Come spring I dial the running back to once a week, usually Monday. But Monday was just too damn’ nice to pound ground, so I took Steelman Eurocross No. 1 out for a spin around the Elena Gallegos Open Space.
Don’t be gruel to a heart that’s true. (h/t the Checkered Demon via S. Clay Wilson.)
Tuesday was a tossup. LIke Monday, it served up some prime cycling weather, but Wednesday’s forecast called for rain, and I hate a squishy trail. So I ran.
And a good thing too, because today is reminding me of my days slaving for an afternoon daily in Oregon, only without the mold, slugs, and bottomless drams of Jameson with Guinness backs.
I still get that 4 a.m. wakeup call, since Herself is an early riser. But at least I’m not the one who has to leave a warm, dry house to work. Give my umbrella to the Rain Dogs.
Mary’s Place in Seattle accepts donations online. Your local shelter probably could use a hand, too.
I brought this up in comments on the previous post about Rebecca Twigg being homeless in Seattle, then thought I should drag it out front for anyone who isn’t rooting around that deeply in the digital weeds.
I dropped Charles Pelkey a note about Scott Greenstone’s story, and he spoke with Inga Thompson, and we’re all at something of a loss here.
Charles and Inga discussed a GoFundMe site that would support the shelter Rebecca’s associated with — Mary’s Place in Seattle, which will take donations online — and that may be one way forward, since Rebecca is unwilling to make a special case of herself, arguing that she is only one of many, many homeless people in the Land of the Free.
The only other thing I can think of that might have some value is to make donations to and/or do volunteer work for the homeless shelter(s) wherever you live, and do it in Rebecca’s name.
Then drop a note to Scott (sgreenstone@seattletimes.com), who is running Project Homeless for the Seattle Times, and he can spread the word that concerned people are taking action on Rebecca’s behalf.
Let me know if you’re doing anything and I’ll make mention of it. Here in the Duke City El Rancho Pendejo supports the Barrett Foundation Inc.
Everything’s growing in the yard, including the amount of time I spend mowing it.
Yesterday was one of those days when you stare into the kit drawer thinking, “Fuck it, I’ll just take it all.”
The temperature was 33 degrees when I first checked in the ayem, and topped out at 74. That’s quite a range. Had it been a song, not even Roy Orbison could’ve sung it.
Steelman Eurocross No. 1 on the high side of Tramway Lane.
Oddly, it never felt quite that warm; not to me, anyway. El Rancho Pendejo is a dark house, lodged at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, and cool morning air drifts down the hill and surrounds the joint like bad news, delivering an inaccurate perception of the actual conditions outside.
Thus I whiled away the morning serving the cats, performing domestic chores, and shouting at various websites, and didn’t start my ride until noonish.
I set out with arm and knee warmers. But while I pulled the arm bits off toward the end, the knee ones stayed on, in accordance with the Bostick Rule, which went something like “Cover your knees under 65 degrees.”
What a beautiful day for a two-hour ride on a cyclocross bike*, though. A little pavement, a little dirt, a lot of laughs. You won’t catch me crying on a day like that.
Ray Keener opened his kimono and left Steve Frothingham with his pants down.
Steve Frothingham is taking a pounding at Bicycle Retailer and Industry News after bike-biz poobah Ray Keener employed the business idiom “open the kimono” in a guest editorial headlined “Is the number of shops shrinking?”
That it was the April Fool’s Day issue is strictly coincidental.
I took note of the expression while reading Ray’s commentary online (it has since been scrubbed from that piece after howls of outrage from various nooks and crannies of The Trade). As a copy editor emeritus I found it odd, but I find a lot of corpo-speak puzzling and/or irksome and gave it no further thought because I’m not paid to copy-edit BRAIN.
After the phrase blew up in Steve’s face I went hunting for source material, but couldn’t really find a single definitive reference. It’s intended to convey disclosure, though of what remains unclear. A lack of weaponry? One’s naughty bits?
Steve Haruch went to work on the phrase for NPR in 2014, examining its ethnic and gendered dimensions, and noted, “Whatever decade it comes from, plenty of people wish it had stayed there.”
But lemme just open this ol’ kimono for you here. …
Steve is the last man standing at BRAIN. Yes, a middle-aged white man, to be sure, but in any case the last editorial employee, period, end of story. It took five full-time editorial types and a handful of contractors like Your Humble Narrator to put out the April 1 issue 10 years ago. But the magazine has suffered alongside the business it covers.
BRAIN was recently sold to another bunch of middle-aged white men and moved from Laguna Hills, Calif., to the People’s Republic of Boulder. I’m told by a reliable source that the editorial staff is expected to double. So now that carbon-fiber barrel will be a two-holer. Huzzah, etc.
Here’s the long and the short of it: You can’t write and edit a magazine and website mostly solo without someone’s bête noire tiptoeing past you and into print. Especially when contributors yank hairy bits of lingo out of their kimonos while you’re trying to wrap a magazine issue plus the Sea Otter Guide while keeping a website on life support and hiring a managing editor between jaunts from Denver to Taiwan to Denver to Monterey.
So please, give the middle-aged white man a break. There is not some vast racist, sexist, ageist conspiracy to be exposed and snuffed out here. Dude was pedaling through a tight corner and cartwheeled into the spectators. Further beatings will not improve morale, no matter what you’ve seen on the Internet.
Mad Blog Media 