If you know a high school student interested in creative writing, check out Hamline University's Young Writers' Workshop. It's a pretty amazing opportunity for students to take classes from Hamline faculty members, meet and workshop with other kids who are as obsessed with writing as they are, and basically get taken seriously as aspiring artists. Enrollment has been extended to May 15!
https://www.hamline.edu/cla/cwp/young-w
https://www.hamline.edu/cla/cwp/young-w
I'm going to do this bike thing. Ten miles of bike thing. Mind you, I've never done ten miles of riding all at once, ever, but I'm going to do it on September 10. Why?
Because I want to raise money for Cycles for Change.
It's an amazing outfit. They repair people's bikes for cheap. They teach people how to repair their own bikes, also for cheap. They sell inexpensive used bikes. They have an apprentice program for local young folks, and an earn-a-bike program. They help the local community, many of whom are low-income, people of color, Native, or immigrant, expand their options for reliable, affordable transportation...which means more jobs, more education, more participation in their neighborhood.
You can help, too, and you don't even have to have rubber legs afterward. Donate to my ride, please. A buck a mile, even, will make a big difference to C4C and the people it serves. Check it out:
https://www.crowdrise.com/emmabull-Bike
Ten days from today, I'm going to do my best.
Because I want to raise money for Cycles for Change.
It's an amazing outfit. They repair people's bikes for cheap. They teach people how to repair their own bikes, also for cheap. They sell inexpensive used bikes. They have an apprentice program for local young folks, and an earn-a-bike program. They help the local community, many of whom are low-income, people of color, Native, or immigrant, expand their options for reliable, affordable transportation...which means more jobs, more education, more participation in their neighborhood.
You can help, too, and you don't even have to have rubber legs afterward. Donate to my ride, please. A buck a mile, even, will make a big difference to C4C and the people it serves. Check it out:
https://www.crowdrise.com/emmabull-Bike
Ten days from today, I'm going to do my best.
- Current Mood:
determined
A while ago, Fourth Street Fantasy Convention asked me to write a little something on What Fourth Street means to me. I wrote the following. It's still true.
I want to tell you all to go to Fourth Street Fantasy Convention.
When I first went to a science fiction convention, my native guides assured me that no one went to programming. Now, the fact is, they were wrong even about the convention we were at, Minicon, and as a result, I missed opening ceremonies and the never-to-be-repeated spectacle of the Dancing Davids.
But Fourth Street is what happens when everyone goes to programming. A single track of it, so you're never torn between Jane Yolen and Patricia McKillip talking about new myths for old, and Terri Windling, Deb Notkin, and Tom Canty discussing the psychoactive qualities of fantasy.
In fact, Fourth Street Fantasy is a single conversation that starts on Friday evening and ends sometime on Sunday. The participants change over the course of the day and night, but each panel, each party, each conversation in the bar or the lobby or the hall adds to the members' accumulated knowledge and growing body of ideas and energy.
And it's a conversation, not a lecture. Small convention, smart membership, all of them interested in exploring the boundaries of fantastical storytelling, whether in literature, art, music, comics, or film. Discussing them interchangeably, all on the same panel, finding the things that unite the media of stories.
If I've made that sound highbrow and stodgy, I've done a bad job. Fourth Street is fun. The excitement of that three-day conversation, of being part of the voyage of discovery, is powerful stuff. And the people you'll be hanging out with are some of the most fascinating I've ever met.
Go. Have fun. Raise a glass to (temporarily) absent friends. I'll see you there!
Have I convinced you? There's still time to get a membership, and be part of the conversation. DO EEEET! You won't be sorry!
http://www.4thstreetfantasy.com/2016/
I want to tell you all to go to Fourth Street Fantasy Convention.
When I first went to a science fiction convention, my native guides assured me that no one went to programming. Now, the fact is, they were wrong even about the convention we were at, Minicon, and as a result, I missed opening ceremonies and the never-to-be-repeated spectacle of the Dancing Davids.
But Fourth Street is what happens when everyone goes to programming. A single track of it, so you're never torn between Jane Yolen and Patricia McKillip talking about new myths for old, and Terri Windling, Deb Notkin, and Tom Canty discussing the psychoactive qualities of fantasy.
In fact, Fourth Street Fantasy is a single conversation that starts on Friday evening and ends sometime on Sunday. The participants change over the course of the day and night, but each panel, each party, each conversation in the bar or the lobby or the hall adds to the members' accumulated knowledge and growing body of ideas and energy.
And it's a conversation, not a lecture. Small convention, smart membership, all of them interested in exploring the boundaries of fantastical storytelling, whether in literature, art, music, comics, or film. Discussing them interchangeably, all on the same panel, finding the things that unite the media of stories.
If I've made that sound highbrow and stodgy, I've done a bad job. Fourth Street is fun. The excitement of that three-day conversation, of being part of the voyage of discovery, is powerful stuff. And the people you'll be hanging out with are some of the most fascinating I've ever met.
Go. Have fun. Raise a glass to (temporarily) absent friends. I'll see you there!
Have I convinced you? There's still time to get a membership, and be part of the conversation. DO EEEET! You won't be sorry!
http://www.4thstreetfantasy.com/2016/
- Current Mood:
artistic
We're republishing most of the Liavek stories in handy short e-collections, and it's so much fun to revisit the world and see it through the eyes of all these great writers. Now I come before you to say:
There's another one out!
Re-read your favorites...or discover Liavek for the first time. I'm so glad these are back!
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Liavek-4-Emma-Bull-e
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/liavek-4-e
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/63
Clarification! These e-book volumes aren't the same as the paperback anthologies. The e-books contain fewer stories per volume, which allowed us to keep the price per volume down. So this is NOT the e-book version of Liavek: Spells of Binding. We're collecting all the stories for which the rights are available, and publishing them in order, but we're doing it in more, and shorter, volumes.
There's another one out!
Re-read your favorites...or discover Liavek for the first time. I'm so glad these are back!
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Liavek-4-Emma-Bull-e
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/liavek-4-e
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/63
Clarification! These e-book volumes aren't the same as the paperback anthologies. The e-books contain fewer stories per volume, which allowed us to keep the price per volume down. So this is NOT the e-book version of Liavek: Spells of Binding. We're collecting all the stories for which the rights are available, and publishing them in order, but we're doing it in more, and shorter, volumes.
It's been five days since I filed a tech support request about my charming Russian hackers. Here's what tech support said:
Nothing.
Not even a quick note to say, "Hey, there's nothing we can do. Change your password and delete the posts." Tech support, as you can pretty much guess by reading their FAQ, is mostly focused on making sure LJ users do everything right and have no trouble paying their bills. Since this doesn't fall into those categories of troubleshooting, it's not a trouble they're interested in shooting, it seems.
Well, all right, then. We live in functional anarchy here on LiveJournal, it seems, and are expected to solve our own problems. I'll remember that going forward.
Sadly, I doubt they'll reimburse me for the time spent deleting 20 posts in Cyrillic.
Update, 3/22: After I sent them an exasperated message of the "Hey! Anybody in there?" variety, tech support responded this morning with links to the relevant FAQs. I'm pretty sure I've done all the recommended things already, but hey, it's something.
Nothing.
Not even a quick note to say, "Hey, there's nothing we can do. Change your password and delete the posts." Tech support, as you can pretty much guess by reading their FAQ, is mostly focused on making sure LJ users do everything right and have no trouble paying their bills. Since this doesn't fall into those categories of troubleshooting, it's not a trouble they're interested in shooting, it seems.
Well, all right, then. We live in functional anarchy here on LiveJournal, it seems, and are expected to solve our own problems. I'll remember that going forward.
Sadly, I doubt they'll reimburse me for the time spent deleting 20 posts in Cyrillic.
Update, 3/22: After I sent them an exasperated message of the "Hey! Anybody in there?" variety, tech support responded this morning with links to the relevant FAQs. I'm pretty sure I've done all the recommended things already, but hey, it's something.
- Current Mood:
aggravated
Thank you all for the heads-up on various forums. I'm working on it!
Something over twenty years ago, Will and I lived upstairs in a fourplex in South Minneapolis. One day we parked behind the building and got out of the car to find a very small boy pointing a stick at us, glaring. "Ho'd it!" he shouted.
I don't remember how we responded, exactly, but since both of us had played army/spies/cowboys when we were that age, I expect we put our hands up and told him we were good guys, too. We saw him several times after that, Each time he pointed something at us and told us to "Ho'd it!" And we would.
"Ho'd it!" was a favorite line with us for many years after.
Yesterday evening I heard the news: a grand jury in Cleveland chose not to indict the officers involved in the murder of Tamir Rice. Rice was a little older than the kid behind our apartment building when he died. Still, all I could think of was that kid, playing the same game I did and almost every kid since me has, if they've read comics or watched TV and had a toy gun or a stick that could pass for one.
Yes, I've read the statements and seen the video. The police officer remembers shouting, "Show me your hands! Show me your hands!" over and over. But the video shows Tamir falling almost as soon as the police car door opens. (The video is not continuous, so we can only judge by what information appears in each frame.)
When Tamir Rice was playing with that toy pistol before the police drove up, was he shouting "Hold it!" to his imaginary bad guys?
When the police drove up to the park gazebo where Tamir was playing, did they shout "Hold it" before they opened fire?
I can list the things Tamir Rice shouldn't have done. He shouldn't have been playing with a toy pistol that had lost its orange barrel tip. He shouldn't have been playing with a toy pistol at all. He shouldn't have been big for his age. He shouldn't have moved once he saw the police, except to raise his empty hands over his head. He shouldn't have assumed he was safe from the police just because he wasn't breaking the law.
Not one of those things is illegal. Not one carries the death penalty. That's what makes his killing murder.
I'm still thinking about the little boy behind the fourplex in South Minneapolis. Did he grow up safe? If he did, has he had to tell his own kids never to play with a pretend gun outdoors, in public, where they might be murdered for it? When he was little, he understood that if you're one of the good guys, you warn your suspect before you pull the trigger. You shout, "Ho'd it!"
"Ho'd it." Hold it. Maybe that's still how we tell the good guys from the bad ones.
I don't remember how we responded, exactly, but since both of us had played army/spies/cowboys when we were that age, I expect we put our hands up and told him we were good guys, too. We saw him several times after that, Each time he pointed something at us and told us to "Ho'd it!" And we would.
"Ho'd it!" was a favorite line with us for many years after.
Yesterday evening I heard the news: a grand jury in Cleveland chose not to indict the officers involved in the murder of Tamir Rice. Rice was a little older than the kid behind our apartment building when he died. Still, all I could think of was that kid, playing the same game I did and almost every kid since me has, if they've read comics or watched TV and had a toy gun or a stick that could pass for one.
Yes, I've read the statements and seen the video. The police officer remembers shouting, "Show me your hands! Show me your hands!" over and over. But the video shows Tamir falling almost as soon as the police car door opens. (The video is not continuous, so we can only judge by what information appears in each frame.)
When Tamir Rice was playing with that toy pistol before the police drove up, was he shouting "Hold it!" to his imaginary bad guys?
When the police drove up to the park gazebo where Tamir was playing, did they shout "Hold it" before they opened fire?
I can list the things Tamir Rice shouldn't have done. He shouldn't have been playing with a toy pistol that had lost its orange barrel tip. He shouldn't have been playing with a toy pistol at all. He shouldn't have been big for his age. He shouldn't have moved once he saw the police, except to raise his empty hands over his head. He shouldn't have assumed he was safe from the police just because he wasn't breaking the law.
Not one of those things is illegal. Not one carries the death penalty. That's what makes his killing murder.
I'm still thinking about the little boy behind the fourplex in South Minneapolis. Did he grow up safe? If he did, has he had to tell his own kids never to play with a pretend gun outdoors, in public, where they might be murdered for it? When he was little, he understood that if you're one of the good guys, you warn your suspect before you pull the trigger. You shout, "Ho'd it!"
"Ho'd it." Hold it. Maybe that's still how we tell the good guys from the bad ones.
I'll be signing books for you and your deserving loved ones at the Holiday Geek Expo, Saturday December 5, from 2pm until, um, sometime! The Expo is held at the Doubletree Hotel, Bloomington, MN (otherwise known as the Minicon and CONvergence hotel). Bring books! And check out the other yummy gift-worthy things being sold by the fan-friendly crafters there.
For everyone I follow on Twitter who live-tweets the game.
Originally posted by
xkcd_rss at Play-By-Play
Originally posted by
xkcd_rss at Play-By-Play- Current Mood:no idea what that means
The Coffeeneuring Challenge is simple: seven weekends, seven different coffeeshops, each as part of a bike ride at least two miles long. (See the delightful Chasing Mailboxes blog for the whole skinny: http://chasingmailboxes.com/2015/09/19/c
My first coffeeneuring adventure was last year, as you can see in my posts from October to November. I coffeeneured unofficially, since I wasn't sure I'd be able to complete the seven weekends due to *cough* Minnesota *cough*. But the household's first fat bike rolled into our lives just in time for me to romp through a heavy snowfall for coffee.
This year I'm ready, and I'm official. I'll be documenting all seven rides in this post, so check back and follow the ongoing saga as the weather gets colder, the coffee gets stronger, and the bike tires get fatter. On to glory and possible caffeine poisoning!
Ride #1: The Creature Without a Name
Keen Eye Coffee is less than two miles from my house. Which would make it bad for coffeeneuring, except that it's on the way to my favorite piece of Minneapolis bike trail. Resolved: coffee first, ride after. Besides, when I started off it was 45 degrees plus the wind generated by my mighty pedaling, so really, riding down by the creek could wait until the sun had been up a smidge longer. I rode to Keen Eye, locked up outside...
...and had a lovely medium latte with an extra shot. I also had a piece of apple sweet potato pie with oat crumble topping, which was breakfast. Very nutritious, and so good I refuse to share even a photo of it with you. Get your own.
Keen Eye's corner isn't overflowing with bike parking, but I've never had a problem finding a spot to lock up.
After good coffee, food, and company, I backtracked to 27th Avenue (less traffic) and rode down to Lake Hiawatha and the spot where the bike/pedestrian trail crosses 28th. After the crossing, the trail swoops downhill in a lovely plunge to Minnehaha Creek and its fringes of trees and meadows. The Park Board plans to turn the 28th Avenue crossing into a bike/pedestrian underpass; then the plunge will be no more. I'll miss it, but it'll be safer to not have to count on traffic stopping at the crossing.
After that, there's just loveliness at every turn. Thank you, little creek, and the Minneapolis Park Board that looks after you.
The trail joins another one at the margin of Hiawatha Boulevard. One can turn right, top the rise, and reach the parkway and Minnehaha Falls for more madly scenic pedalling. I needed me some lunch, however, so I turned left to get to 46th Street, the light rail station, and the Hiawatha bikeway, with its broad lily leven leading me straight to he-- er, home.
Next week: More *gasp!* coffee! And biking!
My first coffeeneuring adventure was last year, as you can see in my posts from October to November. I coffeeneured unofficially, since I wasn't sure I'd be able to complete the seven weekends due to *cough* Minnesota *cough*. But the household's first fat bike rolled into our lives just in time for me to romp through a heavy snowfall for coffee.
This year I'm ready, and I'm official. I'll be documenting all seven rides in this post, so check back and follow the ongoing saga as the weather gets colder, the coffee gets stronger, and the bike tires get fatter. On to glory and possible caffeine poisoning!
Ride #1: The Creature Without a Name
Keen Eye Coffee is less than two miles from my house. Which would make it bad for coffeeneuring, except that it's on the way to my favorite piece of Minneapolis bike trail. Resolved: coffee first, ride after. Besides, when I started off it was 45 degrees plus the wind generated by my mighty pedaling, so really, riding down by the creek could wait until the sun had been up a smidge longer. I rode to Keen Eye, locked up outside...
...and had a lovely medium latte with an extra shot. I also had a piece of apple sweet potato pie with oat crumble topping, which was breakfast. Very nutritious, and so good I refuse to share even a photo of it with you. Get your own.
Keen Eye's corner isn't overflowing with bike parking, but I've never had a problem finding a spot to lock up.
After good coffee, food, and company, I backtracked to 27th Avenue (less traffic) and rode down to Lake Hiawatha and the spot where the bike/pedestrian trail crosses 28th. After the crossing, the trail swoops downhill in a lovely plunge to Minnehaha Creek and its fringes of trees and meadows. The Park Board plans to turn the 28th Avenue crossing into a bike/pedestrian underpass; then the plunge will be no more. I'll miss it, but it'll be safer to not have to count on traffic stopping at the crossing.
After that, there's just loveliness at every turn. Thank you, little creek, and the Minneapolis Park Board that looks after you.
The trail joins another one at the margin of Hiawatha Boulevard. One can turn right, top the rise, and reach the parkway and Minnehaha Falls for more madly scenic pedalling. I needed me some lunch, however, so I turned left to get to 46th Street, the light rail station, and the Hiawatha bikeway, with its broad lily leven leading me straight to he-- er, home.
Next week: More *gasp!* coffee! And biking!
- Current Mood:
accomplished
In which Pope Francis unintentionally reveals the joys of a pedestrian- and bike-friendly city, and Kyle Cassidy muses wisely and asks questions that are worth considering. With pretty photos.
Originally posted by
kylecassidy at Mayor Nutter's Unexpected Gift to Philadelphia
Sometimes a disaster produces beneficial side effects that could never be otherwise experienced because of the terrible cost. When the FAA shut down all airline traffic after 9/11 scientists got their first chance to study the effect of airplane contrails on temperature.
This weekend the Pope came to Philly and the city shut down virtually every bus, train, and street for three days -- the bridge between New Jersey and Philadelphia was closed, concrete barricades went up at major intersections, "Walking Dead" jokes abounded on the news media and the city got a chance to see what a life without cars might be like. Runners and cyclists spilled out onto the streets, joyfully running and biking in places that are normally both unsafe and illegal.
Running across the bridge to New Jersey.
When the Pope's visit was announced, Philadelphians were on the whole very happy about the idea. But as plans progressed and the city announced seemingly more and more bizarre security measures people got either outraged or incredulous, depending on the makeup of your Facebook feed. One of the most baffling was the plan to shut down the Benjamin Franklin bridge and have pilgrims park in Camden and walk three miles in to see the Pope and then three miles back. Early plans were to install TSA style screening on the bridge which the city said would be performing more security checks than the airport during that time.
Clever people mocked the city's planning producing things like this map:
Certainly if terrorists had been able to shut down every street in the city, block traffic, and cut it off from New Jersey for three days they'd be pleased with themselves. We got our car free experience at a significant cost to businesses who lost untold amounts of money, some closed because workers couldn't get in to the city and others who did open found that nobody was shopping.
I'd been initially planning on locking myself into my house and watching Netflix for three days, but when initial reports started to come in from runners about the multi-million dollar limited time playground open in center city, I jumped into my shoes with the West Philadelphia Runners and we ran an amazed route through the city, proverbially slack jawed with disbelief at the pedestrian wonderland which had opened up.
No wait at the Genius Bar.
Employees at the completely empty Apple store
stand at the window and wave to people.
The city's newly formed Indego Bike Share shined during this time, setting up permanently open kiosks with people to check in bikes even if all the racks were full. The able bodied rejoiced while the most Catholic people I know stayed home, scared off by the through of trying to push a wheelchair for six miles, navigate closed streets and go through unknown TSA security checkpoints.
Route 76, the normally jam-packed beltway around the city was shut down.
It was a runner's paradise in many ways, one of which was the installation of thousands of portable toilets all throughout the city as well as massive icebergs of free bottled water at strategic locations. These are things that runners want often, people walking miles want eventually and homeless people want constantly. By providing public amenities in vast quantities our eyes were open to how much we were missing constantly. Runners map water fountains and plan their runs around them -- access to public water is a sadly rare thing.
The race course everybody wants.
We saw for the first time how long it actually takes to get places on foot without traffic lights. I'd recently just experienced this in Wyoming, where you can point to a spot three miles away and know pretty much exactly how long it will take you to get there. I discovered that things were much closer to my house than I'd realized, that the density of the city and, especially the impact of cars, stretches miles. That much of our time moving in a city is actually spent standing still in an incredibly inefficient way. Our run to the bridge, which I think of as "There be Dragons" far from me took much less time than I'd expected.
The shutdown brought things closer together, it brought us together, even if as gawkers, to meet one another, we got to see a city as it could be, and as a lot of people have envisioned a city as being -- truly walkable, truly bikeable, uncongested.
You may have seen this photo from the Australia Cycling Promotion Fund showing the amount of space taken up by pedestrians, busses, bicycles, and cars:
This is the world we live in and for a moment, we got the chance to see other options. Years ago, playing Sim City, I designed a city with only public transportation, cars were parked in a ring outside. My city had extremely low pollution levels but the rents skyrocketed and eventually I was hung in effigy, but I do imagine this type of world where streets are limited to mass transit, delivery and emergency vehicles. I've never known though if it would work -- and I still don't. If this persisted would the Mayor become a hero or would the city just die? I don't know.
All traffic in and out of the city, shut down.
There's a huge down side to this as well. I don't know if anybody will ever be able to accurately figure out how much this experiment cost the city. I've read that among the hidden costs, 75% of the babies born that weekend weren't able to be born in the hospital of their parents choice because of transportation difficulties.
The West Philly Runners on the Ben Franklin Bridge.
Philadelphia's expanding it's bike and pedestrian trails, we have miles and miles of them along the Schuylkill river, though for the most part, they go to nothing -- they're recreational rather than functional paths. What would it be like to be able to easily and safely bike to center city? Having seen free and open streets, can we now be satisfied without at least protected bicycle lanes? Is it the job of a city to encourage people to adopt healthy lifestyles? There are obvious financial benefits To encourage walking and biking
This thing wasn't the thing that the Mayor thought he was giving us. But having seen it, we want it, I want it anyway. I know that the thing we have now isn't the thing that I want.
Add me: [LiveJournal] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Google+] [Tumblr]
Originally posted by
kylecassidy at Mayor Nutter's Unexpected Gift to PhiladelphiaSometimes a disaster produces beneficial side effects that could never be otherwise experienced because of the terrible cost. When the FAA shut down all airline traffic after 9/11 scientists got their first chance to study the effect of airplane contrails on temperature.
This weekend the Pope came to Philly and the city shut down virtually every bus, train, and street for three days -- the bridge between New Jersey and Philadelphia was closed, concrete barricades went up at major intersections, "Walking Dead" jokes abounded on the news media and the city got a chance to see what a life without cars might be like. Runners and cyclists spilled out onto the streets, joyfully running and biking in places that are normally both unsafe and illegal.
Running across the bridge to New Jersey.
When the Pope's visit was announced, Philadelphians were on the whole very happy about the idea. But as plans progressed and the city announced seemingly more and more bizarre security measures people got either outraged or incredulous, depending on the makeup of your Facebook feed. One of the most baffling was the plan to shut down the Benjamin Franklin bridge and have pilgrims park in Camden and walk three miles in to see the Pope and then three miles back. Early plans were to install TSA style screening on the bridge which the city said would be performing more security checks than the airport during that time.
Clever people mocked the city's planning producing things like this map:
Certainly if terrorists had been able to shut down every street in the city, block traffic, and cut it off from New Jersey for three days they'd be pleased with themselves. We got our car free experience at a significant cost to businesses who lost untold amounts of money, some closed because workers couldn't get in to the city and others who did open found that nobody was shopping.
I'd been initially planning on locking myself into my house and watching Netflix for three days, but when initial reports started to come in from runners about the multi-million dollar limited time playground open in center city, I jumped into my shoes with the West Philadelphia Runners and we ran an amazed route through the city, proverbially slack jawed with disbelief at the pedestrian wonderland which had opened up.
No wait at the Genius Bar.
Employees at the completely empty Apple store
stand at the window and wave to people.
The city's newly formed Indego Bike Share shined during this time, setting up permanently open kiosks with people to check in bikes even if all the racks were full. The able bodied rejoiced while the most Catholic people I know stayed home, scared off by the through of trying to push a wheelchair for six miles, navigate closed streets and go through unknown TSA security checkpoints.
Route 76, the normally jam-packed beltway around the city was shut down.
It was a runner's paradise in many ways, one of which was the installation of thousands of portable toilets all throughout the city as well as massive icebergs of free bottled water at strategic locations. These are things that runners want often, people walking miles want eventually and homeless people want constantly. By providing public amenities in vast quantities our eyes were open to how much we were missing constantly. Runners map water fountains and plan their runs around them -- access to public water is a sadly rare thing.
The race course everybody wants.
We saw for the first time how long it actually takes to get places on foot without traffic lights. I'd recently just experienced this in Wyoming, where you can point to a spot three miles away and know pretty much exactly how long it will take you to get there. I discovered that things were much closer to my house than I'd realized, that the density of the city and, especially the impact of cars, stretches miles. That much of our time moving in a city is actually spent standing still in an incredibly inefficient way. Our run to the bridge, which I think of as "There be Dragons" far from me took much less time than I'd expected.
The shutdown brought things closer together, it brought us together, even if as gawkers, to meet one another, we got to see a city as it could be, and as a lot of people have envisioned a city as being -- truly walkable, truly bikeable, uncongested.
You may have seen this photo from the Australia Cycling Promotion Fund showing the amount of space taken up by pedestrians, busses, bicycles, and cars:
This is the world we live in and for a moment, we got the chance to see other options. Years ago, playing Sim City, I designed a city with only public transportation, cars were parked in a ring outside. My city had extremely low pollution levels but the rents skyrocketed and eventually I was hung in effigy, but I do imagine this type of world where streets are limited to mass transit, delivery and emergency vehicles. I've never known though if it would work -- and I still don't. If this persisted would the Mayor become a hero or would the city just die? I don't know.
All traffic in and out of the city, shut down.
There's a huge down side to this as well. I don't know if anybody will ever be able to accurately figure out how much this experiment cost the city. I've read that among the hidden costs, 75% of the babies born that weekend weren't able to be born in the hospital of their parents choice because of transportation difficulties.
The West Philly Runners on the Ben Franklin Bridge.
Philadelphia's expanding it's bike and pedestrian trails, we have miles and miles of them along the Schuylkill river, though for the most part, they go to nothing -- they're recreational rather than functional paths. What would it be like to be able to easily and safely bike to center city? Having seen free and open streets, can we now be satisfied without at least protected bicycle lanes? Is it the job of a city to encourage people to adopt healthy lifestyles? There are obvious financial benefits To encourage walking and biking
This thing wasn't the thing that the Mayor thought he was giving us. But having seen it, we want it, I want it anyway. I know that the thing we have now isn't the thing that I want.
Add me: [LiveJournal] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Google+] [Tumblr]
- Current Mood:
impressed
Toby left us today around 3 p.m., at home. As I said to Will, matter can't be created or destroyed, so he'll always be the best cat in the universe.
I want to tell you all the things that made him singular and wonderful, but they look so small written down. And they're so big in my heart.
He is so big in my heart.
I want to tell you all the things that made him singular and wonderful, but they look so small written down. And they're so big in my heart.
He is so big in my heart.
A lot of other SF and fantasy authors could, though, and I'd admire the heck out of 'em for it. But they don't have to.
Archerfish. Seriously. Who would have thought?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2
Archerfish. Seriously. Who would have thought?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2
- Current Mood: impressed
- Current Mood: hopeful
I have this friend. She used to sew wedding gowns for a living. Yes, the equivalent of walking into a war zone armed only with a sewing machine and a pincushion.
So you know she's tough, and damned good at what she does. What she does, among other things, is design and sew amazing, useful bags of holding in a variety of configurations. She designed a Perky Goth shoulder bag for me that's one of the most versatile hauling devices I've ever had, and, thank gawd, it refuses to wear out.
Go check out her cool stuf: https://www.etsy.com/shop/XOStudioClothi
So you know she's tough, and damned good at what she does. What she does, among other things, is design and sew amazing, useful bags of holding in a variety of configurations. She designed a Perky Goth shoulder bag for me that's one of the most versatile hauling devices I've ever had, and, thank gawd, it refuses to wear out.
Go check out her cool stuf: https://www.etsy.com/shop/XOStudioClothi
- Current Mood: busy
- Current Music:Post-modern Jukebox, "Talk Dirty to Me"
Now you can have one!
His life is a race against time. And time is winning.
He was a prince, until his world was plunged into civil war. He was a son, until he discovered his mother’s secret. He was an exile, until he became Niki Falcon, piloting a ship linked to his nervous system, crossing light-years in a breath, addicted to the drug that makes it all possible.
Now he needs to free a planet. But to save Lamia and defeat its enemy, Niki Falcon needs to cheat both physics and death...
A Locus Recommended Novel for 1989
New York Public Library list of best books for young adults, 1989
“Ms. Bull has an unabashed enthusiasm for the mythic dimensions of adventure fiction.” —The New York Times Book Review
“I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how the story was going to end... Bull knows how to fit bombshells in unobtrusively, then explode them at exactly the right moment.” —Locus magazine
"Absorbing...Entrancing." —Lois McMaster Bujold
“Emma Bull is one of the best writers working today. She combines an elegant style with high adventure and thoughtful speculation. Falcon is one of my favorite novels. Read it.” — Steven Brust
“Falcon soars! Exciting, evocative, and entertaining. I couldn’t put it down!” —Chris Claremont
“A taut and chilling SF adventure. Bull is outstanding among the new generation of writers.” —Julian May
"Stark and strong: Strict science fiction, purely myth. A perfect novel!" —R. A. MacAvoy
Currently available for $3.99 at
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Falcon-Emma-Bull-e
Barnes and Noble
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Falcon-Emma-Bull-e
Barnes and Noble
His life is a race against time. And time is winning.
He was a prince, until his world was plunged into civil war. He was a son, until he discovered his mother’s secret. He was an exile, until he became Niki Falcon, piloting a ship linked to his nervous system, crossing light-years in a breath, addicted to the drug that makes it all possible.
Now he needs to free a planet. But to save Lamia and defeat its enemy, Niki Falcon needs to cheat both physics and death...
•
A Locus Recommended Novel for 1989
New York Public Library list of best books for young adults, 1989
“Ms. Bull has an unabashed enthusiasm for the mythic dimensions of adventure fiction.” —The New York Times Book Review
“I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how the story was going to end... Bull knows how to fit bombshells in unobtrusively, then explode them at exactly the right moment.” —Locus magazine
"Absorbing...Entrancing." —Lois McMaster Bujold
“Emma Bull is one of the best writers working today. She combines an elegant style with high adventure and thoughtful speculation. Falcon is one of my favorite novels. Read it.” — Steven Brust
“Falcon soars! Exciting, evocative, and entertaining. I couldn’t put it down!” —Chris Claremont
“A taut and chilling SF adventure. Bull is outstanding among the new generation of writers.” —Julian May
"Stark and strong: Strict science fiction, purely myth. A perfect novel!" —R. A. MacAvoy
