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In my travel this weekend to the city of Bloomington, Indiana, I found myself driving in from the north on College Avenue. As the Avenue transitioned from two to three lanes, I noticed signs on traffic poles announcing the existence of a bicycle lane and bicycle icons painted on the rightmost of these three lanes.

Wow! Zoom! Great! Bike lanes in Bloomington, Indiana, right? I’m not so sure. During that and subsequent drives on College Ave. this weekend, I saw cars using that right-hand lane just as they used the other lanes, driving at the same speed, taking up the same space. Bicycles weren’t given the right of way in that lane. And it’s not just a de facto culture of driving thing: according to the city Bloomington, that’s the way it is. The Bloomington bike map makes sure to stipulate that “No assurance of safety of legal right-of-way is implied by the publication…”.

Perhaps my expectations have been set unreasonably high by my youthful visit to the Netherlands and by my six-year youngish stay in Tucson. In these places, separate dedicated bicycle lanes from which cars are forbidden are a common sight. In most American states, bicycles have the same right to a right-hand lane of traffic as any car. What does painting bicycles on a lane of traffic accomplish if cars are allowed to drive on it as usual, anyway?

There is a PR value to such designations: I am reminded of a narrow street in Durham, North Carolina on which cars regularly drive 50 miles an hour. The street ended with a vertical lip, making crashes by bicyclists more likely, and there was no dedicated space, not even a shoulder, for bikes to occupy. City officials nevertheless affixed a cheery metal “Bike-Friendly City!” sign to a pole on that street. Did the message make people feel better about using bikes around town, regardless of the difficulty? Does the Bloomington Bike Map look better having a College Ave. “bike path” to give the impression of improved downtown accessibility? Probably.

Call me a stickler, but if I were the Grand World Bike Map Drawing Pooh-Bah, I would stipulate that a “bike lane” is a visible lane just for bikes. Anything else and it’s just a regular old “lane.” If city planners want to have a pretty color-coded bike map with “bike lanes” on it for their city to attract visitors and new residents and “bike-friendly city” designations, they’d have to set aside money in their transportation budgets for actual bike lanes. You know, make an infrastructure commitment beyond the purchase of a gallon or two of paint.

If you find yourself in southern Ohio for reasons of business, family or wanderlust, I encourage you to take a trip to Chillicothe where a hidden treat sits in store. On 125 West Water Street sits a building with a plain corrugated metal front, an industrial-scale garage door with another plain door embedded in it. Nothing other than a rather small, low-contrast sign in dark red and black hints at what lies inside: the Dard Hunter Studio, a production shop first (and showroom second) specializing in paper and ceramics in the Arts and Crafts style that Dard Hunter practiced before his death in the 1960s. His grandchildren and friends and the grandchildren of his friends and the friends of his grandchildren carry on in classic and contemporary fashion with the same do-it-yourself ethic that Hunter espoused during his life. Hunter had considerable family wealth to help him do-it-himself, but the results are impressive nonetheless.

If you’re made of money, you can buy an expensive framed ceramic tile or an even more expensive print on handmade paper, but there are more modest items for sale as well. In my visit I didn’t purchase a thing, just marveling at the layers of color or distinct borders between color in the various productions ranging from completely abstract designs to the stylized representations of natural objects. The people in the studio that day take part in the ceramic and papermaking, and so they were enthusiastic and detailed in showing off old wooden printing presses and rolls of wire woven to create watermarks. Call ahead to 740-779-3300 to arrange a visit so you’ll be sure someone is in the shop.

It looks as though attendance will be through the roof for the Presidential Inauguration of 1-20-2009 itself and for the Inaugural Parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC that follows. Here are some practical tips for the Inauguration attendee:

1. You’re too late to get tickets to the Inauguration itself, at least up close. Tickets have already been distributed to members of Congress and other political VIPs to distribute, and demand already far exceeds supply. You can stand for free on the national mall to see and hear the inauguration on a jumbotron screen, then say to your children that you were there. If someone tells you they have a ticket to the inauguration for sale, they’re scalpers and it should be going for more than a thousand dollars. Otherwise, it’s a scam. Even if the price is high, it still might be a scam.

2. You’re too late to get a hotel room in DC or anywhere nearby. Give up on that. They’re all taken as far out as the last metro stop. So if you really want to be at the inauguration, stay in Pennsylvania or West Virginia or central Virginia and drive yourself to a DC Metro station in the wee hours of the morning. Don’t even think of driving in to DC itself.

3. Your uncle’s second wife could stage an “Inaugural Ball”. Most of the “Inaugural Balls” are chances for party organizers to rake in gobs of money from clueless visitors for lame drinks and a chance to possibly see a third-rank celebrity on stage who was famous 20 years ago and… that’s really it. The rich and famous have already bought up the tickets to the small handful of Balls where the Obamas will show up. Don’t be suckered into shelling out hundreds of dollars for a lame warehouse event.

4. Bring layers, heat packs, discreet cash, a teeny radio and beef jerky. Sure, it might be 50 degrees and sunny on Inauguration Day 2009. But it might also be 36 degrees and raining, as it was on Inauguration Day 2001. Wear layers, which you can always wrap around your waist if it gets warm. Make your top layer a poncho. In case it gets extra cold, bring the little heat packs that work when exposed to air. They weigh next to nothing but will keep you happily warm. Stuff cash in various odd places because you’ll need it especially if you can’t get out of the city. Everyone will be in line for the eateries that take credit. You’ll be able to eat at a cash-only stand if you get desperate (or just don’t want to give up your coveted place on the sidewalk). Bring beef jerky if you’re a carnivore: it’s light and filling. And get yourself one of those micro FM radios with earbuds. That way, you can listen in on Obama’s inauguration speech even if you can’t get close, and if something unexpected goes down you can know what’s up.

5. Don’t bring poles, sticks, or heavy gear. There will be a large security perimeter through which officers simply won’t allow anything that possible could be used as anything like a weapon. And after hour 4 and mile 4 of carrying that boom box, you’ll set it down and leave it on the curb anyway.

6. See a bathroom? Go to the bathroom. This thing is going to be like a chilly Woodstock. A chilly, urine-soaked Woodstock. Take advantage of all opportunities.

7. Keep yourself updated. Visit the DC Metro, Senate and Washington Post, DC city government Inauguration websites for updated information.

The James, a new luxury hotel in Chicago, proudly declares itself to be “the only game in town”. If that were true, given the number of people who visit Chicago every day, it would be unfortunate.

Right now, The James is offering a special offer to “Make My Reservation Carbon Neutral”. That sounds very environmentally friendly, but consider what the carbon neutral program actually does: It has you spend extra money, which it then takes on your behalf, and gives it to two “marketers” of renewable energy. The money is used to construct electrical generation plants that use renewable sources of energy, like the sun and the wind.

I’m all for solar and wind energy, but what I don’t see is how the construction of new solar power plants and windmills takes carbon dioxide out of the air. These new power plants add to the amount of electricity that’s available, but they don’t result in the closing of coal-fired power plants. Solar power plants and windmills do not consume carbon dioxide. They’re part of what should eventually replace fossil fuel power generation, but they don’t really offset the carbon dioxide emitted because of a hotel stay.

There are real things that can be done to reduce carbon dioxide emissions - but they involve actually ceasing certain activities. Not mowing your lawn is an example. Or, you choose to buy certain kinds of food that are grown locally and require little use of fossil fuels in their cultivation and transportation. Better yet, you could grow your own food. You could drive your car less. These actions actually reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that is emitted into the air. The carbon neutral program offered by The James does none of these sorts of things.

In fact, the carbon offset program offered by The James is paired with another program that actually encourages people staying at The James to drive their cars instead of using more efficient methods of transportation. “Drive to The James for your stay, and receive free parking and a $50 Primehouse gift card. Reserve Now.”

If you drive to the hotel, you not only get free parking, but you get 50 dollars worth of free food at the Primehouse hotel restaurant - a steakhouse that offers foods that are not at all local to Chicago: Salmon, scallops, lobster, mussels, shrimp, Himalayan salt, and crab cakes. If you take the train or other more efficient transportation to get to the hotel, you have to pay your own money for any food you eat.

I don’t want to cast the management of The James as environmental villains. The truth is that we all use too much energy, and need to do more to conserve. However, it would be more helpful for The James to take a more thoughtful approach to contributing to conservation efforts, and not just slap a silly “carbon neutral” gimmick on its web site.

Van Nuys rhymes with fries and disguise and otherwise, but it smells like a refrigerator that has been used for years to store cabbages. It’s the smell of something that once grew, but then sat and waited. It’s a smell that holds on.

Looking around Van Nuys, I can’t get a sense of what the land looks like. There doesn’t seem to be much land here, just paving to get to somewhere else, and a lot of used car lots to help people who want to get away, or to come through, or whatever it is that they do here.

Yet, I see things that are familiar all around me. There’s the Hampton Inn, and Denny’s just down the street, and the competing Chevron and Shell Oil gas stations, where I can fill up self serve so that I can get away again.

Sarah Palin says she’s just like you, that she understands the struggles you go through, and that’s why she should be elected Vice President of the United States. So, just like you, Sarah Palin has billed the government so that her children can travel and stay in luxury hotels.

Sarah Palin keeps saying that she’s a reformer who fights against corruption and wasteful big government spending. What she does is different than what she says, however. What she does as Governor of Alaska is demand that the State of Alaska pay for her children to travel, on trips to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and to stay at the Essex House hotel at Central Park in Manhattan.

Palin justifies this government spending on her travel expenses for her children by saying that her kids had to travel because they were working on official state business. How did 7 year-old Piper Palin and 17 year-old pregnant Bristol Palin conduct official state business?

If the McCain-Palin ticket were to win, and Sarah Palin were to succeed to the Presidency, would Piper Palin be writing her mommy’s foreign policy?

Turning into the core of September, most of us are coming to grips with a decreased mobility, so it may be relieving for us to watch Arctic Chronicles, the log of Jessica Robertson a “public affairs specialist” for the U.S. Geological Survey. She will be going on a trip on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy as it maps the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean moving freely through waters with a record low amount of ice cover. By the end of the mission on October 1, the ice will thicken with the turning of the year.

This one goes out to Sarah Palin, a great little lady who’s running for Vice President of the United States, and maybe President too, if John McCain kicks the bucket.

Sarah Palin hits the trail
with a hunting rifle and a husky wail.
She’s travelled the world and knows it all!
Her foreign policy standin’ tall.

Sarah Palin told everyone that she had lots of foreign policy experience, and had travelled to Kuwait, Germany and Ireland. It turns out though, that Sarah Palin’s visit to the airport wasn’t nothin’ but a one or two hour layover in the airport while her plane got refueled on the way to Kuwait.

Well, shucks! Ain’t we all told some little fib now and then? It ain’t like we need our leaders to be honest with us or nothin’! Just you pay no never mind, and don’t make the little lady cry, now, y’hear?

So Sarah Palin ain’t been ’round much,
who needs experience and such?!?
From metropolitan Wasilla,
she’ll someday visit Canada!

Sarah Palin world traveller extraordinaire…
Yeah, hoooeeeee!

Ballad of Sarah Palin video podcast

It’s summer, and the Ohio State Fair is on in Columbus, Ohio. Of course, there is the butter cow:

But this year there are also the butter presidents of Ohio:

Presidents Garfield and Harrison look a little bored, or perhaps irritated, by the proceedings.

Plane Stupid is plain genius. Last month, a member of the UK activist group glued himself to the Prime Minister inside 10 Downing Street with the message, “You only have two possible legacies before you leave office: as the first prime minister to take climate change seriously, or the last one not to.”

Today, members of the group took part in a surprise protest at Gatwick Airport. The target of the protest was “short haul” flights - brief airplane flights that consume huge amounts of energy, releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, in order to take passengers a short distance that could be easily covered by more efficient forms of transportation, such as train.

The message of Plane Stupid, that frequent air travel has become a grave threat to the natural environment and to human civilization alike, is even more relevant in the US than in the UK. The group’s tactics for successfully grabbing attention through dramatic action are something we Americans would do well to emulate.

“Pregnancy” was what caught my eye. Not a nonexistent overlap, I suppose. But pretty darned small.

Mother Davis opens up Microsoft Outlook as she writes,

If you’re traveling outside of the United States, even just to Canada or Mexico, you had better leave your computer laptops and cell phones at home. The Department of Homeland Security has announced that it has authorized the search and seizure of devices such as laptop computers and cell phones from anyone entering or leaving the USA.

There is no requirement that the owners of electronic equipment be suspected of any crime or any other form of wrongdoing. Homeland Security will take your computer at will, without explanation, just because it wants to, and you might never get it back.

It wasn’t too long ago that we could imagine computers as tools to transcend boundaries between nations. Now we can see that it’s the boundaries between nations that have the higher power.

Closing her Outlook,
Mother Davis

This morning, I was abducted from my usual round of reading by the discovery of an odd little article entitled, Why “The Greys” are here and what they want with us. The greys, we are to understand, are a kind of space alien that has visited planet Earth and taken people on board their flying saucers for unusual experiments that no one understands.

What do the greys want, and why are they here? I called them up on the telephone this morning to ask them, and here’s what they told me they want:

- Low, low prices
- A planet that isn’t so touristy
- No methane (stinky)
- Good beaches, with a warming climate
- A little bit of color (you’ll note that the grey in the photograph is actually turning a little beige)
- Zagat recommends Earth as a good place to eat
- They’re looking for a bartender who knows how to make a Long Island Ice Tea that isn’t too dry

The greys came to Earth several decades early so that they could get in line for the iPhone. The first 100 iPhones went on board their spaceships. Then, just a few months later, Apple went and cut the price in half. Watch out, Steve Jobs - ET is pissed, and he wants more than just a refund.