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A Numbing Spectacle
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I flew into New York last week. From the air it still looked like winter, grayish brownish city stretching into the distance from JFK as we flew low over Long Island Sound to land. I took the arduous trip by subway, usually 2 hours to arrive at any Brooklyn address, and got to my daughter’s new apartment where her bed is about 20 feet from the elevated tracks of the J-M-Z. I slept through it with ear plugs my first night, and then moved over to Donald N-S’s place on Grand Army Plaza at the gateway to Prospect Park. All around Park Slope in Brooklyn, and even in City Hall Plaza in Manhattan, spindly dormant trees were giving way to spectacular explosions of color in plum and apple blossoms, and wildly exuberant magnolias. Spring was springing!
 Magnolia in City Hall Park, New York. There were two reasons to be in New York, the big one for me was Francesca’s 25th birthday! Amazing to be the parent of a 25-year-old, especially such an all around wonderful person who also happens to be a smart, radical, engaged charmer… lucky me! She was part of the 2nd occupation of New School a week ago or so, and when their best laid plans were met by Vietnam war criminal and school president Bob Kerrey ordering the police to violently evict them. Francesca got heavily pepper sprayed, and jailed overnight with the rest of the occupiers, but they are now receiving great support from New School faculty and much of the student body, nearly all of whom detest Kerrey and want to see him go. To what end, though? They eschew demands, and see their efforts as a broader effort to jumpstart a more thoroughgoing student movement of social opposition.
Continue reading Springing Through NYC
My trip to Glasgow was cancelled a few days before I was to go, and then miraculously came back to life thanks to a lovely posse of friends there. Denis, Tilly, Hannah, Jock, et al, are part of a community of friends occupying several flats in Glasgow. Their pal Katie saw my Talk in Bradford and after asking me about it, made some calls and Denis and friends found a venue for me in the Mono Cafe, and I made my way there on Monday April 13. I arrived around midday under graying skies, and after a shower and some serious coffee I was given a lovely tour around Glasgow by Jock and Hannah. Jock is a doctor who plans to “go feral” in a couple of years after he finishes his residency, meaning he’ll be heading away from Scotland and probably end up in the far reaches of the 3rd world somewhere. He’s spent some serious time already in Pakistan, which he spoke very highly of–he speaks Urdu, something he learned while living in Glasgow by taking a class and working at it–so he argued that Pakistan is a friendly place to visit (I was doubtful that I could have anything approaching his experience… which is also probably true!). Anyway, he was a gracious host and pedaled me all around the city, taking in as much as we could in a couple of hours.
 View of Glasgow from hilltop in park.  Jock and Hannah in the hilltop wind!  The art museum catching the golden light of evening. Glasgow has a lot of gorgeous old buildings, but also a vast pedestrian L-shaped area in downtown, basically an outdoor mall, but heavily trafficked by pedestrians and some cyclists. In both Glasgow and Edinburgh the bike infrastructure was often pretty good in small spots, with median-protected green-paved bike lanes in parts, but nothing approaching a comprehensive grid that would facilitate safe cycling all over town. As usual, we had a chance to cycle along a gorgeous canal for part of our tour, and also made it to the top of a nearby park’s high point…
 Ahhh, canals! Continue reading A Wee Visit to Scotland!
Waiting for my flight across the Atlantic with some minutes to start summarizing the last few days of my “UK Nowtopia (Sublebrity) Tour”… After Bradford I went to Lancaster, where Dave Horton was waiting for me. We’d met ten years earlier, when he was a grad student and had been quite involved in starting Critical Mass in Lancaster. It’s a lovely town still, maybe 50,000 people, making up a semi-continuous urbanized area with Morecambe, which has another 50,000 or so. Dave is married to Sue, and they have two lovely children, Bob and Flo.
 Bob, Flo, Dave, and Sue (l to r). Getting to Lancaster, and later taking the train to Newcastle via Carlisle, was a journey through Lamb Country! Spring lambs were in nearly every field, cavorting with their moms, nursing, sleeping, traipsing about in their awkward newness… quite a beautiful scene, rolling green hills hedges stretching in all directions, and spring lambs by the hundreds. I guess the sheep are on a similar schedule with one another!
 Feeding time! Lancaster has a somewhat utopian feel about it. Small enough to be intimate and cozy, large enough to have some diversity and energy, plus a large university too. I arrived to spectacular, crisp spring blue skies in the mid-afternoon. Dave took me out right away for a walk to his nearby “allotment” (as they call community gardens throughout the UK), where his wife Sue was weeding, his son was playing soccer in an adjacent field, and his daughter Flo was bouncing back and forth between a nearby playground where many neighbors’ kids were, and the allotment where it seemed half the town was out preparing their plots for spring planting. I walked around and took a bunch of photos, of course!
Continue reading Spring Lamb Bonanza!
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Hidden San Francisco 2nd EDITION!
NEW 2nd EDITION NOW AVAILABLE!
Buy one here
(Pluto Press, Spring 2025)
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