hitting deer

Every year, the weekend before Thanksgiving, our neighbors go hunting and kill a deer. They hang the deer with a noose in a tree in the yard. For the several days until Thanksgiving, the deer dangles there, dripping blood.

In early years I talked with our neighbor about the killing and the obscene display, thinking it might change their custom. It did not. Some years I obsessed—staring at the corpse, taking pictures of it. Others I hung sheets over all the windows of the house.

This holiday season my girlfriend and I killed a deer. It was what the insurance company called "an act of god." It was a car accident on an eight lane highway during heavy traffic. The deer leapt over the car to our right, landing right in front of us. The impact was impossible to avoid.

I've worried about hitting animals for as long as I've been driving. In Arizona it was rabbits, sidewinders, roadrunners. In the northeast it's been possum, skunks, and mostly deer. On the Taconic Parkway especially, I drive so slowly that drivers of other cars cuss me out.

But after decades of worrying, we've hit a deer. She didn't die right away so I was glad when other cars hit her, putting her out of her agony. The next thirty minutes were spent waiting for the police, cringing in the smashed car expecting to be hit by one of the cars swerving to avoid her body, and watching her body be torn apart by those that didn't swerve enough.

I know there was nothing that could have been done to avoid hitting her, and nothing we could have done to save her. Still, I felt awful.

Both the sheriff and the insurance adjustor said accidents involving deer were up dramatically due to hunting season. It felt better to blame hunters.

Building Bicycles for Two

I went to see the Starn Brothers' bamboo installation at Tallix yesterday (Big Bambu). Some of the really old, huge stalks of bamboo look like elephant legs. The artwork was okay, but what it really did was make me even more obsessed with the idea of doing the bamboo bike workshop in Brooklyn. I want a bamboo bike (and to provide one for someone who really needs transportation!!

sky. light.

My new car is just over a decade old, and it's the newest car I've ever had. I'm still adjusting to strange phenomena like levers for moving side mirrors. I'm used to shouting instructions to passengers with their arms out the (crank) window: in just a bit, up a touch, down half that.

The very best thing about this new-fangled vehicle is the sunroof. I get to feel like I'm outside when I'm having to drive.
I've always driven with windows open, ridden a bike without a helmet (gasp!), left the doors and windows of my house hanging open. The more light and air the better. For some reason, it improves things exponentially to have that light and air above you.

This, I realized belatedly, is what I like about Dia:Beacon. I can do without the bulk of the artwork. It comes as no surprise that I believe the best parts of the museum are the gardens and the bookstore. AND the skylights. It is a lovely building. But any spacious industrial building would look lovely bathed in tons of natural light. It feels good.

The entire main floor is lit by daylight. The artwork is lit by daylight. When the skylights are buried in snow, Dia:Beacon is dark, and closed. This bit of information makes me appreciate the museum much more.
Then, the artwork. I can be really grouchy about modern art, especially massive, macho, public sculptures. There is a lovely response to that kind of work in the museum, and that is the holes, or negative space sculptures of Michael Heizer. They're still lined with steel, lest he be too femme about it. Let's re-line those suckers with some nice cotton canvas for a good lesbo aesthetic, shall we? Or just go upstairs and visit all those artists' removed testicles in the Louise Bourgeois room.

*Cloud fabric from Repro Depot Fabrics

deer, dear

I've been lucky. In all my driving years I've never hit an animal. This may be due to the obsessively slow and white knuckled approach to the open road, or maybe the alert whistles hooked up to the battery. Today, my commuter train struck a deer on the way to work. The conductor obsessively announced the condition of each of the train's mechanical parts, but no report on the deer. May she have died quickly, without pain or fear.

use what you've got

There's a guy in Poughkeepsie composing music, amazing music, by hitting the bridge with various tools. This idea isn't so new...people who haven't had much have created musical instruments out of whatever they could find for eons. Those of us who ride the NYC subways are intimately familiar with the bucket drummers who keep us dancing on our commutes.

It does still seem novel to be playing the Mid-Hudson bridge. The compositions will be complete and made public this summer, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage up the Hudson River. You can listen to a clip here.

And, I don't know if there will be drummers there, but this summer will also see the opening of the Walkway over the Hudson. This railroad bridge, just north of (and visible from) the Mid-Hudson Bridge, was the longest bridge in the world when it opened in 1889. In the 1970s a fire damaged the bridge, and it's been out of use since. It's being re-engineered as a park and walkway over the river, connecting rail trails on either side, and promises to be a stunning public space. Parks and paths and views and drum music make for happy living.

traverse

The problem of freeways (and other blockades) cutting off the movement of people (who are not in cars) and animals is not new. And there hasn't been a lot of attention given to solving the problem—just ask anyone who's ever stayed in a motel and tried to get to the restaurant across the road on foot.

Some cities have introduced overpasses and underpasses in pedestrian-thick areas, like universities. But only in money generating ones, which is why there often aren't even sidewalks in poorer neighborhoods. So non-human animals who need to cross the road? Well, tough luck.

Some activists, tired of seeing massive amounts of animals hit by cars even in so-called "preserves," are campaigning to build over and under passes for deer, alligators, panthers, and salamanders. I'd heard about land bridges over I-78 in the Watchung Reservation area of New Jersey, and heard that auto accidents on that stretch of road decreased dramatically, with no reported collisions with animals. Proposals for a similar project to allow coyote and opossum to safely cross the Sepulveda Pass in L.A. was met with scorn, even from environmentalists, who wondered how animals would find their way there. But apparently the oldest land bridges (and tunnels) built with wildlife in mind are in the Everglades, and both humans and animals seem to be appreciating them.

I don't know how the animals find the best hikes, the best bridges, the best bicycle paths, either, but I'm sure once they do, word gets around.

critical mass

granville_bridge_3298, originally uploaded by doviende.

Critical Mass is not an organized group, rather "happenings" that happen to occur in many cities around the world on a regular basis. Critical Mass bike rides bring awareness to the availability of non-polluting alternatives to cars. They also make pretty obvious the lack of consideration city planners give to any form of getting around that doesn't involve cars. In the 'burbs it's worse yet (see pedestrian).

Tousles with cops are standard fare at these rides, since some traffic snarling tends to happen when large groups of cyclists ride together. (Especially when they're in costume or naked.) There's been lots of attention in NY to the cop who tackled a rider last week. But anyone who has ever attended a ride knows arrests, permanent confiscation of bicycles, and cops roughing up riders are all too common. Hopefully this media moment will get more bicycle activists involved.

All that, and the rides are still joyous events.

activism on wheels

Erin Davies had a rainbow sticker on her car, which "inspired" someone to vandalize it with spraypaint, writing "fag" and "u r gay." Instead of having it cleaned, she took a road trip in the fagbug to talk about hate crimes, meeting with the lovers and families of murdered queers, talking to high school groups, talking to anyone who was interested or angered.

She had some interesting experiences on the road, with both letters of support and hate mail left under her wipers, her windows being smashed, multiple people trying to clean off the writing themselves, and constant parking issues, since nobody wanted to deal with the slurs.

She's now made a documentary of her trip, and is working on a book. If you're interested, check out more of her story, her photos, and her press coverage on fagbug.com.

pedestrian

Yesterday, in Newburgh, NY, I saw a man get stopped by the police for walking down the street. Sirens, lights, the works. He was walking on the shoulder of a road at an intersection where 5 years ago there was farmland, and now there are strip malls: "essential" things like B&Ns, Lowe's, Mobil stations, Chili's. It was illegal for him to be walking down this road because there is no sidewalk (like most roads these days), and, I'm guessing here, because it is considered a highway by the town of Newburgh. On an already hot and sweaty afternoon, in a landscape covered with black asphalt, this man wasn't allowed to walk home from work. (The Talking Heads song Nothing But Flowers comes to mind here.)

I was flabbergasted, and feel that, for me, this felt like the beginning of the end. I saw all this happen from a car, no surprise, but was so horrified, it makes me want to want to walk and ride my bike exclusively. I'm so repulsed by a culture that makes it illegal to walk in this place that has so recently been taken away from people, and handed to corporations. Sickened by this class crap, that tries to require people to have cars by not funding public transportation.

I'm inspired to give my friend John Francis, of the organization Planetwalk and the book Planetwalker, another read. John didn't ride in cars for twenty-two years to protest oil industry abuses, and has many an interesting story to tell from his journeys. And, bonus, he's another banjo player!