It’s summer and I’ve been trying to ride my bike for an hour or so every evening, for a number of reasons: I need exercise and biking spares the joints the way running doesn’t (until I crash), biking helps my body adjust to the heat (since I swelter in a hot little room all day), I see things from my bike that I don’t under any other conditions.
One thing I see are bike lanes, of which Burlington has many (maybe not as many as we need, but we do OK). The bike lanes are demarcated by a white line and every so often, a stick figure on a bicycle.
(I tried to include a photo of this, but failed to import the photo on a few tries and then imported a huge photo that would have blotted out everything else. I’m better with simple things, like bikes and – I guess – word pictures.)
To encourage bicycle safety, someone decided the stick figures should wear helmets, but portraying a bicycle helmet on a stick figure is no easy matter and the result (which you’ll have to visit Burlington – or find a friend more adept at computers – to see) looks like a stick figure riding a bike while wearing a chef’s toque. At first I thought I was riding in a lane reserved for food deliveries.
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No Environmentalists Need Apply
Many people on the political scene are anticipating Mitt Romney’s vice presidential choice in a state of high agitation and none are more agitated than I. Four years ago next month, I had just left the dentist’s office with a face full of novocaine when my boss’s boss called me on my cell and screamed, “McCain just picked Sarah Palin! The governor of Alaska! To be his running mate! We didn’t expect it! We don’t have a file on her environmental record! We need one! Quick!”
I said, “Uhh thih! Uhll geh rugh uh ih!” and drooled a bit (which, for the record, is my only occasion of drooling in relation to Ms. Palin).
So for the past month or so, I’ve been looking at the records of the various Republicans the oracles of punditry have been tossing forth, hoping Mr. Romney stays true to his cautious self and doesn’t go all maverick like Sen. McCain. (BTW, I loved it when a reporter asked Mr. McCain if Mr. Romney’s tax returns and business history had caused Mr. McCain to pass over him as VP candidate. Sen. McCain said, no, Ms. Palin was simply a better candidate. So, one of the GOP’s most senior members thinks a half-term governor who clearly didn’t grasp her own party’s foreign policy positions was a better candidate than its current standard bearer. Good luck with that.)
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