Share the road?

You’re driving along. You occupy an unyielding metal vehicle weighing a ton, more or less. You overtake a bicycle rider. You have a stripe of paint on the road to your left. You have a human being riding a bicycle on your right.

What kind of mind can’t decide which of these should be accorded the greater degree of inviolability?  Whatever type it is, we seem to have lots of them among us.  “I can’t cross that paint stripe!  It’s a double yellow!  I’ll just grit my teeth and take a chance with that human life over there!”

You’d think people could figure this out a little better, yet time after time this odd pattern evidences itself. Not only do we get obscure glimpses into the minds of single individuals this way, we also see how humanity tend to act when in “herd mode.”  On the positive side, when one person in a line of traffic swings wide to give the bicyclist some room, the rest tend to follow along. This vice works versa, however, since the opposite pattern is just as likely to appear. One person deciding to “play chicken” with the bicycle rider will lead a string of drivers to engage in similar behavior. Apparently, we are only about as good as the people around us. Continue reading

Quite a Trip

I just got back from Charleston, SC.  It was a great long-weekend trip.  I went down to see my first son who will be opening a deli tomorrow.   The project looks like a winner, and I am so happy for my son. It is kind of a momentous time for him. Like his Dad, he has “explored his options” for quite a few years before actually kicking in and making some choices.   I’m completely behind him on this project on so many levels.

My little family and I had a great time on the trip.  Despite the 60-degree water, my younger son had a fine time swimming in the surf.   I don’t know how or why he does it, but he does, and he loves it.   I love watching him, too, so alive in that mother water that birthed us all–all life forms on earth, as far as we know, anyway.
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Trip to White Pines (with pics!)

Sometimes things just work out right. The other day I took my son to White Pines Nature Preserve south of Pittsboro, NC. This is one of the properties owned and preserved by the Triangle Land Conservancy, and according to their Web site, the White Pines Preserve is “located at the confluence of the Deep and Rocky rivers.” The preserve is unique in that it supports several stands of white pines and other plants that normally are found in the cooler mountain region of North Carolina.  Apparently, because of the rivers and a north-facing hillside, the area supports a cool microclimate, and because it is a little out of the way, people have left the area pretty much undisturbed.  The trails are well worn and easy to follow, so it seemed like a good day’s hike for the two of us.[googleMap name=”White Pines Nature Preserve” description=”A land holding of the Triangle Land Conservancy” width=”500″ height=”400″ directions_to=”false”]+35° 36′ 51.94″, -79° 9′ 28.48″[/googleMap]

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You say it’s your birthday…

Happy Birthday TO ya!Well, it’s my birthday, too, yeah.

Yep, if I haven’t made it to this august and sublime threshold yet, I am now well and truly, “old enough to know better.”  My Mom started telling me that when I was still pretty young.  I didn’t believe her then, and I’m not altogether inclined to believe this particular sentiment even now.

Anyway, here are the usual URLs I consult at such times:

NYTimes – On this Day
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20090326.html

BBC – On this Day
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/26/

Wikipedia – March 26
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_26

I’m Sorry: 21st Century Style

The translation here, 21st century style, is, “I know I did something to inconvenience you, but I don’t really want to have an unpleasant exchange with you, and I certainly don’t want to change my behavior in any way, either, so I am saying this meaningless thing I learned in elementary school so you’ll go away and not say anything unpleasant to me to try to get me to actually take responsibility for my actions.”

Do I sound grumpy? Maybe I am.

But the translation is almost Hemingway-esque, in a way, isn’t it? I mean in terms of sentence structure.  Content and meaning be damned. Hemingway nor his characters would have said anything so insincere.  Imagine one of Papa’s characters making a false apology.  I mean, really.  They were more likely to leave a righteous apology unsaid than to make one insincerely.  But the compound sentences, Man! Look at the sentence structure!

But back to the issue, I am “apologized” to almost daily in this way.  I have occasion to run and ride my bike on a series of paved trails just miles from my house.  The trails are marked with a center stripe designed, I suppose, to keep everybody in line.  Still, I am constantly coming up behind pairs and groups of pedestrians and cyclists who have arranged themselves across the entire width of the trail, blocking it rather quite completely with their wide, wide, butts, their canine companions, their double-wide strollers, their colorful magnesium bicycles and associated festive costumery.  There is a plenitude of what-all out there, believe me. Continue reading

Once more into the breach!

Speaking of that whole keep-up-with-the-traffic thing, one situation really screams out for it.  Think of the last time you found yourself at the end of a long line of cars at a stop light.  Didn’t you wish everybody would just go when the light turned green–I mean, hurry, even?  Typically, the drivers at the front know they have a pretty good chance of getting through the light, so they don’t have any urgency about it.  But how about the guys at the back?  Wouldn’t it be karmicly appropriate for the ones at the front to think of the poor schlubs at the back?  Well, of course it would.

That’s sort of banal, I admit, but it gets more interesting.  This simple, everyday situation actually involves all sorts of thoughts, beliefs, fears and associated mental/emotional human what-all.  Take the simple calculation that every car-length that develops as the cars go through the light equals one more schlub who won’t be making it through.  You’d think that would be simple math for most people, and it is in many major cities where the horns start honking three seconds before the light turns green, but it is not the case generally across the country.  What happens more generally is that the first car goes, develops a few car-lengths of lead, and then the second car goes, and the pattern continues in its petty pace on down the line.  We end up getting about one-half to one-third of the cars through as we would have with a little more adroit behavior–all this as people dimly try to recall some rule or other about following distance they learned in high school.  What was it?  Something about car lengths and miles per hour?  Needless to say, the anal specificity of “one car-length for every ten miles per hour” has a way of leaving the normal person cold–or should I say, confused.  Too much math, right?  Let me break it down for you, though:  If you’re hardly moving, you don’t need much following distance.

In the extreme, this slow-mo approach to driving through lights leads to another unfortunate occurrence–the dreaded sensor-in-the-street gotcha.  In this scenario, even fewer people get through the light than might have otherwise, and this is because people don’t consider the fact that lights are set to turn red when it appears no more traffic needs to get through the light.  Sensors in the streets oversee the process, and excessive gaps in the flow of traffic set them off. Continue reading

Pick it up there, how about it?

keep right!There is something that approximately one in five of you could do for the rest of us, something that seems quite easy, and why wouldn’t you want to do something easy that helped many other people?  It really would  entail no downside for you at all.  It’s simply a matter of keeping up with traffic, if you could please.  Or getting out of the way.  Thanks so much.

See, I began commuting on four-lane, non-Interstate highways recently.  These roads have traffic signals rather frequently along the way, and I find myself stopped behind lines of cars several times in my 20-mile trip to work.  The really surprising thing I have noticed is how many people continue to sit still when the light turns green.  Then, once they finally get going, they allow the cars in front of them to pull even farther away while they maintain a much slower speed, and yes, as you might have guessed, they usually occupy the left lane where they do not belong.

All these people would have to do is depress their gas pedals a fraction more, and they would be right there, a reasonable distance behind the car in front of them; instead, the car in front of them disappears in the distance while they cruise along right beside the car next to them in the right lane.  Meanwhile many cars are piling up behind them, and many of the drivers inside them are becoming quite annoyed. Continue reading

National Toilet Day? Not nearly grandiose enough!

[Edit:  Dang, I missed the 19th by eleven minutes!  Oh, well.]

Today is a memorable day in human history, we’re told. The World Toilet Organization has declared it National Toilet Day.  The WTO (not that one, this one) seems to want to pull a straight face as they do so, though.  They would remind us, rather gravely, of the filth in which we would live were it not for the “porcelain convenience” to which most of us in the western world have become accustomed.  Talk about serious; organizers delivered speeches Wednesday on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol.  The U.S. is even using a shuttle mission to deliver a new toilet to the international space station. The toilet is really making headlines (did I say that?).

The straight face might betray itself with a few wry creases as the organizers state that the WTO “has been striving to elevate the status of toilets to make  them status symbols and objects of desire.”

Or maybe they are not grinning behind this facade; maybe they are sincere.  Maybe these fellas just ain’t been around that much.  But object of desire?  I mean, I have seen some smooth curves on a nicely turned out commode in my time, but I never really had any desire for them, not the way I might harbor lust for, say, my girl Scarlett Johansson [2][3]. Continue reading

The Founders – Not Godly, But Wise

Tonight’s A Prairie Home Companion impressed me as a pure and joyful celebration of the election of Barack Obama–perhaps the best expression of that joy that I have heard thus far.  In the opening minutes, Jearlyn Steele and Garrison Keilor teamed up for a rousing rendition of “America the Beautiful,” and as they sang, I found myself thinking back, impressed at the genius of our Founding Fathers.  Against some pretty steep odds, and after an uncomfortably long period of foundering, the ship of state has righted itself, but not through any random miracle or massive act of violence; it has righted itself through the foresight and devotion to reason shown by that intrepid group of 18th century philosopher-poets in their attempt to create a utopia and bequeath it to the generations yet to come.

If you need something to cheer you up, you really should hear the show, and it might be available by the time you read this.  Check HEREContinue reading

Where Is Your God Now, Libbie?

Having plumbed a new low in North Carolina politics–and, let’s face it, a low in NC, the home of Jesse Helms, is by default, a national low–Elizabeth Dole has managed to lose her senate seat, perhaps primarily by accusing her opponent, Kay Hagan, of being (gasp) an atheist.

Well, in point of fact, she lost by merely occupying her senate seat instead of actually doing anything productive for the state and nation, and by being more closely associated with her husband’s home state of Kansas than with her native state.  But still, the political ad, which New York Magazine, in their supplement entitled “Our Super-duper, Ultrasimple Election-Watching Guide,” called “the single worst ad by any candidate in 2008″ did not help her desperate cause.

This development is really kind of encouraging to one who has lived in the state for almost 40 years–not that North Carolina political ads continue to be so debased as to leave only disgust in the minds and hearts of thinking people everywhere, but that this last foray into the muck has not succeeded in bringing victory.  This stuff usually works great here!  What happened? Continue reading