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Haven’t seen one of these news releases in a while, but I guess with global warming and all we may be nearing the end times. Anyway, The Virgin, or at least an image that a cafeteria worker discovered as she scrubbed a baking pan, has shown up in Texas. What is up with Texas?
Here is the AP report via the ever-reliable Christina Broadcasting Network. (The video does not seem to work. I wonder what that means?)
Every once in a while I am humbled by how much can be said in so few words. The Gettysburg Address – 272 words, The Declaration of Independence - 1325, The Magna Carta - 4,370. OK forget the Magna Carta. (That was for the English version, anyway. The Latin one is probably longer.)
Here is a photo of a protester in New York that says it all with six words and a picture.
At first the topic – child soldiers in Sierra Leone’s civil war – seemed eerily out of place in this beautiful, yet simple, Berkeley church with its vaulted ceiling and muted walls. A few moments after Ishmael began to speak about his experiences, though, it seemed like the perfect setting for such a conversation. We would all be trying to make sense of the incomprehensible, and where better than in a setting where the incomprehensible is commonplace?
Ishmael Beah, the author of his recent book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, seemed ill at ease for a moment as he sat down in a rather grand chair on the raised sanctuary to begin the interview with several hundred people sitting quietly in the pews below him. He smiled self-consciously and immediately connected with his audience. This was a young man who is quickly learning how to work a room – a good thing to know if you want to make a difference in the world.
He looks much younger than his twenty-six years with his slight build and boyish smile. Perhaps it was his diet as a boy. Maybe it was the "brown brown", a concoction of cocaine and gunpowder that he snorted as a boy soldier. Perhaps he just seems young for his age. All these thoughts and more ran through my mind as I watched him center himself, become more grounded, and begin reading a passage from his memoir.
The passage he read was a lovely vignette about being with his brother at his grandmother’s house and how the boys tussled a bit to gain control of a hammock, and how one brother tricked the other into getting his way. It was all so mundane, so touchingly ordinary.
I could not help but think about the fact that not long after that day with his family, Ishmael was carrying an AK-47 and killing rebels in villages across his country – many of whom were boy soldiers like himself getting high and watching Rambo films when they were not being Rambos themselves.
Ishmael spoke sparingly about his time in the army, coyly urging the audience to buy his book to learn more about that. At one point he spoke about a meeting he had a few hours before the reading. This really got my attention because he told of his time that afternoon with some boys in the Alameda County Juvenile Detention Center in San Leandro just south of Oakland. He described his meeting with “these children” in very loving terms. The publisher of his book had sent copies to the youth there, and they had read about Ishmael before he met them. Because of his experiences with violence he was/is able to see past what they have done, and could still see the childish innocence that is buried deep beneath the wounds that come with being a boy soldier – be it in Freetown or Oaktown. In a strangely compelling way, for perhaps the first time I could see that it is all the same.
During the interview that was being conducted by Ishmael’s mentor, Priscilla Hayner, Co-founder of The International Center for Transitional Justice, they spoke about the Truth and Reconciliation process that was occurring in Sierra Leone. Again, just as I did when I heard how the South Africans are doing it, as I listened to them describe how it works, I was in awe of the Africans’ capacity for forgiveness and for their resilience. If we ever did in the past, we in the United States today have no structures now in our culture to reclaim and redeem these young soldiers. We just see them as criminals, as gangbangers. Nothing more. We want them to disappear. We say, Lock them up and throw away the key. But we are not throwing away keys. We are throwing away our children. The Africans have figured that out, and they are reclaiming as many of them as they can.
As fate would have it, when I returned from the reading that evening, I came across a story about three boys who killed a homeless man in Milwaukee a few years ago. They had asked him to buy them beer, and while drinking the beer with him the boys began to beat him, kick him, and eventually kill him. In a taped interview the youngest of the boys (who was 15 at the time of the killing) spoke about it in ways that seemed so similar to what Ishmael spoke of. It all happened so fast... We smoked some marijuana... We hadn't slept all night... I didn’t think about what I was doing... I just joined in... It all happened so fast…
That boy is now serving a fifteen-year prison sentence. He is a few years older now, but still thinks and talks much like a fifteen year old. I’ll grow up here in prison... I’ve never driven a car... I’ve never had a job... He doesn’t say it in a self-pitying way. Just matter of factly. As if he is speaking about someone else at an incomprehensible time and an incomprehensible place.
Sort of like Ishmael.
Welcome to Sweet Alabama… Now Go Home
This from BBC’s Topgear, God bless ‘em.
So here is the question: Imagine you and some friends are driving a small caravan of cars through southern Alabama, and you decide to paint some messages n each other’s cars that might get someone killed. What would you write? What could you possibly say on the diver’s side door, or on the trunk, or on the hood that would do the job nicely?
See the answer in this YouTube clip.
Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time…
Remember back in the days of Earth Day 1 and 2? Hopeful times then. One of the many innovative solutions to the problem of our overflowing landfills was to use discarded tires as artificial reefs. The thought was that over time these tires would become encrusted with bits of this and that and become inviting habitats for all sorts of sea creatures. Well that was the idea.
Now it turns out that this idea has become another global ecological disaster.
This from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
"We've literally dumped millions of tires in our oceans,'' said Jack Sobel, a senior Ocean Conservancy scientist. "I believe that people who were behind the artificial tire reef promotions actually were well intentioned and thought they were doing the right thing. In hindsight, we now realize that we made a mistake.''No one can say with certainty why the idea doesn't work, but one problem is that, unlike large ships that have been sunk for reefs, tires are too light. They can be swept away with tides and currents from powerful storms, and marine life doesn't have a chance to attach. Some scientists also believe the rubber leeches toxins.
Another factor to consider within the larger ecological disaster known as the internal combustion engine with all its peripherals, and its fuel that we are all addicted to.
Last night was a lesson in how fragile routine systems can be.
Like any complex system that runs on a schedule, mass transit systems are designed with limited capabilities for self-organizing. Drivers are expected to drive their routes. The schedules are designed with some of the unpredictability of shifting traffic patterns and so forth in mind. When stressed to the edges of those tolerances, however, it is easy to see just how fragile these systems are. And weather can be a major stressor.
Public transportation systems like the commercial airline industry - with its tight schedules and quick turnaround times (especially for discount airlines like JetBlue – is case in point. And metropolitan transit systems are another.
So last night I was standing at one of my usual bus stops, and noticed that there was an unusually larger number of people waiting for the bus. A gentleman there said they had been waiting for almost 45 minutes (buses on this route usually arrive every 10 minutes or so). Obviously, there was some serious problem upstream. The weather was bitter cold, and all the slush from the afternoon traffic had now turned into jagged icy ruts that were difficult to negotiate. It was not a stetch to imagine that there may have been an accident or some such calamity on the southbound route.
Here’s the thing, though. At least six or seven northbound buses kept right on going to the end of the line. That meant that there was no way to adapt to a critical situation. No way for drivers to cut their routes short – maybe offload passengers to another northbound bus, and turn around to pick up the passengers stranded at the southbound stops.
So, I was faced with one of those remarkably difficult decision trees. Do I wait for a bus, or begin walking the mile or so home? Do I risk being in the middle of the block when a bus goes by making the trudge home seem longer? Do I stand in the cold with the other penguins, or do I wander off like a polar bear? I chose the polar bear route.
Turned out to be a wise choice. No bus passed me during the half-hour journey across the frozen tundra of Germantown. Yet, thanks to a brief shopping spree last month to REI, I was reasonably warm (except of the acupuncture needles that seemed to be sticking into my face.
On that great trek I saw at least 3 more buses head up the northern trail. While at each corner I encountered more penguins.
At some point in critical situations like this one where mothers with small children and elderly folks were left shivering in the cold, I believe it is important to empower those on the front lines to take the initiative and break out of their routines. Or at least create a communication system that is less fragile than the transport one, so that supervisors can direct drivers to change their routes and allow humans to do what they often do quite well – adapt.
And speaking of elderly folks…
Also during the trek I saw several pedestrians yielding their right of way to motorists, even though they were at a cross walk and had a green light. I even saw one especially egregious case where a man in an SUV actually made a right hand turn right in from to an elderly woman trying to negotiate her way across the icy street. She was forced to not only stop, but also step back so that this picture of entitlement could complete his turn. I tried to imagine that he was a pediatric neurosurgeon - black bag sitting on the seat next to him - on route to a hospital to save a sick child. Only instead I saw what looked like a spoiled middle-class white guy, and all I could imagine was an extra-large pepperoni pizza with extra-cheese on the seat getting colder by the minute. But that's another story.
To say the weather was bleak at the bus stop last night is a disservice to the word bleak. What is bleaker than bleak? Siberian? Whichever the apt word is, that is how it was standing on the corner of Germantown Avenue and Mt. Pleasant Street in Mount Airy waiting for the 23 Bus. Maybe it was the 19-degree temperature. Or it could have been the freezing rain. Or perhaps it was the wind. It might have been the 1-degree wind chill. I don’t know. What I do know now is the rather pleasant sound of power lines literally frozen stiff as they hummed like steel cables. It even sounded cold.
And then…
A bicyclist appeared across the street coming in my direction. As he passed, I smiled and said, “Balmy evening, isn’t it?” He stopped and smiled back and said, “This isn’t the coldest I've ever been.”
“Where was that?”
“Bismarck, North Dakota in the middle of winter”, he replied still smiling.
And so we began to chat.
He was dressed in a tight fitting orange down parka, black winter bicycle pants, several pairs of heavy socks and boots. His helmet was a bit of an oddity, though. It was black and white – looked more like a policeman’s motorcycle helmet than a bicyclist’s, with one minor alteration. On the top was a blinking light sitting atop a spindle-like device, so that the light arced back and forth. No way one of those aggressive Philadelphia drivers would miss seeing him!
Looking at his bike told me that his was a serious rider. He had an old steel framed Peugeot. I haven’t seen one of those in quite a while. (You can see one here, though.) He said he had been riding it for about twenty years.
He then pointed to his pack on the back of his bike, and said, “I’ve been keeping a log, and I have ridden 240,000 miles. Some years I rode 9,000 and sometimes 10,000 miles.”
“When did you start the log?” I asked.
“In February 1974.”
And then I looked closer at his face. “Can I ask you how old you are?”
“Seventy-four. My mother is ninety-five, but she is wearing out her warranty. I expect to live to be one hundred fifteen… no, one hundred eighteen.” He never stopped smiling.
We spoke some more about microbiology and macrobiotic diets and how there was someone even more important in France than Louis Pasteur who was a contemporary of his but whose name I never heard of who had a whole different take on biology and keeping food safe and how Pasteur on his deathbed said that he was wrong and that the other guy was right but now it is too late because we have embedded Pasteur’s model so deeply and all sorts of interesting facts half (or more) of which I had no clue about. (Breathe, breathe...)
Unfortunately, around that time I saw that my bus was slowly negotiating its way up the small hill to the corner, and it was time of us to go on our separate ways. As I walked the few steps it took to get to the waiting bus, I realized that the evening wasn’t so bleak anymore. Down right balmy, actually.
When the student is ready, the teacher will come, as the adage goes. The other day my teacher came disguised as a bus.
I was walking to the bus stop a few mornings ago on my way to pick up a car at the Philly CarShare pod not too far from my flat. When I was about a half a block away from the corner, I saw the bus about a block away. Great timing, I thought. I began to jog toward the bus stop, and as I heard the bus approaching I waved. There was a green light at the intersection and the bus kept right on going leaving me standing there a bit out of breath and really pissed off. I was absolutely furious at the bus for not stopping. Then it occurred to me how strange and how totally irrational it is to be angry at a bus.
Once I was able to get in touch with just how absurd my thinking was in that moment, my whole little story about what had just occurred began to unravel at breathtaking speed. I quickly realized that during that whole dramatic scene I had just painted there was no other person sharing the stage with me. What I had done was to waive to the bus. I had not taken a moment to turn, make eye contact with the bus driver, and make it clear to him or her that I wanted to actually take the bus. No doubt the driver interpreted my actions to mean the exact opposite of my intentions.
So, instead of riding on the bus for a few blocks, I was treated to a very pleasant twenty-minute walk to the car pod. I picked up my car in plenty of time to stop by my friends’, Richard and Marcia, house and have a cup of coffee with them. Richard showed me a short cut to where I was going in Northeast Philadelphia, so I ended up getting there a bit early.
The rest of the day went well. The training I did on Emotional Intelligence seemed well received by the employees at the Just Born PeanutChews plant in Northeast Philadelphia. (I even used this little bus story in the training to show how irrational we can become when our emotions highjack our thinking.)
Later that day, after I dropped off the car, I went back to Infusion, my favorite café in Mt Airy, to use their Wi-Fi. Heading home I waited for bus on the corner. Evidently, a bus was taken out of service because there were a number of people waiting at the bus stop.
Across the street there were three teenage boys hanging out and acting like three teenage boys with a basketball. I commented to an older gentleman nearby about their “youthful enthusiasm”. He laughed and then commented about how wild these kids are these days. A wonderful conversation ensued about the state of our culture today, and how so few people really get global warming these days. He then remarked about what it is going to take to get us freedom loving Americans to get out of our cars. He envisioned a day when driving will be rationed. This gentleman was obviously far from wealthy. In his late seventies, I would guess. He had no front teeth, and was wearing a winter coat that, while still seemed warm enough, had seen a number of winters. So much for stereotypes.
And there we were having this great conversation about the state of the world – the likes of which I rarely seem to have much these days. When the student is ready…
One rather surprising finding after Week 1 in Philadelphia was the spillover effect it had on my time in the Bay Area. I found that just paying attention to my “transit habits” altered them, at least a little.
All in all there were a number of unexpected similarities to the two areas in terms of transit. Some remarkable differences to be sure, but still not everything was as different as I previously thought.
I noticed that, while in the Bay Area, I began to organize my time differently so that I didn’t need to drive as much as usual. It took some planning, and clearly there were times when it was truly impossible to avoid driving, but not as much as I had thought in the past. One stunning contrast, though, was the difference in cost of public transit. During the second week I was there I needed to go from Berkeley to the city. Driving is always an option, but the cost of parking in the city is on par with New York in most places. So, I drove to the West Oakland BART station, parked my car there and took the train under the bay into downtown San Francisco.
But here’s the thing: parking there cost $6 a day – a steal by most standards to be sure. And then there is the cost of the trip to the city – about 3 bucks each way. So, that’s $12 a day just to avoid one of the world’s busiest bridges. Compare that to $18 or so a week for a transit pass in Philadelphia. By the second day…
And then there is the race thing. I spoke to one of my young Verger colleagues there, Franklin Hysten, about why there are no white folks on the buses in Oakland. Franklin deadpanned, Wow, I noticed that, too! During the conversation he was reminded of the scene in the movie, Crash, where one character says that the reason the bus windows are so big is so that the rich people can see all the poor people taking the bus. The only problem with that observation is that the train windows are fairly big as well. But still.
We also spoke about one big difference between SF and PHL transit-wise is that lots of white people take the bus in SF. We came to the obvious conclusion – white people take buses when other white people take buses. Very few middle-class while folks take the bus in Oakland, so very few middle class folks take the bus in Oakland. (This of course leads to the next questions: How much of this dynamic is a function of race, and how much is about class?)
Arriving back in Philadelphia last night I was aware of an amazing confluence of well-functioning systems. Yesterday morning I left the flat in Berkeley a bit after 10 am, walked through the Cal campus to the Downtown Berkeley BART station. I waited about 3 minutes for a train. Two stations later I transferred to a train headed to the city (it was waiting across the platform), and then at the southern end of the city I made a final transfer to a train to the airport (after a wait of less than ten minutes). I arrived at the airport in plenty of time, got through security and boarded the plane without any hassles. The plane had about forty passengers on board, so everyone had their own row.
We had a great tailwind, so we arrived in Philadelphia about forty-five minutes early (about 8:45pm). I walked to the train platform at the airport and got there a little before 9. The train to the city arrived right on time at 9:12pm, and got to 30th Street Station at 9:30. The local train arrived on the next platform on time at 9:40 and arrived at my station, Tulpehocken, at 9:57 on the dot – right on time. A three-minute walk later and I was opening my front door at 10pm.
It was all so effortless. I know that it is not like this all the time, but when it is, it is a delightful way to move my molecules around.
One other thing I noticed on the two trains from the airport - how different the ads are on the train as opposed to the buses. On the buses there are lots of ads about HIV testing and fair housing, and ads for immigration lawyers. On both trains, though, I saw this ad from The Philadelphia Foundation:
If Warren Buffetneeds some help
giving away his money,
maybe you do, too.
On the 23 Bus there was this ad from the decidedly not not-for-profit, First National Fund:
CASH BY PHONE$100 - $500
MAKE ONE CALL
You’ll get the cash you need
TODAY
If The Philadelphia Foundation ad ever appears on the #23 Bus line, then maybe we will be getting somewhere with Transit Publicus.
Last May I went way out on a limb and predicted that Al Gore would run for president in ’08. I’ll go out on the thinker end this time and say that it is even more likely. So, far my prognostications are holding up well. I didn’t see the Allen “macaca meltdown”, of course, but I suspected he would falter in some way. The Senate win was a surprise. There was no way to predict then just how much the corruption, and the Foleygate mess would impact the already faltering Republicans.
I am now thinking more and more that he will run and that he will ask Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania to run with him (instead of the governor of Kansas, who I thought might join the ticket back then.)
Gore will win an Academy Award in April, a Nobel Peace Prize in November and then the Democratic nomination. He will enter the primaries late in the game, but he will be well financed this time, and Obama and Clinton will have had at each other (and the media will have had at them) long enough that Democrats across the spectrum will be eager for him to take the nomination and win the election.
Gore is right on the war – and he can end it swiftly. He will have the wind at his back in Europe – he can engage in a regional conversation about the Middle East that Bush cannot do. He is of course right on global warming – he can create the necessary momentum to get business behind going green because they will actually get more greenbacks when they do. And he will be right with the media who are increasingly aware that Bush hoodwinked them in 2000, and that Gore may not be the two by four that they had created.
It’s his time.