Watch the wheels....

I've ridden motorcycles on and off (always better on than off) for over thirty years. While a few things are annoying--bugs in the teeth, bits of rotting roadkill kicked up by a car, the unexpected downpour--the joys far outweigh the negatives.


The one thing that threatens to tilt joy to despair are the folks in the 4-wheeled cages who simply do not see bikes. Live cars sitting at intersections make me wary.

When I see one, only one thing matters--its front wheels. Are they moving?

Only that, nothing else matters, nothing.  Riding gets down to the bare physics of things.

If it creeps forward, react. Do not waste time looking amazed, or yelling, or flipping the bird.  All are useless
The motive of the driver does not matter. At all. It cannot be changed even if you knew it.

You'll hear a lot about how Arne cares for kids, how Gates humanitarianism saves thousands of children, how the new nationalized standards and multimillion-dollar tests are good for our children, and a few misguided souls may even believe it.

When the front wheels are moving, it doesn't matter what the driver thinks. We need to react.

The front wheels of the edu-plutocrats are spinnning so hard they're leaving patches of rubber. React

Arne photo from Colorlimes.com; motorcycle photo (no one hurt) from lowellsun.com.

Now a word from our sponsors....

"The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that."

Larry Kudrow, CNBC, said this a few days ago, and got flak for it, as, I guess, he should. He sort of apologized for it, too, though unlike many, I do not think he needed to. He shared a sentiment common to his class. It's good to hear a reminder now and again.


This is the global economy Arne wants your child to join. 


Me? I'm busy wrecking as many future Kudrows as I can, showing them lichen and moss and squirrels on our Bloomfield Green. It's hard to hate the world once you fall in love with the local.

Here's an idea--no bombing areas of the world at least half your citizens can't find on a map.
The photo is from here, unattributed--I'd love to hear where it came from.....

 

Shameful

Maybe I'm a tad sensitive, at least for someone who once scrapped with another dockworker while mutually armed with shovels, but I doubt it.

Maybe it's because my Dad flew tons of tuna for Nippon Cargo Airlines back in the day, but I doubt it.

Or maybe it's because I just read CitiGroup's 2006 report praising plutonomy, so I'm looking a little too hard, but I doubt it.

Or maybe it's because my first girlfriend was first generation Japanese American; her mother grew up in Japan during the war. I learned a little about Japan, and a lot about cultural blindness.

This is a screenshot from Google news this morning. It was taken from the general news, not the business section:

Maybe we'd see the same concern about the financial markets if this had happened in Ireland.

But I doubt it.

What better way to nakedly expose what matters most to those of us who have the most. This is shameful.

Photo is of Google news, obviously, taken around 6:30 AM EST. 
Yes, I know the news order is based on a computer algorithm--this makes it better? 
Yes, I know it would be shameful no matter what part of the world got hit.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!"

A few of us got to meet with Governor Christie and the Ed Commissioner Chris Cerf, behind closed doors, no camera, no press, for almost two hours. I didn't even have to wear a suit.

A passionate, civil discussion took place, about, among other things, the purpose of public schools.

Governor Christie is bright, charming, and well-versed in educational policy. I expected nothing less. His message to us was consistent with his public statements. Mr. Cerf, likewise, knows his stuff.

For those of us still holding the quaint notion that a functioning democracy requires truly public spaces, truly public schools, truly informed citizens, a smidgen more idealism (and a lot less elitism), well, I failed to make any change in the destructive path Jersey's following, though I did get to show the Governor a blister I got clamming on public waters.

And yes, I get the irony of pushing for public schools while immersed in a private meeting.

The other irony? It's not what's happening inside schools that creates the huge inequities we see, and ultimately it's what's happening outside our walls that determines the success of our students.

The "storied pomp" are killing the rest of us.

Maybe our next meeting should be in a boardroom at  

CitiGroup, home of the Plutonomists, their word, not mine.