call the Somerville Journal's "Speak Out" to rant about police not prosecuting the driver who mauled the 69 year old crossing guard (When is the sun NOT in driver's eyes on Highland Ave?)
- Get Jim Hodgedon's new e-mail address (bike cop on bike committee)
- Send out bike committee's new subcommittee member list
x Update Friends of the Community Path's brochure
x Ask other Education subcommittee member for ideas for the year
x E-mail Bhupesh and get subcommittee list and 2003 member contact list
- Order MassBike Kids Club stickers
x Design and order Kids Club rubber stamp


Yes, well that's all well and good, but now I've got a new list to work with. Check out Adbuster's list of things to do to avert a war. I'd add on to that list: listen to Christopher Hedges talk about the addiction of war, and what gives him hope amidst all the atrocities committed on a daily basis.