Tab Set: A Round-up of Current Miscellany

The title of this post refers to a habit of mine: Click on lots of links from Twitter, email newsletters, Google Reader, and Facebook, opening them all with every intention of reading them later, and eventually lose them because I decide I can't stand the number of tabs open in my browser and I don't have time to do the reading right at that moment. Multiply this by the fact that I have a work computer, a laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone, and that's a lot of tabs.

I'm choosing to do this sharing in a medium other than Twitter, where to tweet is to cast a twig into the floodwaters, or Facebook, where the rate at which I read things I want to share is a bit overwhelming for my friends. (I realized this after having Twitter tied to Facebook for a brief while--something I now consider a social media faux pas--and having a friend dub me "Queen of the Status Updates.")

This choice to create a post is thanks in part to the first entry on the list (a link I did manage to follow and finish reading because he writes really short posts):

What are you leaving behind? By Seth Godin: A blog post that asks why we don't collect our various musings and sources of inspiration in a more permanent form than social media postings.

Neil Gaiman commencement address on Brain Pickings, one of my very favorite websites for wonderful writing and unusual discoveries. While I click regularly on links from the @BrainPickings Twitter account, this particular post was recommended to me by Kent Peterson, who writes the charming Kent's Bike Blog (which isn't in the tab set because when I go into Google Reader I read the posts).

Where are the Women Bike Commuters? on Sightline, another site I read regularly via Twitter and email links. As someone who writes a lot about biking, aiming particularly at women, I'm sorry that the data from Spokane in this piece on riding in Northwest cities represent too small a sample to draw any conclusions, although I know empirically that I see more people--and more women--riding than I saw when we started Bike to Work Week celebrations five years ago. This tab is still open because I'm not done reading the comments and I know I'll want to add to them.

Why Bicyclists are Better Customers for Local Business than Drivers: It's on DC Streetsblog, which I follow on Twitter, but I found it by way of someone's tweet about a Planetizen bit that linked to this (another demonstration that the good stuff gets passed around and eventually I'll see it so it's okay if I close a tab after a while). I'm saving this and similar resources as inspiration for a future post on Bike Style Spokane and my occasional (okay, frequent) discussions with businesspeople about why biking is good for their bottom line.

What does your bicycle mean to you? A question on Quora I've been meaning to answer.

Nine-year-old's lunch blog shames school into making changes on Grist: I cheated on this one--I had actually read it, commented, and closed the tab, but just had to share it here. I serve on the board of the Empire Health Foundation, where we are working on childhood health by, among other things, supporting schools in making the switch to scratch cooking. I got to see the results a few weeks ago at the Cheney School District and in July will get to meet Cook for America founder Kate Ademick at a Culinary Bootcamp for school nutrition folks.

Statistical Abstract for My Home of Spokane, Washington, by Jess Walter. OK, see, I'm cheating again a little bit because I followed this link from inside Facebook and was so sucked in by Jess's wonderful writing that I devoured the whole thing. But by putting it on this list I make a record to remind myself to read it again, and I get to share it with others. I also signed up to follow Jess on Byliner, where this was posted and which looks like a fantastic resource for finding new authors and following favorites. This same piece was later highlighted on The Spovangelist, another on my regular reading list.

Lowest Difficult Setting Follow-up--Whatever: I read the original piece (nice gaming metaphor explaining straight white male privilege without using the word privilege, except I just did here), loved it, and shared it on Facebook. Now I want to read the follow-up so it's waiting for me.

pbump.net: Site of Philip Bump, who's going to work for Grist and who was part of a Twitter exchange I was in that somehow involved sprinkles and whipped cream. Twitter is so random and his site appears to be the same so it would be dangerous to start reading it and following links. Squirrel!

How to Fix Shockwave Flash Crashes in Google Chrome: Yeah, really tired of this problem. Love Chrome--hate the washed-out white screen and twirly circle and "Kill this page or wait?" messages.

From the sublime to the ridiculous or thereabouts, part of my current tab set. What are you reading? Post a link so I can pop it open and have it sit there staring at me, waiting to be read.

No Rack?! Now What?

Inspired by a discussion on the LinkedIn Bike Commuters Group

No, not that kind of rack so get your mind back on the bike. The question is, What do you do when your destination lacks a bike rack? (aka bike parking)

#1—Vote with your wallet! Take your dollars to places with bike parking: My closest grocery store has a rack so I like going there. When I set a meeting at a coffee shop I choose one with a bike rack whenever possible (and it’s usually possible). 

There are racks next to Taste, Madeleine’s, the Rocket Bakery on Main, and Coffee Social for starters. Other spots like Rocket Bakery at 1st and Cedar or Rockwood Bakery on 18th have railings you can hitch to.

I'm especially fortunate that my workplace has both outdoor racks and indoor hanging racks in secure locked spaces. Employers who want to attract healthy, active employees need to think about things like end-of-trip facilities (secure bike storage, showers, space to change clothes). Building owners/managers might want to look at these issues too, to make their facilities more attractive in a tough economy for commercial real estate.

Improvise: Street signs, hand rails, fences, benches and other fixed items enable you to use your lock. Parking meters are a last resort since you could just lift the bike, lock and all off the meter so it’s a defense in name only.

Impose: I have taken my bike into a couple of grocery stores and asked someone at the closest courtesy desk or checkstand if I can stash it against the wall near them and if they'll keep an eye on it, explaining that I have to do this since they don't have a rack. No one has ever turned me down.

I occasionally have to go to a meeting at a facility that lacks both racks and anything to lock to. One of our newer local event facilities presents me with this. I take the bike in, explain that there's no parking for me and ask if there's somewhere I can put it.

So far every time I’ve asked, staff have let me put it in a side room, a hallway, near the coat rack or somewhere that doesn’t inconvenience others but gives me more peace of mind that my transportation will be there a couple of hours later when I need it.

The key for me is two sides of the same coin:

• “Entitlement"--I am a customer and they need to make it possible for me to deal with my transportation.
• Lack of "entitlement"--I ask politely if they can help me solve this problem and they always do. I think I'd get different (worse) treatment if I got self-righteous or huffy about it.

I also bear in mind that I am almost never dealing with anyone who made a decision not to put in a bike rack, and they probably can't make one appear later either.

It's like dealing with customer service on the phone: they didn't design the problem so they don't really own either problem or solution. They're just there to make you feel better so you'll keep bringing them your business.

And you’re there to remind them that if they want to continue getting your business and that of other people on bikes, they might want to suggest to management that a bike rack should be installed.

Green Is the Color of Money: Growing a Sustainable Local Business Approach

Today I attended the monthly green business networking lunch organized by Sustainable Local Investment Partners of Spokane. The incredibly dynamic and inspiring speaker was Michelle Long, executive director of Sustainable Connections in Bellingham and also of BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies), a national "network of networks" for sustainable businesses.

She showed a quote from Wendell Berry; I found a longer version of it at the Unstuffed blog. It's from The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (here's an Amazon link but what you SHOULD do is go buy it at Auntie's if you're in Spokane or at your own local independent bookstore to support a truly local business).

"One of the primary results--and one of the primary needs--of industrialism is the separation of people and places and products from their histories. To the extent that we participate in the industrial economy, we do not know the histories of our families or of our habitats or of our meals. This is an economy, and in fact a culture, of the one-night stand....

"In this condition, we have many commodities, but little satisfaction, little sense of the sufficiency of anything. The scarcity of satisfaction makes of our many commodities, in fact, and infinite series of commodities, the new commodities invariably promising greater satisfaction than the older ones. And so we can say that the industrial economy's most-marketed commodity is satisfaction, and this commodity, which is repeatedly promised, bought and paid for is never delivered. On the other hand, people who have much satisfaction do not need many commodities.

"The persistent want of satisfaction is directly and complexly related to the dissociation of ourselves and all our goods from our and their histories. If things do not last, are not made to last, they can have no histories, and we who use these things can have no memories. We buy new stuff on the promise of satisfaction because we have forgot the promised satisfaction for which we bought our old stuff...

"The problem of our dissatisfaction with all the things that we use is not correctable within the terms of the economy that produces those things. At present, it is virtually impossible for us to know the economic history or the ecological cost of the products we buy; the origins of the products are typically too distant and too scattered and the processes of trade, manufacture, transportation, and marketing too complicated. There are, moreover, too many good reasons for the industrial suppliers of these products not to want their histories to be known...

"If the industrial economy is not correctable within its own terms, then obviously what is required for correction is a countervailing economic idea..."

What was so exciting about Michelle's presentation: They have demonstrated in Bellingham that encouraging businesses to connect with other local businesses genuinely grows the local economy. 

After having a much higher unemployment rate than the rest of the state, they have had a lower unemployment rate over the past five years. They were recently certified by the EPA as being #1 in the nation--in the nation--for green power. They're working with local government to change permitting processes so a green building isn't a problem that goes to the bottom of the stack to be processed.

National numbers are quite clear: There's more job creation in small businesses than in the giants. In Bellingham they appear to be learning to think first about whether there is a local source for something they're used to importing, whether it's food or anything else.

This idea isn't the least bit anti-business--it's pro-good-business-we-can-live-with-over-the-long-haul.

Here's another take on our economy (and how the financial system is not the same thing as the economy), from someone far more knowledgeable on finance than I--Leslie White, a Wall Street veteran:

"Let's get to the task of facilitating the efficient exchange of goods and services, which, in the process, employs people in productive capacities so they can then afford to buy what they need. It sounds simple, and it is simple.... Every one of us can take a leadership role in some aspect of our local economies. We can buy local food, shop at locally owned stores, enjoy neighborhoods and communities, and engage in financial transactions at the local level."

Nearly 80 people at the lunch thought Spokane is ready for this kind of approach (with a few who aren't sure we'll tackle it). I hope we do.