Harrumph!

My still quick reflexes for an old fart kept my legs from mangling by a cart in the Roslindale Stop & Shop a short time ago. It was not propelled idly by an inattentive shopper or even a helpful, but too short, kid. Instead a hostile, angry and racist older black woman came right at me.

Sure enough, we forget or at least compartmentalize when we don’t have to deal with obvious racists regularly. After 21 years in Jamaica Plain and one here in Hyde Park — both very racially and culturally diverse Boston neighborhoods —I don’t experience or witness much of that.

There was no question this woman wanted to hurt me and why. I was a couple of feet from the front of my cart, ready to load in some greens. The cart was against a veggy display. She cut across about six feet of tile, veering hard left directly toward me, leaving me no exit and no way to avoid her.

First she glared and sneered as she aimed at my legs. I dipped into my t’ai chi background to touch the front of her cart as it came into contact with me and divert it just enough to keep it from smashing my legs.

That further enraged her and her racism became obvious. She swore about white people and said they were always pushing around black folk. She remained furious.

The three women with her, ranging from perhaps 50 to 17 were likely a daughter and granddaughters. They sort of looked down, but it was quickly obvious that this was not new behavior by the matron of the family.

Trying to give granny an out, I said pleasantly, “God bless you.” In return, she literally spit back, “No, God bless you!” as a clear curse. They left and I could hear her continuing to defame white people.

I did get an odd chuckle of recognition though. A black friend from way back had warned me of angry, elderly black women. The stockier they are, he’d say, the more evil their evil eye and the more likely they’d be willing to have at someone verbally and physically. This crazed shopping lady was exactly what he’d warned me to avoid.

Of course, like the good UU I am, I look for the lessons here. I not only ask my three lads what they can learn from an unpleasant experience or error, I ask myself.

First, I’m glad I could retain my equanimity. She was spoiling for a physical and verbal confrontation and literally bruises and blood. She picked the wrong white guy for that.

Next, I do recognize home-turf advantage. The American Legion Highway store is patronized and staffed almost entirely by African Americans. It’s much more comfortable for racists to act out when they perceive they are the norm. I rather doubt she would have pulled the same antics in the Dedham S&S.

Moreover, I felt for the trio with her. It has to be tough to regularly accompany a bigot, kind of watch out for her and be associated with her acting out.

What I didn’t feel was an empathy or even a sympathy for the racist. I don’t know wat she may have seen or heard at home or in pubic life. I do that that each of us gets our share of unfair knocks and slaps. None of that excuses smearing whole sets of fellow people, much less attacking individuals who differ from us.

Regionally, I regret how the allegedly liberal and open Boston area still has its onerous share of racists, of all races themselves. When I moved from the South first to New Jersey for high school, some time in Cambridge in college, a decade in Manhattan and the past three decades here, I was initially surprised at the racial tensions and negativity in Yankee lands. Yet in all those places, the locals were quick to scold me for my Southern roots, contrasting them to the enlightened Northern places. They seemed truly oblivious.

I found again and again that this was naive or disingenuous or both. Boston as a whole has never gotten over its own sordid history and racism and largely segregated sub-neighborhoods.

Here today I found that old brick back in my bag. It wasn’t the classic North End teen slurring passing black Bostonians. It wasn’t even snooty Brahman remnants running down others on race, class or schooling. It was an old bigot with absolute no reason to dislike me, feel threatened by me or certainly feel justified in physically and verbally assaulting me.

I would wish her peace and freedom from hate. However, she’s likely rounding off her life and may simply be who she is for the rest of it.
Well, God bless her, regardless.

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Tags: harrumpher, harrump, UU, supermarket, Boston, racism

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We had heard and seen and read about Alvin Greene already, from the Globe to the Times to Huff to Daily Show. The best just arrived today though.

Our friend who moved back to South Carolina, Savannah (a.k.a. Marion Etheredge), mailed us the Columbia Free Times with the cover story. There’s no fabulous breakthrough, but it’s the very best piece on the funky Dem primary win of an unemployed unknown for U.S. Senate ever.

Praise to writer Corey Hutchins. The only thing missing is a big pig — more on that in a moment.

For background, click the Daily Show clip below on the subject. Jon Stewart aptly calls S.C., America’s whoopie cushion. He has the basics down. Greene put down ten large to be in the primary, didn’t campaign and won the primary with 60% of the vote. He surely will lose resoundingly to incumbent Republican Jim DeMint in November, but meanwhile…

Unlike the WTF? view of national reporters, the local guy does what Sandlappers do well. He asked, “Who are your people?,” and dealt with that. Greene’s father, James Greene Sr., has long been a populist activist. So despite the pretty sad conspiracy wails of the Dems when their favored candidate, ex-legislator Vic Rawl, took his drubbing, this may have been the post-Reconstruction fluke it appears. That is, a non-politically connected black man gets the party nod for U.S. Senate. Maybe that just happens every 140 years or so.

To those pigs though, I know about the importance of BBQs in elections. I lived in S.C. for five years, edited the black weekly there for a year, and married a native (although in fairness, we met where I lived in Greenwich Village when she was visiting). In a state with carefully choreographed legislative votes and election prep, pigs are big.

I remember many times being in the state house (with its external metal stars where every piece of Yankee shrapnel hit the building in Sherman’s rude visit). Typically a couple of buses of school students were on field trips as part of their civics or history education. They had anticipated the fervent debates and grand oratory on a bill under consideration.

Invariably, the bill would get announced and there’d be a clear, often unanimous, vote up or down — nary at metaphor, much less a passionate speech.

The pig had happened. That is, the party leaders and often the whole legislature would be at a BBQ or Christmas party. They’d do their lying, swapping and dealing over chunks of pig. By the time they left the function, they really had nothing else to discuss on the matters at hand.

Amusingly enough in Greene’s case, he has never been part of the power structure. He almost certainly never got an invite to a pig roast…and almost surely never will be in the BBQ elite.

In S.C., there is pretty my much a mirror image of Massachusetts’ party structure. Here, Dems rule. There, Dems converted to that other party during the sweeping civil-rights revolution. The S.C. Dems feed off the leavings as MA Republicans do.

In that sense, it’s irrelevant whether Greene came up with that $10,400 filing on his own. The national media has the dummy’s fixation that this is the issue.

More to the point, we need to consider that other fixation, that is of an innate wisdom of the larger electorate. Even locals up here like to squawk about voters being smart. As the Greene victory suggests, that is a fantasy that ignores short, mid-term and deep history.

We voters goof up all the time. We don’t pay attention. We don’t understand the issues. We don’t know the differences among candidates’ positions. We goof up.

Sometimes, we do it inanely, on purpose and reflexively. Think of the James Strom Thurmond, former governor, elected to the U.S. Senate in 1954 and 1956 and serving until 2003. That was 59 years from S.C. into D.C. for that destructive schmuck. If possible, they might have returned his corpse to the office.

As a nation, we have done as badly shorter term for President too many times as well. Wait until after the November elections. We can look at whom we elect. Then we can talk about how smart the electorate is.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Alvin Greene Wins South Carolina Primary
www.thedailyshow.com
Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, South Carolina, Greene, Democrats, Daily Show, Massachusetts, Free Times

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What could befit our New England frugality than useful and free goods? If Bike Fridays on Boston city hall plaza do not appeal for their athleticism nor for their camaraderie, perhaps as much swag as you can carry, inside or out will.

It must be the endorphins. Biking can turn you sappy sweet, the antithesis of the crazed messenger stereotype. The reasons to cycle are many and those to attend the jolly mornings of Bike Fridays are several. Yet, grabbing useful or delicious freebies doesn’t hurt as motivation. Plus, the stuff is useful.

More chances

I just returned from the first of the season. You can redeem your self and join in the last Friday of the next three months — June 25, July 30, and August 27. Get there at 7 for the uncrowded shot at free bike tweaks from pros, plus the goodies. It all continues for nearly three more hours.

Today’s ridership seemed typical. There were huge (well, 10 to 20 in a bunch) gangs coming together from various neighborhoods and towns. You can come on your own, but the convoys have regular stops and times.

We can all fit it. There’s folks in suits, in skirts, in Spandex. There’s every somatotype and age. I only saw one pet, a pup in a trailer who seemed quite used to a chauffeur.The only warning is that over half the cyclists acted like suburbanites in a supermarket; like their counterparts fearful of losing their carts, they clung to their bikes rather than locking them on a rail or bike rack. That clogs up the works, such desperate ownership.

Over a dozen tented booths filled the upper plaza next to the T-stop, which disgorged amused and bemused commuters gawking and greeting the cyclists. Exhibits included organizations like MassBike and the DOT, Landry’s and Wheelworks bike shops, the Swiss tourist folk, and food and drink.

Swag to Consume and Carry

So, to the goodies. There was food and drink. We cyclists need or pretend to need replenishment, even after a short ride. We can justify treating ourselves, even at 7:13 a.m.

Boloco had the only real line, handing out burritos by tray. They also joined the city and state in offering high-end water bottles. In fact, TD Bank North accosted the convoys as they arrived — in the ear with cowbells, to the eye with YOU MADE IT signs, and in the hand with the event water bottle.

Abutting boxes elsewhere had muffins the size of a newborn’s head and healthier fare such as bananas. If you arrive hungry, you don’t have to leave that way. For drink, there was coffee but the water bottles were dry. Likewise, Harpoon held a raffle, but didn’t expect us to drink and ride.

So the various exhibitors offered goodies including:

• A great trousers-leg strap from the DOT and MassBike, with a secure slot for a key. This is keen for runners as well. It is also a reflector.
• A slap anklet like a slap bracelet that keeps the cuff out of the way and is also a reflector. That was from the Swiss tourist folk, who also offered those fab Lindt chocolate balls.
• A pair of tire levers.
• Bike maps of Boston.
• Bike Week t-shirts.
• Key chains.
• Clif bars, Bare Naked and other brands of energy snacks.
• Zipper eyeglasses cases and foldable Frisbees from TD North.

It went on and on. Being judicious  and only taking stuff I thought I’d use, I still ended up stuffing my small messenger bag. I had had two personal water-bottle tragedies recently; replacements were timely. The anklets with key slots should be good for three of us.

So, you have three more shots this year. Go to a Bike Friday because it’s fun and there’s fellowship…or go for the goodies.

Welcome Evolution

About 8:30, the orations began. Some downtrodden city hall fellow brought a podium and mic by dolly to the upper level. The resulting queue of speakers was an obvious shift from when this was the end of Boston Bike Week and not as it was today, Bay State Bike Week 2010.

Even ownership has become dispersed and diverse, and likely more sustainable. It used to be that a few Boston bureaucrats emerged from the cave that is city hall. Typically, Mayor Tom Menino, Bike Coordinator Nicole Freedman, and a city councilor who likes bikes, like President Mike Ross, would chat and whoop it up. Today, a series of state-level organization and agency folk took the mic.

They heaped praise on each other, only taking credit tangentially. In fairness, there’s lots worthy of praise. The shift in those attending and speaking also suggests that many more machers at higher levels see the short- and mid-term future in biking around here.

More cycles, fewer cars, healthier citizens, less noise and pollution. Everyone involved should get credit.

A Bike Friday is a feel-good morning.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Bike Friday, bicycles, Bike Week, Boston, Massachusetts

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Yes, it was a silly, short bike tour. Yes, I loved it.

Billed as the opening to the now-statewide bike week and billed as a ride with the mayor (Boston’s Tom Menino), cycling the few miles to play on the new Commonwealth Avenue bike paths was a spoke-geek’s delight.

First, a disappointment was that this was not a ride with the mayor. Instead, it was a ride to the mayor. I’ve asked him personally several times to ride into city hall together. He demurs — I’d be too fast; he only rides around his (our) neighborhood; and lately, he has been recovering from knee surgery. I even got City Councilor Steve Murphy, also from Hyde Park, to say he’d ride in with us.

Today when we arrived at the podium and mic set up on Commonwealth Mall for the press conference, Menino started his words with a promise to get back on the bike…starting next week. He got applause instead of snickers.

For us who ride in Boston, he remains a hero. Long stereotypically disdainful of cyclists, he had an enlightenment a few years ago. He hired hot shot champion cyclist Nicole Freedman to run the city’s biking program and backs her up with resources and words.

So today, he and she chatted up Boston’s emerging shift from bike-hostile to bikeable. As illustrated at top, they implemented one of the Comm Ave plans. That’s no small accomplishment and it compounds the bike lanes going in piecemeal as roads are built, rebuilt or re-striped. This actually makes a place on a major street, on the left, away from parked cars with their dooring dangers. It also sets the pattern for the possible.

For many decades, cycling advocates before Freedman heard repeatedly that we were unique among cities (horse feathers!) and such things couldn’t happen here. What critics, which used to include Menino, meant was that motor-vehicle operators had the rights and weren’t going to be asked to share the road.

Joining Da Mare and Da Champ was City Council President Mike Ross. He’s a cyclist, mostly, although he doesn’t commute by bike. This week, Bike Week, though he intends to go by cycle. We’ll see how his resolves holds up in Wednesday’s predicted rain. (That’s Ross and Menino.)

His head’s in the right place. He’s the one who encouraged Menino to bike. He backed that up with a gift of a mountain bike…and more encouragement. Ross was the catalyst, Menino has said repeatedly.

We’ll get Ross on a Left Ahead! podcast soon. It’ s been over a year since we’ve done a biking one. He told me today he’d like to do it.

Today was the week’s teaser. There’s lots of activities, free breakfasts, rides, movies, and of course, Bike Friday. Thursday evening, there’s a one-time presentation on cycling successes in various cities, at BU’s Sleeper auditorium. During the week, most towns in the Boston area will have their own bike events too.

Plus, it doesn’t stop with this week. For example, on Monday, June 7th, there’s the annual Redbones party to benefit MassBike. That’s only $15, with brew and food…and valet bike parking. Then, the Bike Fridays with all the goodies reappears on Boston’s city hall plaza the last Friday of the month through the summer.

In other words, you don’t even have to roll to Boston to do some of the stuff. There’s no way you can do all of it, but there’s plenty in many places for everyone.

Today was a little more focused on bike advances. Thursday’s presentation will be more serious still.

The good stuff this afternoon came from Menino recounting some of the successes of the city’s successes and continuing projects. Freedman (right) was as excited as the rest of us on the bike lanes, which she called “more than a four-inch stripe on the road.” Also, Ross promised more bike lanes coming to Boston.

I’m slowly becoming convinced that patience will out here. Word is that when car, truck and bus drivers see more cyclists, more bike lanes, more sharrows that there’ll be less threatening cyclists and resentment expressed in other ways. Bikes become part of the traffic. That can’t come fast enough for me.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, cycling, Bike Week, Menino, Freedman, Mike Ross, bike lanes

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Sometimes bureaucratic incompetence is so elegant, so complete that we can only begrudgingly admire it. I doubt that our RMV actively teaches unusability to its programmers. Rather, they must hire for that inability.

Yesterday, I found out that even though I had renewed our van’s registration online a month before, it was unregistered. We had been expecting the new paper and decal, but were not concerned. I had my date and time of renewal, as well as the confirming transaction number issued at the time. The form we got in the mail even said we’d be able to use that until we got the new material.

As it turns out, the RMV can and did void the transaction without letting me know. My blunder, which was immediately obvious to the guy I spoke with after waiting on hold (praise speakerphones) for 41 minutes, was that I had entered the amount the RMV document said I owed.

Foolish I had entered the printed amount when the online renewal page commanded. The two prominent spots on the form that list it read Fee: 55.00.

Honk. Thanks for playing. That’s totally wrong.

My new phone buddy explained that there should have been a separate little piece of paper in the envelope reading that online registration was $50, that is $5 less.

Well, we had the envelope as well as the form. It had no such note.

Even if that had been there, most drivers would not be anal-retentive as I and many likely would not have noticed it. I suspect that was how the guy knew so quickly what the problem was.

He pleasantly explained that if you are off so much as a penny either way when you type in (not click a radio button or other choice) the amount, the transaction appears to go through but does not complete. Yet, the site shows a completed transaction, provides a transaction number for reference and most important does not give any error message.

Gotcha, sucker!

There is no provision to notify anyone that it voided the renewal on the QT. The next time you hear of it is when the garage where you go for an inspection informs you, or in our case if you get a new insurance quote, or probably worst, if a police office pulls you for any purpose.

Honestly, I admit that I would have contacted them in another week regardless. We had not gotten that garish sticker for the license plate. Yet, I never imagined that they screwed me in the dark.

As a long-time tech writer with considerable usability training, I did have to ask a few questions. It turns out:

• The process will give you an error message early, but only if the vehicle and owner details it demands do not match the database.
• Online renewal does not give you a valid price or choice of valid prices related to the vehicle they just looked up.
• The online form will take whatever fee you enter.
• It will accept a valid credit card number and expiration date.
• It will reward you with a sense of accomplishment with a message that the renewal was complete, providing you with a transaction number.

The wonderful humor here of course is that they can do to you what they did to us — void the transaction after the fact without informing you in any way at any time.

By the bye, my RMV guy left me hanging until I asked how I could proceed. He told me I could try again online, but was not at all surprised when I said I was not interested in another such gamble. Then he said I could give him a credit card number and he’d do it immediately. I went that way.

At the end, he gave me an authorization number. That apparently is supposed to me more meaningful than a transaction number. I remain to be convinced and won’t really be until I get the paperwork in hand in what he said would be three to seven days.

I’ll do my anal thing here and write to the new DOT chief. I can point out:

1. The form mailed owners needs a price in the 1) Renew online BEST OPTION at top. Even if you do intend to tuck an addendum with a separate price in, think like a citizen and consider what information you will use at renewal time.
2. This the 21st Century, computer and internet era and all that. If you use the database to access the owner and vehicle information, also access the line for the fee, which you print on the renewal application.
3. If you must have the owner choose the fee, make it a choice from valid ones, not a string entry.
4. If an invalid fee entry will queer the renewal, provide the error during the process and prompt for correction, as with the vehicle information up front or the credit card entry at the end.
5. Never, ever, ever provide a number and message indicating a complete transaction if you have not done your verification on the backend.
6. Go to any government or commercial site and see how it’s done.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, RMV, Massachusetts, registration, renewal , usability

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