I admit

I admit it: I prefer listening to KUT than to the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, not for the NPR/news/talk stuff, but because the music is way, way better. Classical music rules the airwaves here.

I also admit that of the two local papers I check every day online, I check the Statesman before the Portland Press Herald. Why? Probably because the Press Herald is a little duller, a little more obvious. Also because the Statesman feeds me such a regular diet of death, traffic accidents, crime, and weather reports that I need the Press Herald's soothing balm.

Private Use of Public Land

This is a good step: making all private businesses, including fitness trainers, to pay to use the parks. Yet it's a sign of how much our sense of the commons have eroded to read comments like this:

"Where did the taxes go that I am already paying for parkland? They should go towards using parks however I'd like, whether it's for flying kites or walking dogs or doing push-ups," said Michelle Persica, a personal trainer with 20 years of experience who sometimes holds classes in Pease Park.

Well, Michelle Persica, if I can come join your class in Pease Park whenever I like, and for no charge, then I guess I'd be happy to let you count your taxes toward a private use fee. Oh...I can't? I have to sign up ahead of time...and pay? Then I guess you're exploiting the commons, aren't you? I guess you're using my contributions to the parklands for your own personal gain.

My friend Roger calls this the "free rider" syndrome, and the free riders "Snopes" (after the family in Faulkner's novels of rising working class Southern whites who "were more interested in avaricious commercial gain than honor or pride" (well put from here)). He describes the phenomenon more:

The Snopes hate the Hoover thing – hate the idea of paying for something when they have figured out how to get it free. And of course they hate the Roosevelt thing of tolerance and enlightenment and blacks moving in next door and marrying their kids. But what they hate most is the idea that the progressives they are conning don't understand what is happening. The progressive harping on the ignorance or bad consciousness or brainwashing of the Snopes class has to stop. Far from being ignorant or unaware of their self advantage, they have had a free ride that has given them the luxury of being able to indulge in reactionary hate while being bankrolled by progressive legislation and opened up to the world through Civil Rights. Everything they hate has supported everything they love: credit cards, big trucks, big motor boats leaking oil over various federally funded dammed lakes, etc., etc. It is no wonder they feel like God's remnant on earth. They have the satisfaction of knowing who is conning who in the great progressive deal, and what they really can't stand is that the liberals that are being suckered don't know who is suckering them.

No free riding, Michelle Persica Snopes.

How to get to the Nomad?

The Nomad got a good review the other day in the Statesman. Good for Miguel. It beats out Spiderhouse, even, which is a major feat. But Dina Guidubaldi, the Statesman writer, put the Nomad "around 51st, behind Target," which is, of course, wrong. I don't know whether to laugh at this moronic sense of place or to celebrate it, because if the Nomad is that good, we'll want to keep it to ourselves. (Notice that I haven't given the correct location here.)

Coffee Rumor

Richard Yu writes to the WP listserv that he's looking into a coffee shop. But Richard! Windsor Park has a new....bar.

This Makes Me Sick

This note today from "Ed" in Windsor Park make me fucking sick to my stomach:

I have noticed an increase in people going around the neighborhood
removing aluminum cans from people's recycling bins. Today someone came
and took mine as well!

I understand these are difficult times we live in, and people are
trying to make ends meet, but I feel like they are stealing from me.

These cans I recycle are not only to do a small part for the
environment, but I think also help subsidise the costs associated with
the trash and recycling pickup. I would imagine the recycling company
makes a small profit from the items they recycle, helping offset the
pickup costs. Surely they take this into consideration when they bid
the contracts.

I know I could collect them and other metals and turn them into the
recycling people myself and make some money, but I don't own a pickup
or large area of land to store metals until I have enough to pay for
gas dropping it off. I don't think my immediate neighbors would approve
either.

Perhaps when the new bins come everything will not be as accessable to
these bandits.

Bandits! Bandits! Stealing what probably amounts to a dollar or two in aluminum. Granted, I don't know how many aluminum cans Ed leaves behind, but let's be generous and say it's not many. But my god, to treat a couple aluminum cans as some sort of loss, as some sort of affront to his property -- all I can say is, I hope Ed gives heartily at church, not because I think the church allocates his money any better, but because I'm sure he's taken to heart his pastor's big fat sermons about charity and the love for your fellow man.

When our old school Democrats, who love to wave the names of Molly Ivins and John Henry Faulk like flags when it suits their own cause, scream like shrill little misers because they've been taken with property value paranoia (say it shrilly: "we're being dumped upon!") , and when others gripe that others who have it worse than they do are picking through their trash to make a living, that's when you know you're living in a mean, pathetic little fucking world. I expect these sorts of attitudes from others. I don't expect it from people in my neighborhood.

Update: Last night after writing this I had a dream in which I had been elected to some WP neighborhood position. My first thought was, I'm going to have to take down that post. Second was, I can lead the neighborhood from Maine.

This morning someone else posted to the listserv about the can thing, and as it was not in my dream, it made me feel some hope for the WP, and for humankind in general:

When I see people taking the aluminum cans, I pray.

When Traffic Becomes News

Britches, meet too big:

"...The city doesn't appear to have the infrastructure or processes in place to handle the number of simultaneous events that are happening downtown," she said.

This isn't news because the traffic was bad; it's news because people's expectations didn't match reality. The new expectation has to be this: if you chose to live in a city whose cultural life is rich enough that large simultaneous events are scheduled in the same area, don't expect to drive up to your destination and park outside the door; if you try it, you'll get stuck, so you're going to be walking, or taking a shuttle, or biking. Basically: expect to arrive sweating. I may be contradicting myself, but I don't think it's the city's job to match reality to expectations. I think it's to provide leadership about -- and certainly to change -- the expectations as well.

Here's a new thought about public transportation: maybe it's not capital-intensive, building streetcars or subways. Rather, maybe it's temporary transport, like flash mobs, shuttling people from one parking area to the event area on the weekends. Riders have to pay for it, of course.

Move

Inevitable. Curious. Unseeing. I don't know what to label how yesterday's NYT Magazine's slew of articles on reducing environmental impact and carbon footprint didn't include one obvious choice that individuals and households can make: moving.

This could be moving to a new part of a city (to reduce commute times), to a new city or region, or even simply to a new style of house (one with a backyard, say, where one can grow some of one's food). Maybe the capital intensivity of this moves it off the table as an option, but I'm not convinced; people buy hybrid vehicles and install solar panels. Maybe it's because it was the New York Times. What if the answer is that big cities make big footprints? I don't know if this is true or not; if it were, the city's newspaper couldn't very well advocate people abandoning it. I think the answer may lie deep in the American psyche: Americans move for jobs or when they retire, not for general economic considerations -- that would be called "migration," and those who "migrate" are called "immigrants."

I'd also want to know where one should move. We have a pretty good situation in Austin: lots of sunlight and our own roof meant we could install solar panels if we wanted to, though not without a lot of other capital improvements. And we have the biggest backyard on the block with proven soil for veggies; a rainwater collection system would give us water for the garden. And chickens! We don't hardly heat the house at all in the winter. On the other hand, we can't walk many places, and riding a bike, though doable, isn't comfortable. Portland is walkable year-round, and the hardcore biking season has just begun, plus things are close: the office supply store and post office are just down the hill, and both Whole Foods and Hannafords are easily reachable by bike trail.