My alarm went off early this morning, on a Sunday, for another one of those things I signed up for many moons ago. Today it was the Tour du Port, sponsored by Bike Maryland, and the last thing I wanted to do was climb out of bed at 7:00am on a Sunday. But oh, I’m glad I did! As soon as I was on the road I was happy to be there, flying down the hill, no traffic, crispy air but the promise of sun. Continue reading
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Rally At the Baltimore City Detention Center on Eager Street to Protest Proposed New Youth Prison
So I’m bounding down the stairs to grab my bike and head over to Fells Point to meet V. for a writing session when I step off the last step and my ankle turns, leaving me crumpled in a pile on the floor. My first thought was that my older brother would love this, and my second thought was damn, I need to ride my bike, and there’s a march and rally later today, so a sprained ankle simply will not do. Continue reading
Malcolm Suber Speaking at the Anti-ALEC Rally at the Federal Courthouse on Poydras
Today’s ride took me down to the Federal Courthouse on Poydras, a place that saw a lot of action today. The verdicts were in on the Danziger 7: guilty, guilty, guilty, all 25 counts. I was shocked. I am not used to the police being held accountable for violence against people of color, not at all. Now, I am under no illusions that putting a few individual men in prison fixes a social problem–I mean, we’ve got to reckon with the part where this just might be the system working like it’s supposed to. And I don’t think we should be putting anybody in prison–that’s not the safety I want. But these convictions mean something, that police can’t do these things under the cover of disaster. That is huge, and it is good for all of us. This afternoon the place was the stage for a different show, a protest against the meeting of ALEC, a right wing think tank with a purchased place at the government table. I took this picture of Malcolm Suber as he reminded us that we are in a class war, but it’s rich against poor, and we best start fighting back. And then we walked, me pushing my bicycle as I listened to R. tell me stories about learning to be an activist, talking about how we teach those lessons. Round and round the Marriot we went, so many lessons in this day.
New Orleans Ladies Arm Wrestling at the Rusty Nail Under the Expressway
If I had gotten out of bed at a reasonable hour I maybe would have gotten a good ride in–which I really, really need–but I was too busy reading about somebody else going for a walk in Baltimore (wow, that’s not how I saw those streets) and the new local paper (Jesus Christ, Frederick County-really?) that by the time I was ready to leave the house, the rain had started again. Bah. I was in my car, craigslist-dealing this, picking up S. at the airport (thank goodness S. is home again!) Until it was time to ride over to the Rusty Nail for another session with New Orleans Ladies Arm Wrestling. I wasn’t much in the mood for crowds, but I knew I would see most of my friends there, and it was raising money for BreakOUT!, one of those groups just plain doing good stuff. I snapped this picture of a bout and also of other people taking pictures of the bout. NOLAW is getting to be the kind of thing that you’ll want pictures of. That’s mine, and I need a much, much longer bike ride to say more than that; I’m not myself without my miles. Tomorrow, tomorrow.
Domino’s American Legends at Common & Carondelet
Warning: this blog will expose some of my latent angry lesbian feminist tendencies. I spent most of my day inside, cursing the vicious rains that are keeping me off my bike. Damn you, Nature! But it is what it is, and I managed to get quite a bit of work done, so, meh, good for me. I was working on my Introduction to Gender and Women’s syllabus for the fall semester, so that’s where my head was at when I headed out for the Britney Spears/Nicki Minag Femme Fatale 2011 tour at New Orleans Arena. I have liked Brtiney since she was a little girl. I wrote my master’s exams to her second album on repeat. I showed clips of Crossroads in my first Intro to Women’s Studies course in 2002; it really does offer a rare representation of class politics, plus, when Brit sings “I Love Rock and Roll,” well, um, I just really like that part. Every semester I talk to students about this quandary, where women’s sexual power and pleasure is an essential feminst right and fight, but also the way that the narrowing of women’s power to the sexual realm is dangerous, especially for women who have long been imagined as always already hypersexual. So, I ask my students, is Britney (or Nicki or Beyonce or Lady Gaga) a feminist figure, or is she just playing up to old damaging tropes of women’s sexual availabilty? Thing is, it’s both and neither and all of that. Nothing is either revolutionary or not, subversive or not. It depends on who’s doing the looking, what the one being looked at is putting on display, where it’s happening. It depends on the rhetorical situation. Tonight, watching so many women hobbling in heels they couldn’t trust and wearing skirts they couldn’t sit in, it just didn’t seem like the kind of feminism I want us to be fighting for, even if Britney’s show is all about her “power” as a femme fatale. It seemed like feminism as just another consumer choice, and it reminded me of this sign outside a Domino’s I passed as I pushed my bike through the rush hour crowds, America’s legends reduced to pizza with ham and pineapple on top, politics reduced to what you buy or wear. And that’s not even to touch the weird Orientalism, the “sexy” prisoner/guard motif, how we all know nobody’s actually making music but we don’t say anything, the endless dance fighting, white versus black, good versus evil, and so on. But that’s just how I read it tonight–we’ll see what I think about it in the morning. What I am sure of is that the bike is the way to get to a giant show. from the grossly underused rack and whizzing by all those suckers sitting in their cars in traffic. Ride a bike, people!
View of the Inner Harbor From Federal Hill
I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been hit by a truck, or maybe thrown from my bike due to a pothole. Ugh. I am sore. But I want to explore Baltimore by bike, and I have no self-control, so after a leisurely brunch in Charles Village, I slowly pedaled my way down to the Inner Harbor where I decided to go ahead and join the Aquarium, envisioning a future where sometimes I ride my bike downtown and check out the jellyfish. I locked up to a rack and headed inside. The place was absolutely packed, and I was feeling a little scrambled-egg in the head, so I just tripped around, wondering why they have to make the jellyfish room feel like a gay dance club–is that what it takes to lure the Kids Today? After a silent promise to never return there on a Sunday afternoon, I pedaled over to the American Visionary Arts Museum to redeem my fast-expiring interwebz coupon. Other than the room of art inspired by bathroom humor, the place was amazing, especially the room filled with wind-up machines–come to town and we’ll go. I had a bowl of fruit and a mimosa in the restaurant before heading up Federal Hill for a view of the harbor. I snapped this picture before reading up; apparently, this is a massive earthwork built by Union soldiers after Benjamin Butler secured Baltimore for the North. In New Orleans, Benjamin Butler represents all the monarchical aspirations of the Yankees, but, as Ranger Davon Williams from Fort McHenry told me when I inquired about their baffling movie, every tells stories in their own way. I pedaled slowly uphill back to K. and N.’s, looking forward to putting some ice on some things and eating the blackberry cobbler they report is in the oven. They are the hosts with the most, for sure. I’m glad I just got back on the bike today.
Book Carts For Sale at the Morial Convention Center
I woke up with leaden legs for the second day in a row, and I didn’t even bike anywhere yesterday! I guess lots of walking and dancing aren’t exactly rest, but I couldn’t imagine two days in a row without a little pedaling, so even though I deigned to drive to brunch this morning, I took the bike down to the Convention Center for another visit to the ALA convention. Continue reading
Librarians Making Their ALA Convention Schedules at the Convention Center
My sister’s a librarian, and so are some of my favorite people I’ve never met (thank you, interwebz!), so when I found out the American Library Association was holding their national convention in little old New Orleans, I was pretty excited, hoping everybody would show up; then budgets and schedules and my surprise loss of my apartment conspired to keep quite a few folks away. But that’s no reason for me to stay home! After riding around doing this errand and that, I ended up at the Morial Convention Center with thousands of librarians, all with their badges and red tote bags and 300 page program books. I don’t have the $200 to get in to the thing, but I can roam the halls and see librarians in their Annual habitat. After New Orleans flooded after Katrina, ALA was the first convention to honor their contract and come here. ALA has been on the front lines of protecting us against the prying eyes of the Homeland Security state. Librarians are the guardians of one of our last shared public resources. I mean, they get a copy and then let us all read it, one at a time? That’s pretty flipping radical in this moment where everybody needs their very own one of everything. Yeah, I can’t afford to go to their show, but I’m happy to sit here and watch them march along, figuring out how to help the rest of us find what we want to find, read what we want to read, and ask questions we didn’t know we wanted to ask. I hope they all have a wonderful time this weekend. And that the Convention Center gets some damn bicycle racks.
MA/Ph.D. Hooding Ceremony at Dixon Hall at Tulane
I’ve said it before, and I’m going to say it again, but this time in brief: I love me some pomp and circumstance. I got on my bike this morning, swapped the SPDs for some wedge heels, and went to Dixon Hall to sit in the balcony and whoooooo for my dear friend R., who picked up a Master of the Arts in Latin American Studies today. It was awesome. And then there was food and champagne, and then a lunch and another ceremony, and hugs and pictures and more of those “chicken” “quesadillas” and another fruit tree, followed by dinner with M. and her positively lovely family (Dad loves national parks! and history!), and then I rode my bike home in the dark, full up on good feelings. Congratulations, graduates!
Parked Cars on a Lawn on S. Lopez Near Esplanade
I got to get up at 6:30 this morning and ride my bike to work–yes, all of this is happening on a Saturday–to give a final exam. We all sat there dutifully, them scribbling along, me looking busy, for four hours. Sigh. I was tired, but the day was lovely, so I rode over to Mid-City to see R.’s new apartment and then just pedaled around until I found D. on a porch. It’s Jazz Fest time, so everybody is on the porch and watching the crowds roll by. I snapped this picture from a most beautiful porch while D. and M. moved cars around like Tetris pieces. Yeah, I’m glad I took my bike, as were those folks walking the wrong way down Esplanade who could ask me, because I wasn’t locked up in a car, “Where is Jazz Fest?” A couple beers and several conversations later and I was pedaling along empty streets on my way home, smooth and mindless circles. I picked up Bicycling Magazine from home and grabbed a salad on the corner. Colin McEnroe writes, “Look what I’ve accomplished, and I have 14 whole gears I haven’t even touched yet.” Oh my, exactly.
What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today 