Baltimore is sustainable?

After being away for five years, it’s nice to come home to good news about how Baltimore is helping the environment — and how Charm City is getting recognition for it. Sustain Lane named Baltimore the 11th most sustainable city among the largest 50 US cities this year:

Baltimore’s identity as a working-class port town is undergoing a transformation, as downtown is revitalized, empty lots are converted to community gardens, and shipping centers are transformed into waterfront residential neighborhoods. The renovated waterfront is now also home to museums, cruise operations, retail stores, and restaurants. It’s an affordable city that offers a strong public transportation system, abundant options for locally grown food, and a variety of attractive public parks.

One more reason to be proud to be from Charm City. I’m not too ashamed to admit that some national recognition for something besides our murder rate makes me even more proud.

I love you, New York.

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I had too much fun in New York — even amidst getting more work done there than I hoped — to begin writing about it very much this morning. I am listening to the Indigo Girls to calm down so I can get back to work and get a small project finished.

I am glad that Daylight Savings Time is over so that the sun is there to greet me when I wake up on weekdays. I like to leave the window open an inch or two at night, and the cold air and lack of sun really don’t help to make me want to get out of my warm bed. I have to put my alarm clock several feet away to make sure I leave the bed. It’s one of those models from Ikea where you can record your own greeting, and I recorded an annoying one that I can’t wait to hush when it goes off. It helps, really, it does.

Off to New York.

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We are off to New York in the morning for three days, at least two of which will be spent on work. Reading in different places in different cities this fall has been fun so far. And I think we get a few hours to check out the leaves in Central Park on Saturday before our train home. Our hotel is right across from the train station, and they have a 24-hour diner that brings “healthy” food to your room. Veggie burgers from diners are always awesome. Especially with fries and five cups of coffee.

Five cups, which is how many pint-mugs I have had today of French press coffee. Two and a half presses full.  Too much maybe, but I don’t care. I get work done, and that is the most important thing until this dissertation is overwith. A state I can’t wait to get to.

Not that I would venture to compare myself to Nietzsche in quantity or quality of thought, but he travelled a lot when he was working. And it feels like I am at least in good company spending so much time reading all of his work over again in a nomadic fashion:)  Don’t know what that means.
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I have not been to New York in two years, and had never really been back then in 2004, despite being through it so many times and spending nearly my entire life on the East Coast. Then, I lived in a small town, and the whole Big Apple was a Big Shock. I wonder what it will be like now that I have been back home in Baltimore for over two months.

And I wonder if I might find some goodies at The Strand (where I have never been) or a really cool stationery shop I found in 2004. I have been doing a good job of not wasting money this fall (despite my new fascination with “craft beers” and pint cans), and I need to get some Moleskine-related holiday gifts for some folks. Not to mention my perpetually-growing library that I compulsively contribute to everytime I go somewhere. I scored a great deal at the Yale Bookstore two weeks ago in New Haven and found a copy of Walden Pond: A History for $10 — new. I have only read half of it, but I am enjoying it. And I get to go to Walden Pond in two weeks, so it’s very fitting.

TIMAB* ii: Walking.

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[See TIMAB i.]

I had missed a lot of things about Baltimore during my five years away. But I have been too busy enjoying them for the two and half months that I have been back home to really blog much about it. Or even think that much about it. But I can’t keep silent about how much I missed walking around this city.

When I was a little guy in Hampden, I walked everywhere. To one of several local markets. A block and a half to St. Thomas Aquinas to go to school. I used to walk to B&J Bookstore on the corner of Roland and The Avenue (not there anymore) each weekend for the “Final” edition of The Baltimore Sun for our elderly neighbor and my Mom, and also on Saturday. Running errands for my parents, like picking out greeting cards from the shop that used to be run by a mother and daughter. It was fun, and it kept me thin and fit. Don’t get me wrong, I used to love to ride bikes and ride in my Dad’s Blazer with 99.1 on during the rides to high school on Mondays and in my Mom’s van with the plush seats. I still like to sit in the back of cars with music and open windows, more than I ever did to drive that way.

My rocky love affair with automobiles aside, I’ve always enjoyed walking. I walked everywhere when I lived in Boston/Quincy — aided by the subway, of course. I think I never liked where I lived in Carbondale because there was literally nowhere to walk around my apartment. I got jealous when I was in town around the residential neighborhoods full of sidewalks and people in other parts of Carbondale. Once a crazy lady braved two sets of those rumble strips and almost flattened the wife and I on the shoulder of our street, on a clear and sunny day. Biking was more fun there.

I love my bike, but I have not ridden it in nearly three weeks. For my neighborhood of Roland Park (the Southern part of it), it’s usually simpler to just walk wherever I want to go. There are two large markets, several coffee shops, parks, the Light Rail, friends and family, libraries, bookstores — all within a mile walk, which is nothing distance-wise to the Mrs. and I. I hated driving around places like Canton, and I still hate to be in a car there, since the place was obviously not built for all those cars. It’s so walkable, but there are still several SVUs for each small [quarter million dollar] house there to fight for parking spots. Seriously, you can barely drive down my grandmother’s street, and they frequently just block and park in allies.

I try not to have anything against cars or the people who own them. My friends and family think it’s crazy that I won’t own one and like to walk everywhere, even in rain and at night. I think they’re crazy to drive 1/3 of a mile all the time. Whatever. I won’t get preachy about the carfree life.

I’m just happy to be back in Baltimore, and back on my feet.

*[Things I missed about Baltimore.]

Hotel view, New Haven.

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I hope it comes out, but there was this one clump of very orange leaves in a field of green when we were in New Haven last week. The huge windows only opened up about ten inches. So I could not get both my head and camera-arm out at the time. I tried, though, much to the amusement of people below.

[View larger at Flickr.]

Life as a turtle.

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You’d think with all the time I have spent at home this week, I would have blogged more.  Hell, I never left the apartment, let alone the building, Tuesday and Wednesday.  But you know.   Have to be careful to stay sane when reading Nietzsche, i.e., not to be charmed into becoming Nietzsche or like Nietzsche or even Friedrich-esque.  Have to get work done because we are travelling to New York at the end of next week.  Get to visit some library in Harlem, where I have never been.  Harlem, I mean.  I have been getting work done on trains lately, but the ride from Baltimore to New York on the Acela Regional is pretty short.  Nice, though.

Then a wedding, for which I am totally going to be rocking a hemp suit and heavy beard.  The event is very black-tie, too.  At least I will wear shoes and socks.  Maybe I’ll even trim the wirey fuzzies that are obscuring my eyes.  Though they do bring out the green in my eyes, with the redness of my beard and the whole complimentary color spectrum dealy or some other.  We’ll see.  I don’t even own any shaving cream.

Waste not.

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I am weirded out by how long I have looked forward to this fall. Last year, at the end of fall, I decided to come home to Baltimore. While two years ago there was a beautiful autumn in the Heartland, last year was disappointing — though I will readily admit that this is largely because of my own issues with the car, bikes, moving, lack of vocational satisfaction, etc. I have been thinking about this fall so much that I am missing it now that it is here. I keep waiting for it. Longing for it. Wanting it to get colder and redder and more smokey and to have the excuse to drink chai tea and pumpkin spice coffee and read Thoreau in the evenings. Hell, we just put our fall decorations out like two days ago, and my favorite mug in the world with the quotation from Thoreau’s “Autumnal Tints” just made its appearance late last week.

Well I don’t want to miss this fall anymore.

It was nice to have a slower afternoon today at home, in the rain. Lots of chai tea and Nietzsche. Too much of one of those two things, really. But a lot of work done and fall appreciated nonetheless. Waste is a big kept-to-myself-in-my-head topic lately. Like wasting too much time schoolin’ and wasting too much time thinking about environmentally friendly pens and what jobs I want to look into. Wasting too much time waiting for specific signals that I can celebrate fall to finally enjoy it. Me want no waste. Not.

Happy Birthday, Fritz.

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On this date in 1844, Friedright Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in Saxony. It’s no secret that among my philosophical heroes, I have always counted Nietzsche. No matter what William James says about him. No matter how much of a brat he seems like at times. Or what that T-shirt says about who got the last word.

My undergraduate institution was a virtual Nietzsche hotbed, with his 150th birthday being celebrated there in 1994, while I was still in high school. My Nietzsche professor had a stuffed serpent and eagle that he brought in. I brought in my stuffed beaver. With my dissertation work, I am in an autumn of Nietzsche Nietzsche Nietzsche.

If Fritz were like Beetle Juice, he’d come forth from the pages from such a triple mention of his name. He would chide me for the stupid things I worry about and let control me. I’d tell him that Emerson (whom he loved) was great, but he should have read Thoreau, too. And Whitman. We would drink some tea and take a long walk around Roland Park and Hampden, and he would enjoy the crispness of the fall day we are having. I’d make us a pasta dish from scratch. Maybe a nice beer or two.

It’s strange that I went to Carbondale to study William James and the Pragmatists and left with a dissertation prospectus approved to study Nietzsche (and the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, or some other pacifist). Maybe only strange to me, though. It’s not like it was not a Nietzsche friendly department. Plenty of followers of Dionysus there.
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Incidentally, if you are looking for some nice fall reading, Curtis Cate’s recent biography of Nietzsche is worth a [long] read. He’s not quite “charitable” to Lou or to Fritz’s sister, but they were…not nice. I wrote an encyclopedia article about his sister that should come out soon, I think. Nasty woman.

Haven.

Me off to New Haven to accompany the Mrs. on a research trip.  Only one night, but we get to have dinner with a former professor who is very nice, and I think Thai was mentioned.  That makes me happy.  And trains.

Good practice for a longer trip to my old home of Boston in two weeks for more work.  I hope we get time to have fun somewhere in there.

Baltimore, I am glad your weather will be so cool when I get back.  That’s kind of you.

Festivals, faking and regular dudes.

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I have always had a thing for fall festivals. One of the things I miss the most out of the things I miss (yes, I miss things about it) about life in Southern Illinois is the Makanda Vulture Fest, which I mentioned last year. Luckily, when I went in 2005, I had not decided to move yet and did not know it would be the last time I would be there and did not make it a sad time but instead a fun time.

Still, the Fell’s Point Fesitval (started in the 1960s to keep historic Fell’s Point from becoming the location of a highway) has always been my favorite. It usually involved a girl who was not there, until my wife and I had our first real “date” there in 1997. I had to miss it in 2001 and 2002 when I lived in Boston, but we caught it in 2003, since we got married in Maryland that weekend and stayed at the Admiral Fell Inn. Missed it the next two years, but we returned for good this year.

The constant rain and my stupid decision to leave behind my umbrella did not ruin it at all. I am still so estatic to be home and amidst hippies and hipsters and even annoying yuppies and bobos that I really wanted to go to the festival just to be there. It reminds me that it feels good to be back in a state/region where the current campaign ads run like, “This dude loves Bush, and that’s bad. Vote for me,” or, “This guy supported the war; he’s a traitor. I’m your man!” Etc. You couldn’t run an ad like that in the Heartland and expect any votes, at least not in my experience. On the other hand, people did not seem to get into such viciously personal attacks on one another’s appearance there, either, like in the Maryland Comptroller primary. So there you go. Campaign seasons are not fun anywhere.

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On Sunday, we went to a very different kind of festival, one that was out in the country and involved apples in a major way. I was a little weirded out at first by the fact that my wife was the only non-white person there for half of the time we were present, and there were more people there than at the Fell’s Point Festival. Despite being in PA, all the bands had “Southern” in their names — really. There were a lot of…moustaches and sweatshirts. Everything that was not apples or a Southern cover band was devoted to cooking dead things on big fires, making scrapple (!) in a tub the size of a Prius and all these weird antique gas engines and old tractors. I know, so what the hell was I doing there?

Some very nice family members invited us, and I will go anywhere if I like who I am going with. I think I can enjoy anything if I enjoy the company. And good food only seals the deal. I like festival food, especially fall festival food. Sweet potatoe French fries. Pumpkin funnel cake. Pumpkin! I think the unexpected heat, having to pee and being very tired made me a little cranky at the end, but I can admit to having a good time at something that no one would expect to find me at. And I can admit to knowing ahead of time that I would have a good time, too. Time.

I like to harbor the pretense that I can be a regular guy. I mean, I can boast to having cemented something, to being married, to having a semi-religious upbringing, to watching the news and enjoying pizza to no end. I like craft beers best, but I drank several pitchers of Coors Lite two weeks ago at a bullroast. I can bullshit all night with scout leaders who are somehow partly: war veterans, Republicans, homophobes, Coors-drinkers, devoted religious leaders, religious hypocrites, genuinely devoted religious people in a good way, etc. And all of them are really a combination of several such traits and more that are unlike me and mine. But we can talk all night about a billion things — not politics, though.

That speaks to a certain flexibility, no? Or perhaps a certain facelessness? A regularity? A prodigious ability to fake it?

One time I was at an event where the speaker was House Rep. E. Cummings from Maryland. He urged the young people there to, “Fake it ’til you make it!” I thought it was a strange — if not stupid — thing to say at the time. But maybe faking is a way to ease into a situation? Like pretending you like someone when you first meet, until you really do like them? Faking it is the best way to ease into being a regular guy? Maybe. If you wanna be regular. Or, as we say in Baltimore, “Reg-ah-lur.”

I love you, Baltimore.

Photo Friday: Thin.

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This is the thinnest statue of St. Francis I have ever seen. I’ve never seen him quite fat, but this one looks like an ascetic, which is contrary to the jovial tone of Francis’ life. He had that famous mitfreude attitude wherein he celebrated everything good with all of creation and such. Even though I can’t count myself a member of the Catholic Church anymore, I always remember his feast day (Oct. 4th), the same day as my anniversary — which I certainly cannot forget.

For Photo Friday: Thin.

[Larger image at Flickr.]

Bike name.

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So, the name of my new bike. After taking the bike home Sunday, we were at Chili’s having chips and beers while we waited for our food, and I wanted to name my ride. I never really named my last bike, though I threw around Jub Jub, lizard of the ugly sisters-in-law on “The Simpsons.” I also considered Snowball III, since the black Focus was Snowball II, like Lisa’s second kitty of the same name who was a black kitty like the car was black and was the replacement for something that died, like the first Focus that got smashed by an SUV and an old man.

My wife’s bike is named Eleanor Roosevelt. Seriously.

I suggested Hudson, since I bought it at Hudson Trail Outfitters, where I now have a lifetime membership and where I get free tune-ups for the life of my bike. It’s sort of like a local REI that has a few stores around the Washington DC area. For getting a new bike, they give you $30 toward a new helmet, which is very nice if you have an ugly white helmet like I did and you see a pretty $40 helmet that you can score for a ten-spot. And the free tune-up thing is awesome. It will save me $50 a pop, $60 if I were not a member. And I take the bike in at least twice a year. Membership was $15, but I have $20 in store bucks already, so I came out ahead already.

And they have a program whereby your bike “computer” is free if you put at least 150 miles on it in a year. If I’m in a riding mood, I easily put 5-10 on a light ride, more if I am going somewhere. You bring it in after a year, and you get store bucks for the price of your computer. Mine was not very expensive at all, but their efforts to get people to ride their bikes warmed my pedals. Plus it’s a fun toy to have. For instance, I know that my top speed on the way to the library yesterday was 28 mph, with an average speed of 10 mph going back uphill to my apartment, and I know I rode a mere 4 miles.

However, Hudson sounds very yuppy-ish, and I live in Roland Park as it is. I can’t ride around on a bike named Hudson with a straight face.

So, my bike’s name. The Hudson Trail was on York Road in Towson. One of my favorite campfire songs has always been “The Grand Old Duke of York:”

The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men.
He marched them up the hill
And marched them down again.

And when you’re up, you’re up;
And when you’re down, you’re down.
But when you’re only halfway up,
You’re neither up nor down!

Usually, you stand for “up” and sit for “down,” and you go faster or more country or more British or German, and it’s a good time. Yeah. So, because I bought it on York Road and because of that song, my bike is called The Duke. Sometimes Duke for short, if he is the subject of a sentence. Always The Duke when he’s the direct or indirect object. Respect and all that.

Yes, my bike is a dude. He does not look like a female bike. It’s way less…cute than my old bike and much more dudely and bad-ass for a commuter bike. It’s much darker than in the stock image above from Giant. The darker silver is almost grey. Would look awesome with a pirate flag. If I put my back-rack on for carrying my crap, I will need some skull stickers, or the Anarchist stickers my friend Brian sent me a few months ago. Or a Clash or Ramones sticker. Maybe both.

New bike.

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Got me a new bike yesterday, which has already been on two rides. I got another Giant Cypress DX (2006 this time). I looked at a lot of other bikes, since I know more about what I want than I did last fall when I bought the other one after ten years of not riding. But when it came down to it, I really liked my bike, and I couldn’t see a reason to get anything different on my modest student budget.

The rims and trim are black, while the rest is silver (two kinds of silver). Better photos to come, eventually. It’s kinda stuck in the living room with the Mrs.’ bike right now, since the building’s bike room is now a no-no. So photos would be bad now. Also, there is a name and story, coming tomorrow or tonight. To you.