Sporadically addressing good books, vegetarian/vegan food and cooking, equity and justice, public policy and a touch of politics, family, work, movies, words, life, coffee, chocolate, and social media in no particular order. More bikey blogging (also sporadic) at BikeStyleLife.com
I started my reruns in August 2023, taking trips down memory lane to reread old posts and find the ones that hold up when I read them years after first writing them. This gives me some nostalgia bumps, like reflecting back on a great bike touring trip I took with my sweetie in 2018 and reading posts I wrote after moving to Seattle in 2012.
Going back to my older posts also reminds me how much I was thinking, reading, and writing about transportation well before working professionally in that realm. Starting to bike commute, creating Spokane Bikes, and participating in local transportation work groups really laid a foundation for the career path I'm now on.
June keeps rolling from National Bike Month in May to provide plenty of inspiration for riding, if not always writing. The 2018 bike tour links below pick up where the ones in May's reruns left off.
I've been thinking a lot about visual metaphors. A lot. When we use a term related to seeing we sometimes mean actual sight, the perception of something that comes in through the visual cortex. But more often we use it to mean so many other words: perceive, recognize, acknowledge, comprehend.
Ever since reading a piece about how use of visual metaphors excludes people who are blind, I've sought to avoid using visual metaphors as a matter of equity and accessibility. I'm trying not to use terminology that isn't equally available to all. An example that comes up again and again in all kinds of documents: I change "See Appendix A" to "Refer to Appendix A." Whether you're reading print or Braille or listening to a screen reader, you can refer to an appendix.
English in and of itself is not equally available to all. So as I choose words, do I sort my way through all the layers that they bring and all that they stand for? When I do that, what will change in my writing and speech? I research* idioms and phrases I learned as a child to check on** whether they have a racist history I wasn't aware of (true more often than I ever would have guessed).
I came at this question first because of my work in traffic safety, a topic in which the physical world and the language used to describe transportation are so often automobility centered, or "motonormative," to use a term coined by Ian Walker. I give talks in which I tell people to be mode-neutral in order to be mode-inclusive. In other words, re-examine statements to uncover those hidden biases and -isms.
What does this reexamination mean for everyday speech about things that aren't traffic? What is it that we center, decenter, acknowledge within a wider circle? How do we draw that circle larger and larger so that what we say has meaning for more and more people?
I'm almost calling for us to translate our own works into other words. When I read poetry in the morning and they acknowledge that a poem was translated, I don't know what was lost through that. I also don't know what was gained.
If we translate our own words into new words we may lose a bit of something we're used to. The exercise of finding new ways to express ourselves in more inclusive ways provides so many gains. As we undertake this rethinking of how we express ourselves what will we notice, perceive, recognize, comprehend, acknowledge, process?
* For "research" I could have used "look up". I chose not to.
** For "check on" I could have used "see". I chose not to.
Edited to add: Shortly after publishing this I read a piece about Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize acceptance speech that adds so much more depth to a discussion of the power of language, with a story about blindness to illustrate the point.
"Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction." — Toni Morrison
Over the years my work has given me the opportunity to get to Washington, DC, every so often. These trips started with a "DC Fly-In" sponsored by Greater Spokane Incorporated for congressional office meetings back when I led communications and public affairs at WSU Spokane, through attendance at the National Bike Summit as executive director at Washington Bikes, and now I go for events like the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting and participation on research oversight panels for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program.
Given the distance, time zone differences and flight schedules, even a one-day meeting in DC involves three days: one to get there, one to be there, one to get back. And so it was that on a Sunday I started my multimodal trip for an NCHRP panel I'm chairing.
Multimodal went like this:
Leave at 9:30 a.m. Pacific time to ride as passenger in car to the Olympia Amtrak Centennial Station (thanks for the ride, Sweetie!).
Train to Tukwila.
King County Metro Rapid Ride F to Tukwila light rail (insert commentary here about how nicely logical it would have been to have Amtrak and light rail connect directly the way DC Metro and Amtrak do at Union Station in DC, but also yay for my Orca card working seamlessly for bus and light rail trips).
Light rail to SeaTac Airport.
Walk-walk-walk because the light rail station is a ways from the terminals (insert more commentary here about the time and labor cost imposed on nondrivers in order to provide storage for personal belongings close to the terminal, and also a bit of gritching about how the TSA Pre-Check security is always clear at the far end, hence a bunch more walking).
Fly to DC.
Catch DC Metro to a stop about 15 minutes from my hotel, feeling grateful for transit frequency so I didn't have a long wait to leave the airport. I could have transferred to get a tiny bit closer but the time difference was minimal and by this time I really needed to move my legs!
Walk to hotel. Arrive at last around 11 p.m. Eastern time. Sure, that's only 8 p.m. home time, but that's a loooong day.
Monday held a bit of walking to and from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine building where we met, and a walk at lunch to pick up takeout from Shouk, my absolute favorite DC restaurant for both its outstandingly delicious 100% plant-based food and its sense of purpose and mission. Thanks to the time zone difference I worked into the evening for meetings that were in the afternoon for folks back home and took a whack at the email undergrowth. I took myself out to dinner at the nearby Busboys and Poets (a Langston Hughes reference), got a couple of books of poetry by Rita Dove and Nikki Giovanni, and enjoyed a delicious vegan red curry risotto.
Tuesday—ah, Tuesday! More email whackage to start the day. My plane didn't leave until 5:35 p.m. Eastern and I'd be getting home around 9:30 p.m. Pacific. I didn't have meetings so part of Tuesday became my Sunday as a form of schedule adjustment. I left my heavier backpack at my hotel and started racking up the steps.
When I have time in DC I try to get to one place I haven't visited before and get back to a favorite. I visited:
The new-to-me Art Museum of the Americas, housed in the original residence of the Organization of American States Secretary General. Not too far from the White House, this includes a stunning tiled wall influenced by Aztec art and displays of work by artists from Latin America and the Caribbean.
From there I headed to the Lincoln Memorial. Packed with people reading the words of the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Speech carved on the side walls, it never fails to move me as I wonder how things could have gone differently in Reconstruction.
Next stop, the memorial for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A giant rock cleaved in half leads to a statue and several of his powerful statements carved on walls at a location alongside the Tidal Basin. The water sparkled in the sunshine, tourists thronged the walkways and wobbled past on bikeshare and rental bikes, a light breeze moved the leaves on the trees. Peak cherry blossom season had passed, but petals still drifted about.
April is #30DaysOfBiking month and I had thought I might make use of a bikeshare bike to get in some pedaling, but it kept being easier to just keep walking rather than find a bike, install the app, and ride a relatively short bike distance to places I wanted to stop. As I trudged along to my next planned stop, the National Museum of the American Indian, I regretted this decision but that was at a point with no bikes nearby, so hoof it I did.
Which was fine! Beautiful sparkling day, after all. Along the way I stopped at the National Museum of Asian Art (the Freer and Sackler galleries) and spent time with the gorgeous Peacock Room, the metalworking of Iran, Chinese and Korean porcelain, and more.
I love looking and learning. And yet, all museums now make me think of the theft and exploitation that underpins the acquisition of items on display (even more so since recently watching What Was Ours, about Shoshone and Arapaho people seeking to reclaim sacred artifacts from museums). The scene in "Black Panther" when Eric Killmonger talks to the museum curator about the theft of the items in those cases comes to mind. I simultaneously mourn the way these beautiful items came to be in those cases, and appreciate what I learn about their cultures, uses, and peoples.
Thinking about this, I also recognized that some of the people I saw visiting the exhibits were discussing how their own cultural history and the works of their ancestors were in these rooms. We weren't all going to take a trip around the world to experience these cultures and places directly; a bit of the world comes to us in museums.
The day was warm and I had long since stuffed my jacket and scarf into my small backpack. Arriving at the American Indian museum, I paused outside to appreciate the running water cascading down, just as people coming upon water in a dry landscape have done for eons.
I've been to this museum on a past trip and the clock was ticking toward my departure time so I wasn't there to look at exhibits. This time I had my heart set on having lunch in the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe, rated one of the best museum cafes by more than one reviewer. I wish I'd grabbed a photo of the display that showed how many foods native to North and South America have made their way around the globe. I had no idea peanuts originated in Peru, for example.
After a delicious lunch—wild rice with cranberries, a Brussels sprout salad, and of course fry bread with honey and cinnamon—I headed back to my hotel. At this point I really would have switched to a bikeshare bike, but the Capital Bikeshare kiosk I stopped at was having some kind of problem with the app. I watched others try to grab a bike and shake their heads in failure, and kept walking. When all other modes have issues, if you're able to walk you count on your feet.
Back at my hotel I wondered briefly why I had gone to museums that were about as far away as I could have chosen. I did a bit more email, swung my heavy pack onto my back, and headed to that closer Metro station. This time I was more than willing to make a transfer to spare myself a few steps! Metro to the airport, long walk through the terminal to my gate, and then hours of sitting before the final steps from gate to baggage claim to the car my sweetie brought to pick me up since there are no feasible late-night transit options from SeaTac to Olympia.
Total steps for the day: 19,035, or 8.48 miles as calculated by my phone app. For comparison my Sunday and Monday steps hit a bit over 7,800, and a typical Saturday walk downtown with a bus trip back gets me around 10,000-11,000. As the saying goes, my dogs were barkin'.
My February walk in the rain forest at Lake Quinault involved soaring trees, mosses, quiet trails, and the sound of water. And guess what—I have all those within a 15-minute walk from my front door.
Well, technically not the rain forest label. But we're fortunate to have found a house very near Squaxin Park, which offers up over 300 acres of woods, a mile of shoreline, and trails that wind through and connect to offer any number of ways to wander.
Back up over two years ago to when we still lived in Seattle, in a corner of the Top Hat neighborhood with no sidewalks, no big natural park within an easy walking distance.
In those early days as we pivoted to the online work world we needed to figure out ways to stay connected and stay up to date on the unfolding emergency. Our leadership instituted a weekly call for senior managers. Each call ended with encouragement to make sure we were taking care of ourselves and our coworkers while we continued to serve the people of Washington under enormous strains and shifts. The call often ended with the words, "Be kind. Be kind to yourself, be kind to others."
One of the ways I found to do this was to make that particular meeting a walking meeting. Now, usually a walking meeting involves walking and talking with other people. I had those other people with me via the headset I wore as I walked laps around the outside of our house, carrying my phone so it could count my steps.
This got me moving if I'd been sitting or standing too long in one place, staring at the screen and typing typing typing. It also made me a much better meeting participant. Why? Because while I was walking and listening I was only walking and listening. I wasn't reading and answering email with half an ear attuned to the meeting. I wasn't trying to multitask, which isn't even a real capability of the human brain. I was being kind to myself.
[Side note on my various forms of privilege that show up in this story, including my ability to buy these homes: I fully recognized then and know that my ability to stay home, warm, fed, and powered relied on the work of thousands of people who kept going into workplaces, being exposed to a virus we didn't understand for which we had no vaccine, and dying at higher rates than those of in these white-collar desk jobs. It still does, they still are, they still do, and I don't forget that.]
Just over three years later teleworking is still my daily reality. Our agency goal is to maintain a high percentage of teleworking so those of us whose jobs lend themselves to that format continue to reduce those vehicle miles traveled by not traveling them at all. I could go into the office occasionally if I wanted to, but the building is mostly empty; it doesn't have the "juice" of those chance hallway conversations that enrich our work by giving us a new idea or an insight into a different way of thinking about what we do.
Walking meetings are also still part of my work life. I select a meeting that doesn't require me to view a lot of slides on screen, although I can actually look at those on my phone if I need to. I put on that headset and head out the door. Within a few blocks I'm in the woods, listening with focused attention to the meeting content and resting my screen-worn eyes with the trees overhead, the water below the little footbridge, the offerings people leave at the Telephone of the Winds in memory of loved ones who have died.
Another way I make walking part of my work life while being kind to myself: Occasionally on a lunch break I put on a podcast and head for those woods. Listening to smart people interviewing interesting guests on a variety of topics yields some of those insights, those new ways of approaching a topic or a scenario that I might have gained from a hallway conversation. I listen to some that are quite obviously "about" work, in that they focus on transportation. Others that aren't transportation-focused stimulate my brain with new knowledge. I'm stepping away from that direct task focus and giving myself permission to let an idea or a question simmer a while before coming back to pin it down.
This time of stepping away is a critical part of brain work. Einstein is famously said to have come up with the Theory of Relativity while riding his bicycle.* The movement of my body through space and my brain coming along for the ride may not yield world-changing science, but it makes me feel better, think better, live better. I'm balanced between woods and work.
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
— Albert Einstein
Related listening
Don't tell the hosts, but I don't listen to every episode of every podcast I'm subscribed to. This list is a sampling; over the years I've subscribed to others and the list is ever-evolving. What am I missing that you think is a must-listen, and why do you think that? What makes it a good companion for a walk?
Contra* from Critical Design Lab (stopped producing episodes in 2020 though)
*Snopes says there's no attribution for this Einstein statement about coming up with the Theory of Relativity while riding his bicycle. But the American Museum of Natural History included it in their Einstein exhibit so I'm going with them. Their description of how the insight ties to riding a bike makes sense to me: "No matter how fast Einstein rides his bike, the light coming from his headlight always moves at the same speed." Snopes says the statement about how life is like riding a bicycle is a paraphrase of something he wrote in a letter to his son Eduard dated Feb. 5, 1940.
2022 was a pretty quiet year in my blogging life until the last few weeks. I lost my writing mojo in 2020 when the world went dark, other than the writing I needed to do for work, and only this fall and winter did I start making an effort to write again.
We still have a global pandemic and people still die from COVID-19 and its Greek-numbered variants. I've been vaxxed, vaxxed again, boosted, boosted, variant-boosted, and I still mask in crowds, stores, and mass-transit settings. The number of people doing the same has dwindled; sometimes I'm the only person wearing a mask.
I'm fortunate to have a job that lets me telework 100%. I do travel a bit, eat occasionally in restaurants, shop in stores (masked), and occasionally have a social life with people I know are vaccinated and maintaining precautions. We kept up the grocery online order/pick-up habit because dang, that's lower stress than going into a store full of lots of people coughing, especially this time of year with the "tripledemic" in the news (COVID-19, flu, respiratory syncytial virus, with that last one usually only producing mild cold-like symptoms but breaking out much more seriously this year, especially in children).
I haven't had COVID-19 yet that I know of. (I do have my suspicions about a few days of feeling under the weather during which I kept testing negative after attending a big conference and receiving a lot of texts and emails from people I'd talked with saying they had tested positive.) Nor have I had the flu, a cold, or any other contagious respiratory illness. Masks are awesome.
You would think that with all this non-social time on my hands I would have done more writing. It's been more like "what do we binge next?" at our house, to be honest, plus a lot of books read. At any rate, here's 2022's short list:
In May I tried to plan ahead for a special round-number birthday celebration: Counting up the Years. This was a lot of fun, coming up with things I could do that don't all cost money; instead they cost the far more rare and precious elements of time and attention.
As part of my job, I get to coordinate with the office of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on the proclamation for Bike Month. I wrote Bike Everywhere Month Rolls in May for the WSDOT Blog to share that—especially happy to do that in the year in which the Washington state legislature passed the historic Move Ahead Washington package with record-breaking levels of investment in active transportation and public transportation and dedicated future funding from a new carbon tax. That same package included a directive to WSDOT, where I work, to apply Complete Streets principles on all our projects, which is game-changing in a way that adds to the value of those new investments.
Revisiting my bike blog revealed I had a problem numbering in the tens of thousands that required drastic action in subscriber management: So long, spammers (with apologies to real people). [Honestly, this one isn't worth reading; noting it only in the spirit of full disclosure of lessons learned.]
I was delighted to write State Active Transportation Plan receives multiple awards for the WSDOT Blog. The plan my team worked on starting in late 2018 got slowed by the pandemic, and became final toward the end of December 2021. Over the course of 2022 the plan won state, regional, and national awards. And for an extra dose of woohoo, the new Move Ahead Washington transportation investment package wrote the plan into state law as a resource for identifying gaps in walk/bike/roll networks to prioritize for investment.
In November when things got weird with Twitter, its potential demise looming, I grabbed the archive of the many faces of Tiggs in The Kitten Chronicles, Year One, The Kitten Chronicles, Year Two, and The Kitten Chronicles, Year Three. I share a picture or funny story every so often, adding to a thread I started the day we brought him home. He can be a real poophead sometimes—ask me about the holes he's eaten into a lot of good merino wool clothing—but he's also brought joy.
Kitten Chronicles Day 1: Attempts to take pictures are almost all either kitty butt or blurry as he runs around checking out the place. Haven't named him yet; awaiting insights into personality or some cute story we can tell about how he got his name. pic.twitter.com/4qEqCDhLE4
I rolled right into wanting to do something to reflect on the National Day of Mourning (labeled Thanksgiving on the federal holiday calendar) and Native American Heritage Day and compiled a post I've had in the back of my mind for a couple of years now: “We Are Still Here”: Indigenous-focused Bicycle Programs.
My morning routine includes reading poetry. Along the way I've encountered more than one poem that somehow involves bicycles. Hence, “I think/therefore/I ride.” A Bike Rack of Bicycle Poems. Like the Kitten Chronicles, that started as a Twitter thread. I invited suggestions, which yielded some of the poems in my post, and I'm continuing the thread so I expect another post in the future. I started a second thread of transportation poems and that's likely to result in a post as well.
Starting a thread of poems with transportation references. As with my thread of bicycle poems these aren't necessarily "about" transportation; transportation appears. The bike poem thread: https://t.co/x8x6GXCo6j
Watching TV with my sweetie, a reference to the Internet of Things sparked some wordplay. We agreed that An Alphabet of Things seemed possible, and a while later I put it together with some of our thoughts and only one bit of research (to find the X word).
As the year drew to a close, I marked the winter solstice during my morning poetry-reading time, which led to Winter Solstice Readings.
My relationship with resolutions has varied over the years. This year I'm making it both fun and easy by thinking in terms of "joy snacks" in Commitment, Bite-Sized and Tasty. To help people get rolling by bike (or some other climate-friendly mode) whether or not they're "resolution types", I rounded up my blog posts over the years that discuss forming new habits, tracking/not tracking your riding, and the nature of commitment in New Year, New Mode(s).
The last day of the year held so many simple pleasures—joy snacks:
went for a long walk with my sweetheart on what proved to be a sunny, beautiful day after a week of rain, to downtown Olympia for a coffee date and a stop at Peacock Vintage;
rode Zelda the e-bike on my first bike ride since breaking my wrist, woohoo!;
baked a delicious vegan dish, a tofu/caramelized onion/mushroom filling in a pie dish lined with thin slices of yam;
sewed trim onto the hem of a coat that Tiggs had chewed a hole in, hiding the mended spot and making the coat wearable;
did yoga, making today one of my "triathlons" (walk 5,000 steps or more, ride my bike, and do yoga all in a day);
finished this blog post; and
enjoyed red wine and delicious chocolate at the end of the day while relaxing on the sofa.
Nothing anyone writes about 2020 can capture what it really felt like. Human memory doesn't want to hold onto horrors. We want to look away, look forward, move on. If we don't do that we risk sinking into existential dread, drowning in the realities that rise over our heads.
Because it was tragic, at a level we wouldn't believe if someone put it in a movie plot. It is still tragic. Even as I rejoiced in the amazing feeling of having coffee with a friend in a coffee shop--something I took for granted in January 2020, something I treasure as a special moment now--I have to live within these realities.
We still have deep, divisive, damaging racism embedded in everything about the way our world is structured. We've had it for far longer than white people like me recognized, even as we benefited.
We still have the devouring, thoughtless habits of careless consumption that will kill our species. Not the planet--it will survive, in some shape. The Earth doesn't need us to go on. We've lit the planet on fire and we're pouring more gasoline on it every day.
We still have the violent, strange, and polarizing politics that made the simple act of getting a shot--something most of us experienced as a child and yeah, I'm glad I didn't get measles, mumps, whooping cough, or polio, aren't you?--a dividing line.
We still have the yawning chasm between the wealth of a Jeff Bezos--who earns more in one second than some people make in an entire month of hard and thankless work that exposes them to the risk of a potentially deadly disease--and the desperation felt by someone who has to call the back seat of a car their bedroom because that's all they have left.
Historians describe turning points, which are easier to recognize in hindsight than in the moment. I have one particular turning point in mind, though there are many.
I'm the daughter of a World War II veteran. I know that when we were asked as a nation to rise to the challenge of the moment by changing our way of life we were able to grow victory gardens, save tin foil, reduce consumption at home so resources could go to our soldiers overseas. 9/11 could have been a turning point to ask that we reduce our dependence on foreign oil so we wouldn't end up making more enemies in the Middle East. We didn't have to put the lives of our own citizens and others into the tanks of our ever-larger vehicles.
We could have committed to a cleaner and greener future. We could have risen to the challenge. We still could.
And if we did that we would also be doing something to confront the terrible legacies of racism. We would be acknowledging and then reducing the greater burdens of pollution and death by traffic violence created by building an economic structure that asks people to spend more and more time driving farther and farther. We would be making healthier places for everyone. We would treat this lost year as a portal to the future that we want.
When I say "we" here, by the way, I mean "we white people who still hold the majority of decision-making power in this country in every sector." Because "we" is me. "We" is you if you're not speaking up, speaking out, taking action. If we can't collectively learn from this lost year then we have truly lost our future.
"No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved, y'know, for a little bit. I fee like the maid: 'I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for ten minutes? Please?' " - Mr. Incredible starting at 0:55 in this clip from The Incredibles
I can't keep entropy at bay. The tendency toward randomness and disorder keeps creeping back in. Today I'm dealing with the equivalent of that mountain of laundry that needs to be done. Or more aptly, the garage you need to clean that holds all the boxes you've moved from place to place without ever opening and sorting them. Today, I'm cleaning up digital files.
In How to Do Nothing Jenny O'Dell wrote about the attention economy's logic "that 'disruption' is more productive than the work of maintenance--of keeping ourselves and others alive and well." She wasn't referring to digital maintenance--if I really do what she calls for I'd have a lot less to maintain--but her point still applies.
It's so much more exciting to start something new than to clean up something old, right? To heck with Marie Kondo; in a consumer economy the thrill of buying a new set of shelves far outweighs the tedium of sorting the things we'll set on them and making a run to donate the items we no longer need or want, let alone dusting those shelves in a couple of weeks after they're no longer new and exciting. In the digital context it's more fun to take today's pictures than to review yesterday's pictures, delete the ones we don't want, and organize them in some useful way.
I appreciate and am inspired by O'Dell's deep thinking about the ways in which we have given away our ability to pay attention, to concentrate, to notice what really matters. We are creating enormous economic value for nothing, doing unpaid digital labor that Facebook or Twitter or Google Ad Services monetizes and sells to shareholders. If we are to extract any true value for ourselves, we're going to have to give some thought to maintenance, not just creation.
I have the digital footprint (and attention span) of an early adopter of some, but not all, of the many shiny-object services of the digital age. I've been on Twitter for over a decade, Facebook about that long. I got interviewed as an early user of LinkedIn in my former hometown because I had so many connections before others were using it regularly. I let a TV station follow me around when I was checking in on Foursquare when that was still a thing. I have an Instagram account I never post to and no doubt dozens of dusty spaces on the web with my name on them created for some forgotten reason. When I changed jobs I had to do at least 59 things to deal with my online presence.
There's no way I can track down and delete all these things I'm not maintaining. I do wonder at times about the amount of server space being held for neglected accounts. How long do you suppose my old "burner" email accounts will be available?
I'm not even going to try to find and delete everything I don't use. I'm going to start by cleaning up what I do use. I'll try to define some rules for what I do and don't save that may make maintenance easier going forward.
Take Dropbox, for example. Handy utility. I have that and Google Drive and wherever the images go that are all automatically saved by my cellular service. How much cloud storage does one person need? Not as much as I have access to. Yet I managed to fill the free Dropbox space and start paying for more a few years ago when I was taking lots of pictures in my work as executive director of Washington Bikes. Every bike ride, ribbon-cutting, Bike to Work Day Energizer Station got captured with multiple images.
And they're all still sitting there.
I keep meaning to go in and clean up. Every time I start, I get a few images deleted, then get side-tracked into thinking about whether I want to save some, renaming a few so they have a more meaningful filename than the date they were taken, opening several to determine which one is the best in a series (and I'm no photographer so none of these are very good to begin with), thinking about whether someday I may want to be able to illustrate this particular historic moment for some reason and no one else has any pictures of this, and and and.... You can understand why my Dropbox is so full it will no longer sync across devices and they want me to pay more to get more storage space.
No. It's maintenance time. By which I primarily mean, be bold and hit DELETE, at least on some of those folders.
Like housework in the real world AFK (Away From Keyboard), this may not stay done. The dust bunnies will creep back in. I'll lose track of my good intentions about not saving everything as files when I could simply bookmark a report I want to refer to.
(Oh no, my bookmarks--those need organizing and clean-up too. Or maybe not. My maintenance energy only extends so far and I need to prioritize. Focus, Chamberlain, focus.)
A while back thanks to Twitter, which I do find valuable as a place to give and receive information from people who are still better value filters than a Google search, I encountered The Maintainers, "a global research network interested in the concepts of maintenance, infrastructure, repair, and the myriad forms of labor and expertise that sustain our human-built world."
Working in transportation as I do, I know our maintenance backlog is enormous and still growing. The belief that something new is more important than taking care of what we have is evident there as in other sectors of public policy and our economic structures. Lack of maintenance carries a hidden cost to all of us, from repairs to personal vehicles shaken by rough roads and potholes to the broken elbow I received crashing on a trail thanks to a broken surface I tried to avoid on my bike.
One of the costs of failure to maintain my digital space is direct: I'll be charged another year's storage on Dropbox if I don't get my usage down. Another is indirect; if I try to find something in those files I'm digging through all the clutter, just like going through boxes in my garage in search of a specific item time after time.
Maintenance protects, sustains and adds real value in the real world. We need more of it. It may not be shiny, but it's essential.
And here I sit, writing a shiny new blog post instead of digging into those dusty old cloud files.
If you read and enjoyed any of these, drop a note here (so someone else who finds this post also finds that recommendation) and give the author's works a shoutout in whatever spaces you inhabit. They need to keep selling books so they can keep writing so we can keep reading. Have a blog post with your review? Share a link here.
And now for the March list, with thanks to these fine authors for their talents--
Masks and Shadows, Stephanie Burgis (@StephanieBurgis): Found via Twitter on sale for $1.99 -- I'm a sucker for a sale and Burgis's work was recommended by authors I admire. This was a fun read, a work of historical fiction with dark alchemy, a castrato, and a woman who needs to break out of the constraints of society to be happy.
Gmorning, Gnight: Little Pep Talks for Me & You, by Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel): Mr. Multi-Talented wrote a charming book that I planned to read and then pass along to Eldest Daughter. Spotted this one thanks to the "Staff Picks" sign on the shelf at Page 2 Books in Burien, my favorite LBS (Local Book Store -- also used to mean Local Bike Shop). I read most of it before it went to its new home, just taking little nibbles of his happy upbeat attitude with my morning coffee each day.
Bright Thrones (Court of Fives), Kate Elliott (@KateElliottSFF): How I love these books! Another author whose works I will read and read and read as long as she puts them out. This one fills in a piece of the story in some of her earlier works.
Sunshine, Robin McKinley (@RobinMcKinley): I've loved everything of hers I've read; she has a gift for richly imagined retellings of fairy tales. This isn't one of those, and yet at the same time she again takes a trope -- this one the woman with a vampire suitor -- and turns it into something completely different. It's simply incredible.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein: I've been meaning to put this on the list ever since the America Walks webinar on the book and finally picked it up. I started reading it on a plane trip in early March but every chapter made me so furious I could only take small doses; didn't actually finish it in March. The wounds of injustice in this country's history cut deeper than the bone. I'll finish it over time.
Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport (@CalNewport but don't bother to tweet at him): Preordered this one after reading his book Deep Work last year. I'd already dropped my Facebook time to near zero after the many privacy issues and manipulation of feeds. This book reinforces his discussion in Deep Work of the need to be thoughtful about what social media gives you that's genuine value and worth your time -- not random serendipitous things you could just as easily live without, or could find with less detritus cluttering your mental landscape along the way.
Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds, by Wendy Sullivan and Judy Rees (@JudyRees). One of the sessions at the Liberating Structures Global Gathering I attended covered this -- the art of using non-judgmental, neutral questions to invite more reflection and sharing. I can imagine infusing this into my workshops on multimodal language usage in transportation, along with LS, to turn what was a PowerPoint talk into something much richer and deeper. I didn't finish it in March -- one I'll keep coming back to over time as I absorb the principles.
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, by Ronald A. Heifetz (@RonHeifetz), Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow (@Grashow). Another recommendation out of the LSGG. Another "started, didn't finish but I will" in March, which happened because I got so many nonfiction works in a big batch and wanted to dip into several. (And I have samples of a couple more on my Kindle. The LSGG expanded my mind and my reading list.)
King of Scars, by Leigh Bardugo (@LBardugo). A fantastic addition to her Grishaverse books. If you haven't started reading them yet you're so lucky -- you have lots to go through before you come to this one. Since it was only published January 2019 I have too long a wait for the sequel; your timing may be better.
The True Queen: As expected, loved this new work by Zen Cho (@zenaldehyde) that follows Sorcerer to the Crown, I had this one preordered and was happy to have it show up. I'm finding I like sequels that center new characters in the same world as much as I enjoy sequels that keep expanding on the through-line for the same cast. This is one of the former.
Smoke and Summons, by Charlie Holmberg (@CNHolmberg): As she did in her Paper Magician series, which I also enjoyed, Holmberg has created a world in which magic is accomplished through something other than waving wands, although arcane symbols are in the mix. An endearing central character, Sandis, needs to break away from the brutal world in which her abilities are misused. Preordered the next book in what I hope is a series.
Toad Words and Other Stories, by T. Kingfisher (@UrsulaV): I love this woman's writing so much. I've devoured her novels, then moved to the short story collections. Retakes and retellings of different angles on fairy tales you'll recognize through the shift of her kaleidoscope, and stories set in a mythic desertscape that seems to draw on Native American traditions although I can't judge how closely.
Jackalope Wives and Other Stories, by T. Kingfisher (@UrsulaV). See above. I'm pretty sure I dreamed about jackalope wives after reading this. I woke up with the song "Buffalo Gal, Won't You Come Out Tonight?" in my head and couldn't work out why. An online search reminded me that this was the title of an Ursula K. LeGuin short story published in Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1987, when I was a subscriber. I now need to track down the story collection this was in. You now understand why the TBR list is bigger than the "read this month" lists.
Kingdoms of Elfin, Sylvia Townsend Warner: Found this thanks to the fascinating essay "Hen Wives, Spinsters, and Lolly Willowes" by Terry Windling. A dark and distant set of short stories about elves that are thoughtlessly cruel and remote in their interactions with humans. Not Tolkien elves, not cutesy-on-a-mushroom-stool elves. Just elves, themselves.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, by Samin Nosrat (@CiaoSamin) and Wendy MacNaughton (@WendyMac): Started wanting this one the first time I heard a review on NPR. I haven't watched the cooking show tie-in, which I understand from my local bookstore is fabulous, so that's going on my list too. I started in March, but this is going to be one I peck away at for a loooong time and then keep consulting as a reference, similar to my use of The Food Lab, by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.
This month's additions to TBR, with notes on how I found the book. This list just keeps getting longer and longer.... This month was a big one for adding nonfiction to the list, some of which I started on. I also got some of the fiction works above and read them right away. I don't have a system for deciding to go back into the TBR -- it's more a matter of what feels appealing.
Pacific Northwest Foraging, by Douglas Deur: We joke about the zombie apocalypse at our house every now and then, usually when buying something that seems useful for long-term survival in a rapidly changing world. I don't plan to become Euell Gibbons (I date myself with this reference) but this seems like a handy reference book. I want to move our yard toward more native plants so they may as well be useful.
The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash a Culture of Innovation, by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless (@Keith McCandless): I went through a two-day immersive workshop on LS (@LSusers) around 18 months ago, I think, and have been using the techniques ever since in a variety of settings. The structures themselves are available on the LS website. After attending the LS Global Gathering (LSGG) this month -- 3 days of growing the body of practice while using the body of practice to examine LS in various applications, from community engagement to data collection to education-- I decided I should read the full work. Join this growing community of practitioners if this topic interests you; I had the most energizing 3 days I've had in a long time and constantly generated ideas for approaching my work with new insights and ideas.
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, by Caroline Criado Perez (@CCriadoPerez). I learned of this one via Twitter, with people sharing links to her Guardian piece on some of the findings from the book. This body of work is critical to transportation safety along with many other realms. If you're on Twitter just search on #InvisibleWomen and become part of a big virtual book club. While you're at it thank her for the research; she's being attacked on social media by men who don't want to acknowledge the bias built into the world.
For a list of what's already waiting patiently on my Kindle, check out What I'm Reading Eventually, which was as of the end of February. I'll post another one in a while to keep track as I read and add new books.
The importance of online reviews: I recently read a piece by an author praising the value of one-line reviews on book purchase sites so go drop those too. The numbers matter as much as the content of your review so don't stress out over your writing ability -- just praise what you like about theirs.
A note on local economies and these links:You should shop at a local, independently owned bookstore. Or check these out through your local library -- did you know they can do that with e-books too, if that's how you read? Links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links. I've never made a penny from Amazon but these links give you access to more information and reader reviews. If I ever do make anything I'll donate it to a local nonprofit that helps people who need it most.
Writers on Twitter: I have a Writers list on Twitter. It isn't everyone I read/enjoy but it's a good starting place if you find your tastes and mine overlap. I so appreciate the chances I get to interact with people directly to tell them I enjoy their work.
January: I started 2018 off with a post on a topic I often return to: Kindness Matters. I was then perhaps less than kind in taking apart some sloppy reporting and misunderstandings of crash data in A Bit of a Rant on Data + Data Rant Continued: What a Tangled Web + Slice and Dice Data Rant: Who's Really Number One? One of the highlights in January: Attending the TRB Annual Meeting for the first time after years of conference envy created by the #TRBAM content I saw via Twitter. A second highlight: Discovering that my social media work had become data points in a research project.
September: This month was packed with travel to conferences so if you want to know what I was thinking and learning, search Twitter on @barbchamberlain and any of these hashtags: #bikeshareconference #walkbikeplaces #aashtoAM (and check out my November post below). Meanwhile I did squeeze in a call to update our usage in Hey (We’re Not All) Guys! Why I Don’t Use “You Guys”.
Looking back on the year reminds me of posts I meant to write (like a list of books I loved this year) and ones I started but didn't finalize, like some thoughts on bicycling in New Orleans from my trip to Walk Bike Places. That's a good one to run some grey day to cheer me up with memories of bopping along on a bikeshare bike through the French Quarter, eating beignets with Naomi, listening to live jazz, and other great experiences. For now I'll leave you with this moment of Zen from a bike ride on the north bank of the Spokane River.
I had such nice encounters with drivers today it’s worth blogging about as a thank-you.
After hearing the rain pouring down last night, I was delighted to wake up and find a crisp, sunny Saturday morning waiting for me. I was scheduled to speak at a bike commuting workshop at Sun People Dry Goods and would have ridden my bike no matter what, but I’d much rather arrive dry than damp.
So I dressed in my typical workday commuting outfit: Black knee-length skirt, black tights, black dress shoes, Smart Wool top, cardigan. Part of my point when I promote bike riding is that it’s entirely possible to ride in regular clothing as just another regular person, not a Spandex Superwoman, so I dressed the part.
After a fun workshop with Spokesman-Review Slice columnist Paul Turner, Cycling Spokane blogger John Speare, and Mother of Bike Education Eileen Hyatt, I headed homeward.
At a busy stoplight at Browne and Second, where I waited in the southbound lane second from the curb (the through lane for the left-hand turn I needed in the next block), a woman pulled up next to me in an SUV, rolled down her window, and said, “You look so cute! Keep it up.” We chatted briefly. She said she thought we really need more women riding bikes. The light turned green and away we went.
I took the eastbound left turn on 4th and waited at the stoplight at Division. A really huge SUV hung back about a half-block behind me. The lights rotated through a complete cycle and skipped us. I realized my bike wouldn’t trip the light sensor and the vehicle was too far back, so I waved the driver forward.
The vehicle eased up beside me and the passenger-side window rolled down. The woman driving said, “I was just trying to make sure I gave you plenty of room.”
“Thanks!” I said. “I just need you to trip the light because it’s not changing.”
“Okay; just wanted to make sure I didn’t crowd you.”
“Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!” The light changed and away we rolled.
No earthshaking revelations here—just two really pleasant encounters with friendly, supportive drivers on a sunny Saturday. Well worth noting.
