Episteme

Ok loyal readers, I would like to present my cousin and good friend Jeff. He will be a guest writer for the next couple of weeks. He is an economics student and all-around inquisitive guy, and I know you will enjoy his musings on oil, ethanol and all the good reasons to ride your bike like Dawn (and not like a crackhead).

And to put in my own two cents ....
I would like to say that after almost twelve years of barely driving, except the 1.5 that I spent in California, I lost a bit of my driving mojo, meaning I find myself extremely non-skillfull when in charge of four wheels and a potentially lethal hunk of metal. That is not altogether a bad thing, given the price of gas, and the fact that I've found myself with an excellent set of reasons to use public transportation. I would like to say a word of praise here for the northeast, because even though it is as cold as he** here and we need a lot of fuel to heat our homes, there is pretty good public transportation in and around many of our cities. I am near Boston, and I've started to park my car at the T station nearby and take the subway into town. Another cool thing I can say about Boston is that since it is a port city, a lot of towns are accessible by boat, and I have been enjoying that option, offered by the MBTA, our local transit authority. I can think of no cooler way to commute to work than in a cozy heated shuttle boat and it might be enough to make me give up my dreams of San Francisco.... Forgive me, oh shining little Western City, center of beatnik-inspired coolness and Dawn-like imaginings, I'm sure you've got cool commuter boats too!

Posted by Kim at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some times it's hard to ride my bike around town because where I live is a medium size town where everybody drives cars (alone), lives in single-family detached homes, and wouldn't ever ever ever take the bus even if they were given a lifetime supply of Twinkies and a million dollars. Because of that, everyone drives their cars, even though a barrel of oil is trading at $112 a barrel (I saw that on the CNN news scroll at the gym around 0630 today), we have a small problem called global warming promising to end civilization as we know it in like 20 years, Americans are fat, and all the other bad stuff that comes with driving (cell phones - please why??), the only people who ride their bikes around towns are elementary school kids and crack heads. And me. Because I live down the street from a half-way house where men on parole are getting a second chance at something (which for the most part is OK because they mostly keep to themselves) and because everyone who isn't 8-years-old or a junky drives their car every where, I usually get cat calls or someone in a car who doesn't know how to drive with a bike practically runs me over.

Given, most of this is in my mind. A very scary place, but nonetheless it exists. And there's just no respect for cyclists, unless I lived closer to the coast and then I could join a bike club. But I don't. I try to ride my bike around town because gas is so fucking expensive and I hate my car. My Canadian friend observed the same thing in her town - drivers rather hostile to any cyclist because they are used to junkies weaving around the road on bikes, spaced out or angry at the world (whichever), and they just think, If run this crack head over the world will be a better place. She likes to ride her bike, too, and now that she doesn't live in suburban hell, it's become a better experience. I love cities. I don't like small towns. I've decided that because people don't really care if a single woman walks down the street after dark or rides her bike to the gym. I miss that even after 2.5 years not in a city. The Netherlands is cool too because everyone bikes there and I did once after imbibing and it was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had.

Posted by Dawn at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In Mexico and much of Latin America, the US is called "El Otro Lado," or "The Other Side." To me that name always sounded mysterious and exciting, somewhere between paradise and a terrifying abyss. But now I am here - I came back home from Mexico almost two months ago and I have been successfully re-integrated. Yes, except for the fact that I stink at driving now and keep getting nearly escaping disaster. I've done everything from leave the keys in the locked car to leaving the lights on, to... well, never mind, this is getting embarrassing and potentially incriminating. My point is that I'm back, and I've been observing everything with fresh eyes, although I'm beginning to feel settled in again. In a way don't want the freshness to go away and I wish I could keep it and let the overwhelmed-ness fade, but they kind of go hand in hand.

Being back for more than a week or two is different. You feel a part of things again. And the main thing for me has been being here in an election year. It's exhilarating to be here at a time of such change - when it looks like my country might go back to being something I could be proud of when I am abroad. I lived in France for a year 13 years ago, and there was of course anti-American sentiment - there was talk of the GATT and a "pays sans paysans" (country without countrymen/farmers). I got a lot of questions about Michael Jackson - did I think he was guilty? OJ ran off with the white SUV and we saw that on TV. The WTC got bombed. People didn't like us, but I was not embarrassed to say where I was from. Things have changed a lot.

I noticed a difference after 9/11. I mean of course, we all did - but there was this mix of sympathy and a sort of mean smugness. I went to Chile to learn Spanish and when the subject came up this cameraman said to me "Lo merecian." "They deserved it." I was living in New York at the time and I literally almost fainted. Anyway I had to sit down and I wanted to cry. I didn't talk much that night and then I left the dinner with the girl I was staying with. Today I'm much less naive. I see my country through a wider lens, and it's not a pretty picture.

That's why it is so important for me to be here now. I was watching TV shows from Mexico about the race, but it's exciting to see it, to be here, at a time when the country is actually hopeful. Yes, we are in the middle of a real estate meltdown and on the brink of an impending economic crisis, but I feel like we may get a president next time around who is willing to confront the country's economic and foreign policy problems with a fresh approach and a dash of humility. Hope it works.

So that's where I'll leave this for today - feeling hopeful while trying to be realistic. Watching political wrangling and thinking there might be a visionary somewhere within each of them.

Posted by Kim at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)