Aim Reattain

On information overload, nobody today wants to sort through facts, though one must find what’s worthwhile hidden beneath ordinary hype, or get someone else to do it. A Cycle Trades of America 1940 ad proclaimed, “A bicycle is a boy’s birthright,” but motoring scammed most of them out of it during subsequent decades. You’re reduced to armchair cycling when roads no longer support car-less self propelling. Actor Will Smith warned Hollywood hype machine they can no longer cheat audiences into watching bad movies, but if you buy ticket you ought to take the ride, and USA remains sadly gullible as proven, not repudiated, by social media. Besides, who’s to deem any movie bad? Measure isn’t its budget, guilty of both flops and hits despite investments, but how story resonates, which could mean revisiting what’s familiar or taking viewers where they’ve never before been.

Aim depends on what direction you wish to reattain. Bliss can only be achieved by ignoring media totally from onset, too late after decades of education and exposure. Instead of paragraphs or scenes, motionless images may suffice, but, if you explore further, they suggest a plethora of backstories and explanations, and thereby offer empathy in suffering but no solace in silence. As in other art forms, a painting or photograph may incidentally or mainly depict ubiquitous bicycles as an aspect or attraction. Bicycle Fine Art is a New York showcase that offers emerging art but none related to bicycles.

This year, Jules de Balincourt referenced dystopia, exodus and globalization when he studied bicycling in 2 original oil paintings, “As Far As We Could Go West” [shown here] and “Cycledelic Wanderers” [now being shown at Joyride Art Exhibition in Brooklyn]. Both represent reality within abstract landscapes, sort of a mashup of fact and imagination, which has become a popular motif. Nonrepresentational art, unlike representational, perceives what is inwardly observable, not outwardly, thus expands universe of what can be experienced. Landscapes can be less exciting than twisted memories, what you ultimately retain whether factual or fantastic.

Fine Art America lists 10,000 objects labeled bike art including 4,100 paintings, though many relate only to motorcycles or reprints of old masters. Notable original examples among them? Andrew Macara has a handful of oil paintings capturing 20th Century summer light. Arlon Rosenoff attacks bikes of all types with a palette knife for 10 impasto treatments. During the last decade award winning oil painter Colleen Proppé has portrayed several relevant San Francisco scenes. Linda Apple loves lines and shadows in hyperrealist oils. On 28 canvases, Peregrine Roskilly enthused over World Naked Bike Rides held every June to protest Big Oil domination. Ryan Radke has at least 4 postmodern cityscapes patrolled by bicycle, reminiscent of George Stein’s Belle Époque impressionist images of Champs Elysses, which naturally featured bicyclists amidst traffic a century earlier.

Marilyn Dunlap represents Paris romance in a pâtissier's dozen of acrylics. Phyllis Andrews amuses with 26 humorous, meaningful and tidy acrylics on board and canvas. Hers contrast with Carrie Nixon’s, who had [at Procycle 2009] a dynamic, large format acrylic and charcoal on handmade paper [shown left] meant to explore control and lack thereof while cycling fast in winter.

Oregonian Jenny Armitage has at least 15 watercolors of bicycles and bicyclists in European cities, though she depicts 3 times as many musical instruments, which do possess similar lines and shapes. Australian Shirley Peters recently celebrated Tour de France pelaton in a series of 35 watercolors.

Antonio Grambone produced several evocative photographs with urban themes. Sports photographer Bob Christopher snapped 55 action shots and racer portraits. Odd Jeppesen’s contemporary collection tightly focuses on dismembered components in every season.

Moral Moraine

If personal morals fall by the wayside - like a glacial moraine of powdered rock and rolled boulders that bicyclists, geologists, and property owners are prone to ponder - what hope is there for an ethical society? Communities abandon homeless and hungry, religious congregations scatter, motorists run down the vulnerable, and scribblers who promote greed succeed. Virtue used to be its own reward. Morals are self defined. Ethics allow individuals to follow own codes of conduct, not merely submit to self exploitation, stone wall isolation, and unexamined convention. Neither can you force yours on others, only suggest that activism, altruism, intelligence and tolerance are in their own interests. Today’s leaders and successful followers work overtime as examples of what not to do, so you have your work cut out for you. Your only audience spends all its time avoiding harm by blindly toiling in a sandy ant farm.

Worry that kindness might lead to overpopulation. Earth can hardly support 7.4 billion humans, while life expectancy creeps ever closer to 80 years on average. Then remember that insatiable simpletons have more insupportable children than intelligent sophisticates. Education could be a key. Cartesian perspicacity and consequent sagacity lead directly to ZPG. Affairs between homosexuals or with postmenopausal crones produce none. The elderly eat less yet require services, so an aging population represents more opportunities than threats. Vegan food can be grown in hydroponic soilless gardens indoors built safely atop toxic brownfields, thereby quadrupling yields and recapturing forsaken space through government grants. But instead of adopting local, consumers are bullied by policy into buying imported. Transportation generates more jobs than any other sector, but wastes dwindling resources faster than rest combined. With states not proactively addressing groundwater contamination and reservoir strain, a lack of potable water still looms as hugest threat to humanity, though legal mandates to produce at point of use make too much sense.

Chances to earn exist, but you must expect less and manufacture them yourself. Innovative entrepreneurs diversify and thereby strengthen economy. Can’t rely on existing companies, corporations and mills anymore; most are run by multinational conglomerates recording record profits despite foreign threats by exploiting least paid workforces. Because debt-strapped millennials still living with parents produce art and books for free, only a few remarkable professionals have a chance to earn anymore. Quality deteriorates when phenomenal exponents get ground down and give up. It’s no wonder engineering declined and slavery returned. It’s almost too easy to oppress masses when producers ask for nothing and can’t be bothered with marketing. When policies create economic depression, those in deep valleys of despair abide bondage for food and shelter, or grab whatever they can from the craven and weak.

In terms of insect fear films, greedy people and needy sheeple resemble THEM! Giant ants would ruin your picnic. Between self serving reactionaries and starving anarchic revolutionaries, most would elude the latter, favor the former, yet find vast majority resides in the middle fulfilling mankind’s demands. Capitalist icon Adam Smith himself agreed that the rich “spurn the most basic standards of moral conduct”, because their esteem derives not from good deeds but jealousy of those less fortunate. Angry moderates seem to have no say until they speak en masse. Anger and hate are easily comprehended, evoked and exploited. Machiavellian leaders thereby deflect wrath from themselves and pit the poor against the middle.

Nursed on conservative Kool-aid since birth, Cameron Huddleston offers advice on how to get rich. It comes down to change your attitude, don’t hate money, pull yourself up by the bootstraps. All you have to do to join ranks of 1% is make a half million a year! Easy, peasy! “Make efforts to improve your finances because your don’t want to get kicked out of your social group.” But money amassers have no friends, only feckless disciples and vicious rivals who’d rejoice if they fail. Having money or owning property entail becoming a target for every scammer and schemer on planet. Can’t Fox News come up with anything less repulsively self serving? Who buys propaganda and self help books loaded with such malthusian drivel? LaMonte Fowler dispels every myth they use to connive and inveigle. As a nation USA remains world’s bigger producer surpassed only by a combined European GDP. If you likewise included Canada and Mexico, North America would easy surpass economy of every other continent. So? Gave Americans a chance to be the most generous nation on the planet.

Who is more repulsive: a casino billionaire who built an empire on bad habits and human misery or the mindless minion with whom his mean message resonates? Monarchists, oligarchs, theocrats, tyrants, and wealth hoarders on top pitch the empty promise of conservatism nonstop. When you have nothing but a rational mind to think things through, equal distribution and liberal communion sound better. Billionaires become a barrier, make your life miserable, slow flow of resources. Amassed wealth impedes everyone else’s ability to earn, survive even. They give none away, the only reason to amass in the first place. Buffett and Gates each vowed to direct billions, some fraction of net worth, toward problems for which they can’t claim blame. Why not punish, squeeze or tax those actually responsible? Banks don’t let your deposits work for you anymore, instead make risky loans in order to wipe out investors in small businesses that inevitably fail, costing jobs and property. Worth doesn't disappear, just slips into hidden pockets. Laugh at anyone whose line is, “Give it to me and I will ensure those in need receive.” What’s wrong with meeting own needs and salting away a bit for family’s future? Worked for millennia. Oh, yeah, ego. Lording affluently over others means everyone must value owning excess as you do, the national obsession and only patriotism. Accordingly, lives are wasted, souls are bought and sold, and taxes are misappropriated. Gives award winning luster to such revolutionary hacks as Mr Robot and V. They are the mirage of, “Just hang on a bit longer, some hero is bound to arise.” You personally decide and realize the future by what you allow, consume, fund, support, and work toward.

After too many rejection letters to count, Labann labors toward the day when this zero sum game ends. Then just one will have it all, money will cease to mean anything, and playing field will again level. Banks will have long since collapsed, insurance houses closed, nonprofits ended, and Wall Street tumbled like Jericho, thus doing humanity a favor. A barter economy will prevail among survivalists. Wealth has never been an honorable goal, rather an unused tool to promote ethics. They give no prizes for being biggest borrower or having highest net worth, though all awards are skewed to those whose work made millions for the already too rich. Achieving, earning, and saving are supposed to permit individuals to seek out hardships and share as desired, not gatekeepers and third parties, who only decrease dividends, hinder turnover, and maneuver profits into own pockets. They act more like rotten parasites than trusted advisors.

Instead of admiring huge stockpiles how about redistributing them to doers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and visionaries? To assuage guilt, Federico Pistono and Rutger Bergman would give everyone alive a base stipend. Welfare? You can’t build fortunes without it. What else can you call business bailouts, farm subsidies intended to keep groceries scarce and prices high, and, worst of all, tax breaks for highest earners and one percenters? By policy, money flows everywhere except towards the dwindling middle class, because they intentionally want to cripple those who’ll fight to hang onto home and land ownerships and voter rights, though it’s said that if voting mattered it wouldn’t be allowed. SNAP and TANF enslave recipients, who have to first divest themselves of property to qualify, while benefits have fallen by 20%. Could you live on $5/day, that is, $7,300 for the typical family of four on relief? In all but 3 states that doesn’t cover shelter, never mind food, no free ride. Neither can the average $27,000 per year household with two minimum wage workers, only $10,000 above FPL, get by. Giving $500/month would not overcome poverty, the #1 health hazard and root of most crime; feds currently draw line at $11,600/year, so it would barely get you half way. But tax free and unconditional grants would stimulate economy and work out for homeless wretches.

Battle can be defined simply: Better versus worse. Decent people want everyone to succeed and survive, but not at their expense or initiative. Otherwise, problems become difficult to remedy, prisons get filled, and tax burdens escalate. Businesses are busy getting leaner by cutting their number one expense, salaries. Too many bellies vie for resources to avoid someone going hungry. Rats who run sly networks promote disparity where deprivation, famine and pestilence visit majority. How society treats constituents was never their intended content. How a caged gorilla had to be shot to protect a three-year-old child is, with debaters condemning or supporting action taken, thereby devaluating human life. Issues of substance don’t entertain masses, so news media lose focus, neglect detriments of wealth, and report nothing that affects your livelihood.

Nobody sane would disagree that gravity attracts. But act and write with gravity and you’ll attract nobody. Bicyclists weigh heft every time they pedal uphill. You’d do better to heed the ever present hum of chaos with which most people can identify. But if that’s all you can do with freedom, for which forebears died and soldiers put their life on the line every day, why invest countless lives and trillions of tax dollars on such an unsatisfactory option? If you comprehend chaos, you may find your angel amidst mayhem. You'll earn no pass for being kind, just the opposite. Decency attracts opportunists, punks, sadists, and thieves who'd cruelly use you. The more you care for others, the more heartache you'll embrace, thus growing stronger to face ever more emotional challenges, quite a bit to contemplate on your next long bike outing.

Next Hurricane

With cyclonic season officially entered, nothing weathers whirlwind days hunkered down without electronics, or otherwise lounging on beaches away from plugs, like a printed book. Several worthwhile choices include:

Brent Kitching, A Bicycle Without A Chain (iUniverse, 2016, 332 pp.). Just out, biographical novel pits chasing capitalism against cultivating a higher consciousness. Oh, my!

Buzz Ponce, A Long Ride Coming: How the Struggle of Losing a Parent Led to a Bicycle Journey Nearly 50 Years Later (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016, 336 pp.)

Cristina Spínola Taller de Felicidad (The Workshop of Happiness, self, 2016, 87 pp.). Author describes adventures of a woman touring Latin America alone by bike.

Daniel Shea and Jeremy Withers, editors, Culture on Two Wheels: The Bicycle in Literature and Film (University of Nebraska Press, 2016, 366 pp.). Well anticipated accessible set of scholarly essays follows the 125 years of evolving symbolism that this "favored ideological steed" conjures. Shea’s own covers Ai Weiwei’s famous bicycle sculptures.

David Herlihy, Bicycle: The History (Yale University Press, 2004, 480 pp.), Previously mentioned his The Lost Cyclist. In The Guardian, Rob Penn recently gave a Eurocentric top ten of books about bikes, which included Herlihy’s History and others hitherto overlooked. How can it be that Kent Peterson’s best list on Outside Online, except for Herlihy’s, is completely different?

DK (Dorling and Kindersley), Bicycle: The Definitive Visual History (Penguin Random House, 2016, 256 pp.). With a magazine approach, celebrates commerce, designs, makers, and racers from graphic, journal and published evidence.

James Runcie, Grantchester, Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (Bloomsbury USA, 2012, 400 pp.). In the mold of Chesterson’s character Father Brown, sleuth/vicar Sidney Chambers rides a bike around Cambridgeshire in 1950’s England while solving crimes. Made into a PBS series for Masterpiece Mystery!

Jobst Brandt, The Bicycle Wheel (Avocet, 1993, 150 pp.)

Mike Magnuson, Heft on Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180 (Three Rivers Press, 2005, 252 pp.). Highlights losing weight and regaining health through self propulsion.

Travis Hugh Culley, The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2001, 352 pp.)

Blue Bicycle Books, a shop located in Charleston, South Carolina, hosts a creative Summer writing camp for kids to get them into good habits.

Prefer Plain

In a medium preoccupied with comic book heroes, nice to recount a smattering of films that focus on how ordinary people without superpowers interact, although in each cited case things end badly and viewers aren't nervously overexcited. No preference for Amish plainness, only considering how much mayhem is usually associated with fast or flying vehicles, which seem to cause or enable all that goes wrong in life and most films. Creeping infants weren’t born with motors or wings; it’s plain that many can’t handle them anyway. More have died on roads than fallen on battlefields, yet no memorial day is observed for accident victims.

Remember Me (Allen Coulter dir., 2010) depicts rich, spoiled protagonist Robert Pattinson (Twilight Saga), who chases love interest Emilie de Ravin, drifts around NYC leaning on a fixie with a massive chain and lock, and learns how to value every minute of life in a world where suicide terrorists abruptly end many.

German thriller Das letzte Schweigen (The Silence, Baran bo Odar dir., 2013) has two 13-year-olds on bikes being murdered 23 years apart in same wheat field.

In The Judge (David Dobkin dir., 2014), film industry’s highest earning star Robert Downey Jr plays a big city defense attorney bereaved of his mother. While back home in Indiana countryside, he revisits old habits, including rebelling against his dad the judge and riding his old Panasonic steely 10-speed no hands, which quickly results in catching a soft shoulder and tumbling headlong. Gives Iron Man new nuance.

Teen waitress Gethin Anthony controversially guides Canadian visitor Frederikke Dahl Hansen by bike through Copenhagen (Mark Raso dir., 2014) on a search for his grandfather.

Cyclique (Frédéric Favre dir., Switzerland, 2015) watches three young adults struggle with their choices to be freewheeling bike messengers instead of exploiting selves as desk jockeys.

The Commentator (Brendt Barbur, 2015) is a recent documentary on Jorgen Leth’s 1976 Paris-Roubaix coverage and Kristof Ramon’s race photography, with a new soundtrack by NYC’s band Blonde Redhead.

In biopic Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle dir., 2015), Apple Founder Jobs (Michael Fassbender) supported by Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) and Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) take on a vision to connect everyone electronically despite unprecedented challenges. There's no bicycling per se, mostly backstage emoting, but toward the end flashbacks depict Jobs inducing CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) to desert soft drinks for digital future. Says Steve, "The most efficient animal on the planet is the condor. The most inefficient are humans. But a human with a bicycle becomes the most efficient animal... The right computer will be a bicycle for the mind." Labann, as an early computer implementer, directly based B&C upon this mindset right down to composing paragraphs like internet surfing, only using personal memories uncorroborated by exocranial research.

Not going to begin to enumerate bicycling scenes shown by Bollywood, since Abhimanyu Mishra already did for the Times of India. For example, Bombay film Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (How Alexander Won, Mansoor Khan dir., 1992) is a Hindi version of Breaking Away with rival teens cheating and substitute hero nevertheless winning by stooping to same tactics. You can even be the hero of your own movie, according to Joe Rogan and several others, though it means little with ridiculously low standards and suits delusional egomaniacs best.

Signal Tulane

What is all this? Attempt to analyze or witness? Make sense of chaos? People expect that anyone who exhaustively studies something becomes its master. Expert? Another drip under pressure filling oceans of ignorance. Many PhDs are as dumb as doorposts, though they are presumably smarter than rabble. Genius resides in humankind collectively: buyers, doers, expediters, explorers, sellers, sweet street sweepers every spring, thinkers. Makes you wonder about education, although boundaries do expand with specialization. Some things don’t warrant profound study, or vary so much what once could be affirmed later can’t. Some are studied too little, which explains why radical right ever gains a foothold. Psychologists measure intelligence as one’s ability to adapt to changes, not knowledge amassed and readily remembered. It’s about applying not parroting, less theorizing possibilities than using hands and minds.

Lack of scrutiny fosters arrogance. This applies to everyone, including Labann, who, unlike many, does invite criticism. Yet readers don’t avail themselves of a comeback opening. Shave and a haircut…? Crickets! Does silence repudiate or validate viewpoints? Seems only the dead have cred. Have read too many books to count, so won’t ever be obligated to read yours after writing one that you didn’t read, either. Producing one’s own is a valid excuse to ignore universe, if ever a recluse remains averse, though society survives on quid pro quo, rules fostering fairness, and sensible trading awareness.

Decency can never be guaranteed. Reagan deregulated banks, financial institutions, and insurance houses, which begat huge swindles for which nobody was indicted. Wall Street traders took out policies to insure against downturns, so someone else - depositors, subsequent premium payers, and taxpayers - absorbed losses, as typical of pyramid marketing rackets. Disproportionate deals engender disasters. But Reagan was only an actor playing POTUS, a pawn for a shadow regime with an agenda of greed. They acted with impunity by diverting spotlight away from themselves and onto their puppet. To this day voters have no idea who they are, never mind how many trillions they’ve stolen, a shameless fraud that precipitated global recession. Archived history. Move on, bossy Labann. Nothing to see. Recede into dim innuendo and dusky past, but not effects, which persist and visit localities, such as New Orleans, butt of Bush’s betrayal following Hurricane Katrina, undeniably the two greatest natural catastrophes to befall America.

Bikeeasy.org accuses goons with baseball bats and paintball guns of assaulting Tulane students and other users of bike lanes on Esplanade and nearby avenues. “Our city has a long, complex history of economic inequality, racial injustice, and corrupt practices that benefit the few at the expense of the many… we believe bicycling can play a positive role in addressing… But bicycling can only play this role if we don’t leave anyone behind.” Hundreds of legal guns are stolen there annually, many being used in crimes. Last year Forbes contributor John Ebersole listed higher education issues including school climate and student safety smelling of impractical suggestions and specious questions. Rather indict corporate policies and educational systems, neither of which is willing to assume responsibility for employee training. Millions of jobs go unfulfilled because brainless managers create countless barriers to hiring. Of occupations, all 95% of them really require is an agile mind and honest enthusiasm, things most educators seem determined to eradicate. Get constant come-ons to handle international receiving/shipping urgencies designed to bilk milk money. How inclined you feel to sortie forth depends upon many concerns, none more weighty than trust in community.

Big Easy born Wynton Marsalis conjectured, “Sustained intensity equals ecstasy.” Nice try. Depends entirely upon what sensations you'll endure. Could mean tortures of serving Laodiceans, screaming sound, water boarding, or whip lashing, zero pleasure to anyone but sadomasochists and those who enjoy schadenfreude of your misery. More saddle time might make you a better person, but, rather than enlightened souls, mostly meet conservative scumbags and sanctimonious scoundrels who instead of discussing bikes prefer talking down to you. Americans readily trade conscience for convenience, something a bicyclist's groan can’t overcome alone.

Nearly through Bike Month, haven’t joined one group ride, though repeatedly tried. Even organized own; nobody showed. Few ever accept invitations from strangers sent in many forms (calendar posts, email blitzes, handbills, paid ads, pole posters), none of which work. Some are so put off by inherent message they delete or remove. Besides barely acceptable Facebook and despised Twitter, there are "meet-ups" and other social media, but it's still hard to find people who want to exchange ideas or socialize nicely, prerequisites to more involved relationships. Negativity mounts. Acquaintance, a crucial baseline for being human, precedes collaborator, friend, lover, spouse and “X”, in that order of commitment, intensity, and possibly regret on every level. For most, where they are on this continuum occupies entire life. Anything more cerebral can’t be withstood. Among those invited expected at least some whose charity rides I arrowed, sagged, or somehow assisted to have attended or declined. No longer feel inclined to reciprocate. Amassing a groundswell into a grassroots movement has never been harder in a society conditioned to being physically alone and totally vulnerable although virtually connected as never before.

Bikes, forced off roads in 1970’s, resumed belonging in 1990, when laws were enacted nationwide to include them in planning. Yet states still haven’t implemented enabling improvements. Begin to see route sign and stripes on streets, but egregious lapses may be impossible to mend. Roads nibbled landscape alongside to get ever wider, which resulted in gutters with grates, 2 lanes in each direction, and trouble for bicyclists trying to cross over. This signals disrespect for a deselected form. Activists and cranks with a passion for pedaling pointed the way and pushed through demands. Public soon forgets them due to new media and nonprofit spin. Why care anymore? What are you fighting for? Share roads with whom? Often regret working on behalf of ungrateful beneficiaries. Then cynically remind self that controversies can offer cheap entertainment.

Lower frequencies literally move slower. Obsession with them signifies an attempt to arrest input inundation and inevitable race to your grave. Insects buzz by on their one-month mission to reproduce and shortly thereafter die. Likewise motorists, whose fatalities bicyclists study at their dawdling tempo. Motoring was once believed the best way to intensify motility, but increasingly isolated drivers from landscape and earners from security. Turns out, bicycling does it better. One ought to make the most of what's granted, be it long or short. How? Make small plans and pull them off. Organize own groups. Or you could crash and learn lessons. Observations attend every awake moment, though solid ideas about them don’t easily coalesce. Yet a brain bounces around many you’ve grown up with until something occurs, a revelation, that suddenly seems significant enough to record. But has the moment irrevocably passed?