Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

- Will Durant

This quote at first sounds trite but then takes root in my mind, because I enjoy those moments in my life when I can tell someone I didn't know that!

REVIEW: Pedaling Revolution

Last June, I reviewed the New York Times book review of Pedaling Revolution, by Jeff Mapes.

The reviewer, David Byrne, posited that bicycling's macho extreme sport image impairs its ability to gain popularity as a legitimate form of transportation.

And now for my book review: Pedaling Revolution is the hardest book I have ever tried to review. It is a fine book, an important book that addresses a subject I care deeply about, and because of that I cannot describe it without reflecting upon my own opinions, experiences and paradoxes.

Like a dead, stinking fish my book review has in its various forms of lengthy draft occupied my computer's hard drive for months. I repeatedly tried to organize and unify my thoughts to no avail, so I have now filleted from from the dead fish a concise review of the book and a more expansive series of riffs on the books's core themes: public perceptions, safety, advocacy and the Euro view.

In Pedaling Revolution, Mapes describes how people and their bicycles are part of a global movement, changing cities and whole countries around the world in places like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland (OR,) Amsterdam, Germany and Denmark. Each of these locations has a unique bicycle history that he explores with the help of local experts, advocates, and innovators.

Mapes excels at explaining the role of leadership, politics and social norms in shaping how each location accommodates bicycle usage. I like how he cites the exemplary advocacy of seventy-two year old Representative Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and his tireless work to garner funding for bicycle accommodations in Federal transportation legislation. Oberstar has a great tag line:

Are you ready to convert from the hydrocarbon economy to the carbohydrate economy?

Mapes omitted any mention of bicycling's impact in East Asia, especially China. Given the sheer scale at which the Chinese ride bicycles, the political dynamics, cultural attitudes and current trends there would provide interesting and insightful reading. Perhaps that would merit an entire book in itself?

Any discussion of the bicycle as a form of transportation naturally must address how bicycle policy comes in conflict with the automobile. Mapes adds a degree of objectivity to this book by frequently acknowledging that automobiles are not implicitly bad, but their near-exclusive use in most American transportation settings is.

Many of the people that Mapes features in the book stoke reader interest when addressing controversial subjects such as John Forrester's vehicular cycling movement and the legitimacy of Critical Mass rides. Nevertheless, Mapes sometimes goes too long on explaining government transportation policy-setting.

Much of the book prompts a central question: why can't more Americans use transportation modes other than the automobile, especially for trips of 2 miles or less? The potential benefits to our health, environment, pocketbooks and communities are mindboggling.

While Mapes' bicycle stories from places around the world may hint at it, he does not state a fundamental problem with bicycling in the United States: that bicycling remains outside of the societal and political mainstream, that the average American views bicyclists as either sports enthusiasts or eco-freaks. This perception excludes what most Europeans (and Chinese) know as truth: that the bicycle can simply be another way of getting there.

This book should equally satisfy the bicycle advocate and the enthusiast. I hope it also wins over some converts. Soon, I will post more about the book's core themes: public perceptions, safety, advocacy and the Euro view.

Thanks for reading!

Farewell, Catholic Boy

Jim Carroll passed away this week. His art touched me as it did to many, and I will always remember how his first record, Catholic Boy inspired me to live for the day.

He was an athlete, junkie, Pulitzer Prize-winner and rock star. Many called him a punk poet, but that label somehow proves too narrow. As his once-girlfriend Patti Smith did and still does, Jim Carroll used punk to animate his avant-poetry and expose both forms to new audiences.
Carroll left us with much more artistic treasure, but that one record means a lot to me. When I heard "People Who Died", "Nothing is True", or the title track, I felt connected with a master storyteller who lived the dark, rebellious, ecstatic post-disco New York culture of the late-70's and early 80's.

I was born in a pool, they made my mother stand
And I spat on that surgeon and his trembling hand
When I felt the light I was worse than bored
I stole the doctor's scalpel and I slit the cord

I was a Catholic Boy. Redeemed in pain, not through joy...

They Smelt of Krispy Kreme

I was awakened this morning at 3:25 by a strange noise. After rising out of bed and investigating I found evidence that someone had been in my back yard, so I dialed 911. An Atlanta police officer soon arrived, and I explained what I saw and heard.
He said he'd take a look in the back yard. That's when I noticed him walking with a pronounced limp.

Uh-oh, House is on the case!
Parked at the curb, he fumbled around his front seat for almost five minutes, when a second patrol car pulled alongside. The first cop says to the other "I can't find my flashlight."
The second cop loans him a spare light, and both finally join me for a looksee out back. The second cop looks like Queen Latifah, and I doubt that either could break the twenty second barrier in a 100-meter sprint.
The second patrol car is still in the street, blocking other vehicles that might try to venture past.
We didn't find anything unusual out back, but I suppose the prowler used those moments to nab the doughnuts from the front seat of Officer Latifah's car.

Miners and Farmers

I recently completed a solar energy “boot camp” in California. It covered topics ranging from the very technical to the philosophical. Some of the most interesting moments came during these philosophical moments, such as the time when the instructor likened us practitioners of solar technology as harvesters of the sun's energy.

Granted, we are not the end-all, be-all “green” solution to our energy needs, but we can satisfy a fair portion of human energy demand through a relatively benign way of tapping a small portion of the Sun's daily energy delivery.

Contrast this with the way that we currently obtain most of our energy, by digging it out of the ground and wreaking all the environmental damage that comes by way of mountaintop removals, oil spills, mercury pollution, CO2 emissions, toxic mine tailings and fly ash, and nuclear reactor wastes.

Oh, to have more energy farmers and fewer miners!

Let Them Eat Advil

Oh, Man, when my beloved Kountrymen have a collective freakout like the teabaggers had in D.C. last weekend, leave it to a group of culture-jammers masquerading as health insurance company executives and Washington lobbyists to at least make it entertaining.

The Billionaires for Wealthcare infiltrated the teabaggers' march wearing black tuxedos, cummerbunds and monocles, thanking the dazed crowds for doing their dirty work for them.

They waived smartly-produced placards bearing slogans like, You deserve the healthcare you can afford, End socialism: privatize Medicare now, and If we ain't broke, don't fix it.

They smoked cigars, sipped champagne and sang patriotic tunes with their own lyrics, such as (to the tune of Battle Hymn Of The Republic)

We bought a bunch of senators and congresspeople too.

They serve our corporate interests and we tell them what to do.

This gravy train will stop the day a healthcare bill gets through.

Let's save the status quo!

Bravo!

CBS: TV Terrorists

The other night, I joined my son as he was watching TV in our den. We watched a drama called Criminal Minds. At first, it seemed to predictably follow the CSI-Law&Order formula, with a crew of buff twentysomething detectives directed by a token grayhair, assisted by the usual array of slick computer databases which always manage to find the right surveillance photo and then zoom in for a clear read of the the crook's license plate.

Criminal Minds managed to distinguish itself by driving the whole shebang off the cliff of decency.

This particular episode showed the bad guy abducting, torturing and dismembering his victims, and then feeding them to a sty full of pigs.

We turned it off, but not before the disgusting images took root in my mind and haunted me for the next day. How, I wonder, do the jerks at CBS explain their exploitive drivel to their family and friends?