Advocacy

This evening, I will join members of the Tempe Bicycle Action Group at a special City Council meeting to speak in favor of a proposed plan to create a free local area shuttle that will provide service along a north-south corridor that is the main transportation corridor for people who travel by bicycle. In the past couple of years, I have realized that if I am to be politically active about anything, the number one thing I want to get involved in is the promotion of alternative transportation. It's especially important for all of the people who just don't have the option of driving--kids, the elderly, the disabled.

I was fortunate to grow up in a city with excellent public transportation, and to attend college in a town with equally good public transportation. In contrast, it has been much more difficult to adapt to life in the desert without a car. Compared to its neighbors, Tempe is already doing a much better job of promoting alt-trans, but the current project is facing opposition from a very vocal minority that is concerned that free shuttles will bring social problems to the neighborhood. On top of that, one of their major arguments is that the shuttles will interfere with the bike lanes along the road. So it's especially important as a biker to speak up in favor of introducing the shuttle (I can't tell you how helpful it could have been for the past four years, and, having biked through the neighborhood where the free shuttle already runs, I can say with confidence that it posed a very minor inconvenience for bikers).

Each person will have three minutes to speak at the meeting, so I'm starting to speech-write in my head. This is going to be quite interesting, but exciting. I hope that Tempe is able to continue to reinvent itself into a model community for this part of Arizona, and able to effectively serve both the long-time residents and the new people who continue to move into the area.

Heritage; the reflective life

I have been thinking about my heritage quite a bit recently, inspired by conversations with both figment80 and J, both of whom seem to be struggling to come to terms with the ideals and lifestyles they have inherited from their parents. figment80 pointed out that we are all very lucky to be in situations where we have the time and space to reflect on our upbringings, because we are in school and aren't trying to reflect and reinvent on top of having kids and raising families, activities that leave little space for thinking.

Probably the most interesting piece of this has do to with figuring out what we each appreciate from how we were raised, versus what things we seek to do differently. My impression from my parents is that my father is a very different person from his parents, and that when he was around my age he had a series of revelatory experiences that strongly shaped his lifestyle to be distinctly different from the lifestyle he grew up with. Oh, there are still many hints of his upbringing, but I think he, too, had to sit down and consider what things to hold on to, and what things to change. I believe that figment80 is also going through a sorting, an inventory, and one that is made quite challenging by the pace of her family's interactions and situations. Likewise, J talks a lot about how his family interacts (or fails to interact), and how he is thus trying to deal with his relationship with his family. Half of the time, the small, simple things that I do are novel revelations to him--gardening, for example.

Really, the most amazing aspect of all of this is that as I get older, I've come to appreciate so many more of the aspects of the way I was raised by my parents, and rather than trying to change many of those aspects, I instead get to learn to celebrate them. As a simple example, I grew up in a household without (much) television (we did have a TV with the bunny-ears broken off that got 1 or 2 channels, but we were discouraged from watching it). As a kid, it was one of the worst possible forms of deprivation--oh how we suffered! We had to read books instead, or go outside and play in the yard. The horrors! Whenever acquaintances would have conversations about the lives of popular TV characters (which is way more often than you think, and very boring for the uninformed), I would be completely and unhappily left out of the loop--I never knew that line from the Simpsons or that episode of Friends. But now that I live by myself again, without a TV, I don't miss it a single bit. There are so many other things to see and do, and I'd rather read a book or pet my cat or have a conversation than sit in front of a glowing box and have my life hijacked by its flashing lights and sounds.

This is the greatest gift of all that my parents have given to me--a heritage that feels right and that I want to celebrate and share with others. My friends' struggles reveal to me all the more strongly what an incredible gift this is. I just hope that with the strength of living a life that feels authentic and right I can also continue to support them in finding the life that is right for them as well.

Oh crap1

Happy belated birthday to bluepapercup! Here's to years and years of wonderful, enlightening friendship, celebrated not just on your day of birth, but every day. :)