Limited Natural Growth (LNG)

Years ago joined fellow bicyclists in a suburb of Boston where Mayor Tom Menino used to live to visit several houses lavishly lit, made it all the more special by braving the cold, damp and dark. Some make it a goal to view a million points of Christmas lights each season. Private homes display on average only 300, so you'd have to witness over 3,300 to reach goal without major installations, still doable, though becoming ever less evident hereabouts. Clark Griswold in National Lampoon movie, as a measure, mentioned 20,000. Cranston City Hall displays about 30,000, possibly surpassed by Praise Tabernacle Church also on Park Avenue. LaSalette Shrine in Attleboro states in excess of 300,000. Nearby Slater Park offers at least 30,000 on over 100 memorial Christmas trees. Taunton Green [shown], through which for several years personally commuted, probably has 100,000, though you’ll see as many driving by homes on County Road in Seekonk. Some of this has to do with the Festivals of LIghts, Diwali and Hanukkah, which celebrate how evil gets subdued by lighting the night and remind people of the miracle of sustainability, oil lasting in ancient lamps for a week longer than expected. Snacks of jelly donuts cooked in oil are symbolic accompaniments. Consider how much oil they now waste generating electricity for folly. Traditions outlive useful lives, and substitute stupidity for rationality.

Surprising how little people have learned given 25 years of free access to information via internet. ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) adopted TCP/IP in 1983; once NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network) was decommissioned in 1995, last restriction to commercial traffic disappeared. Ever since, persuasion and profit have mostly driven factual exchanges. Eternal tease of telling you how to get it, why you need it, but not what you need to know screams scam, though works upon the unwary every time. Get bored and exhausted reading articles seeded with so-called facts only to be propositioned by some businessman greedy for another payday. Like any other tool, cash or data can be used for evil or good.

Historian Sophia Rosenfeld also said, “The Internet is particularly important because of its reach and because of the algorithmic way in which it promotes what’s popular rather than what’s true. It creates a culture of untruth, probably, that other forms of publishing can’t easily.” Advertisers look to exploit situations based on prevailing trends that social media reveals. Show any interest in anything whatever, and your mailbox will fill faster than you can delete irrelevant input.

Basic logic has never been taught. Empty promises and logical fallacies dominate choices. For perspective, see Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions (2008). Historically, important facts were carefully withheld, whether by guilds, who jealously guarded lucrative skills, or monarchies, who feared revolutionary anarchies. At intervals, authors sought to rectify this knowledge gap. Voltaire’s circle published encyclopedias revealing how to do trades. The Whole Earth Catalog ambitiously collected what it deemed necessary for do-it-yourself sufficiency and global sustainability. Mistakes and snafus are inevitable, probably necessary, for learning to occur. Profitability often relies on waste.

Stuff never changes. Idle gossip and ingrained prejudices still predominate, then talk of past events. Future plans and new ideas only appeal to a small minority of already gifted, and then often as image props, not serious concerns. Observations are slivers of life, what exists in a moment that can be perceived, including concepts, feelings, measurements, memories, patterns, smells, sounds and touches. What many would prefer instead of facts are prophecies. Who wouldn't want to know for sure, so brace for the inevitable? The hopelessly doomed, junkies, ne'er-do-wells, parasites, prisoners, and walking dead who account for probably a quarter or more of population just don’t care, never did, rely upon dole, handouts, and other people’s efforts.

Spare us your words. Most are just attempts to bilk, hoodwink and steal. Don't need what you're so eager to sell. People adamantly rationalize poor decisions; to admit a mistake is to reveal own gullibility or ignorance. Many doing likewise is how crooks keep congressional seats and tyrants grip on power. Ideals of individuality mean taking personal responsibility, not such an agreeable proposal for many.

Easiest thing any writer can do is predict doom and provoke conflagrations that mushroom. Dystopian stories abound. Risking apocalypse and tempting fate, they’ve plopped LNG domes and nuclear power plants right next to population centers. Could have located them at remote nodes on edge of grid, but that’s where private estates of the powerful are. Any accident could prove catastrophic. Getting humans to cooperate on a shared mission means imagining alternatives to greed and sloth and understanding what keeps ideals aloft. Improbable? Optimism has always been irrational and seldom rewarded unless warranted. However difficult reasoning may be, it beats assuming, blindly obeying, and capitulating to crowds. You're granted rights to believe whatever you want, but you have to pick your fights. Some aren't worth waging.

Can't tolerate abuse of office, armed insurgency, conservative bullying, consumer fraud, criminal conspiracy, identity theft, mass shootings, minority discrimination, mob violence, power hegemony, or thoughtless policy. They demand immediate amendment and indictment. But, otherwise, why sweat someone else's lifestyle?

For the most part, people forgive heinous abominations and prosecute venial sins. They allow murderous results and squabble over imagined insults. They don't properly prioritize because government, institutions, and news media condense crucial issues and present alongside trivialities, so minimize importance. Plus anything too complicated is hard to indict. Without infotainment, ratings would suffer, and share of advertisement fees decrease. Some stories never get told, because they'd detract from earnings of those who buy ad time. For examples, direct link between soft drinks and Type II diabetes, distracted driving collisions and deaths due to smartphone use, dozens of cancers and respiratory diseases related to petroleum use, and other issues industry doesn't want disclosed. Not only advertising time but national policies are bought by profitable corporations, particularly automotive, financial, insurance, medical, petroleum, pharmaceutical, utility, and weapon. Trillions from treasury were misspent on stuff nation didn't want and nobody really needed, while innovations were suppressed and stupid choices fostered on behalf of exclusive interests.

Never want to tout beauty or benefits of what you cherish, because greedy and needy will swoop in to exploit and trash it. Will always be a lot easier and safer to belittle and denigrate, lest you'll be accused of bad taste and lame choices. Anyway, when you survey surrounding culture and landscape there's really very little to recommend. Blacktop is boring, roads usually lined with strip malls, toxic expanses, and ugly wastelands.

Spent months compiling lists of public places. Parks prove residents want to improve ambiance of environments which they deem less than appealing or healthy. Pretty obvious they've got no control over business or private properties, only minor influence over mutually owned spaces. Planting trees seems to assuage their rage, but pleases arborists with commerce maintaining and trimming. So who pays? You guessed it.

What’s out there to enjoy? Not enough vistas of neatly kept farms or shorelines still exist. Quaint villages with nostalgic architecture don’t receive deserved maintenance. Winding narrow lanes through overhanging forests are disappearing. Brookside bungalows you’d see on Christmas cards may be mere facets of memories and figments of imagination ever since poles with drooping wires and sign pollution befouled landscapes. What have you done to preserve anything worth seeing? Once cash, funds, gifts or taxes are given, you have zero chance to recoup.

Midwinter brings blues, depression, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and scores of maladies remembered in melancholic songs. Cusp of a new year inspires hopeful resolutions to better oneself. “Art should improve your life, and who you are. It should lead to emotional and spiritual growth. Otherwise, why have it?” protested Billy Childish. But why suffer through self improvement when nobody values what you do? Because what one accomplishes against own expectations is all it matters. Readers will find and respect it. If one claims bicycling rates as a form of praying, then can’t disavow magic realism and mystic spiritualism. Never needed an otherworldly reason to improve self or trade fairly in any season.

Legal Daisy Spacing

Planet is awash in problems without ready solutions that you can do little or nothing to cure. But you can, unless disabled, improve self and surroundings. A better world begins internally and locally. For example, you can maintain place you live, mow grass, touch up paint, and trim bushes and hedges. Nobody wants to see debris, mold and overgrowth in their neighborhood. One derelict home lowers property values along entire street. Gracious gardens and pleasant ambience are gifts to whole town.

Nobody suggests sanctions or sentences for spacing daisies too far apart, though there are such rules as maximum unrelated occupancy, minimum housing standards, property setbacks, and zoning restrictions. You can’t park cars overnight on sidewalks or streets, can’t strew yard with junk, must remove ice and snow from public frontage, need to obtain permits to establish a daycare center, group home, public tavern, or retail store. Promptly remove garbage bins after pickup and store out of plain sight, not in front or on curb; lazy habits can cause traffic tragedies. Anything doesn’t go, though many things do. Usually penalties come as civil suits rather than arrests or fines, though both are possible.

Plus brains aren’t popular today. Experts who were placed in positions of trust betrayed and disappointed, consequently many distrust facts and fakes. Conservatives ushered in banking deregulation, biased news, citizen surveillance, constitutional bypasses, illegal wars, and unitary power aligned with dictatorships and monarchies. Education and endowments took a beating, with funding diverted from performers and students to directors and presidents. Without schools that teach not only job skills but ways to properly discriminate between facts and lies and teach self the truth, you get sheeple easily hoodwinked and violated. Rage against a statue in Columbus Square is misplaced, but there's rightly none of Cortés, who pillaged and slaughtered, so an intrepid explorer who codified Caribbean customs and languages and conquered no one gets defamed. Typical, ill informed zealots seek someone who can easily be blamed. The proof is made plain in social injustice and widest gap between poor and wealthy in recorded history. It’s a zero sum game in which nobody wins, not even billionaires who depend upon armies of unsung heroes while denying them any chance to thrive, not smart at all.

View toward downtown from H.P. Lovecraft's Grave, Swan Point Cemetery: "I am Providence."

Brutal taxation, insufficient funds, and national policies impact appearance. Poor people give up, lack tools, neglect homes, wear rags. If world’s going to end soon, does it matter? When you recall how Providence once looked, stately homes lining neatly paved streets with public parks dotted with artistic plantings under a canopy of mature elms, maples and oaks, the contrast to today’s wasteland makes you wonder. The 13th State was once nation’s richest per capita with plenty of jobs for able apprentices at mills all along 13 busy rivers. Colleges arose to graduate classes of well-informed citizens. Yet it was also a vacation spot for untouchable robber barons who built palaces on Newport’s cliffed coast and exemplified disparities of power and wealth.

Parks extended gardens to less fortunate masses, plus inspired many home owners to emulate on smaller scales. Anyone who rolls slow enough takes note and utters thanks to those who decorate a doorstep or develop a perennial border. All that effort isn’t in vain, as blooms and foliage boost mood and fight depression. Plus yardening provides aerobic activity outdoors that builds stamina, fights disease, and fulfills deficiencies of oxygen and Vitamin D.

Little Rhody has suffered economic decline as a target of political retribution for predominant Democrat votes and unchecked bank, developer, and insurer greed. For line access utilities cut tree limbs. Diseases took elms. Maples and oaks fueled fires. Costs very little to replant forests, though land gets snapped up for new housing tracts upon which to live the alleged American Dream, which lately accounts for 90% of population in six figure debt. Cable providers and other utilities are monopolies that demand outrageous fees for what little they offer. Annual property taxes in cities and towns are so high they force you to rebuy your home every decade or so. Cuts to state aid to cities and towns resulted in recurring double digit tax hikes. But pruning, raking, and recycling organic debris into soil improving compost cost nothing; you can also for free divide perennials to extend plantings or swap plants with other gardeners.

Restaurants fail so often, one suspects that huge capital investments can’t react to dining trends and readily adapt to suit. How do food trucks fit in? They are hard to regulate if they stick to private property with owner’s permission or public streets. Ice cream vendors and lemonade trucks prowl wherever a sale once occurred. Without food, festivals fall flat. Commerce draws patrons and enlivens shared space. But eateries demand sanitary facilities. Beer and beverage dispensers should park alongside places where anyone, including them, can pee, then wash hands; otherwise, what’s the infectious aftermath? Epidemics of Cholera? Hepatitis? It’s an attraction of merit when a microbrewer invites a food truck, thus meets all needs. And such pairings need not be temporary. One bike shop serves coffee and pastry. A farm stand features a popular deli with eat-in seating. Several new restaurants feature local farm to table. What matters are businesses anticipating customers’ needs, investing capital into them, and supporting entire community. Small business accounts for bulk of economy, and government gives few breaks other than to big business.

You’d imagine all this carping might condemn state’s residents and disrespect local entrepreneurs. Quite the contrary. You only chime in when you care. Robert Curley arbitrarily and histrionically lists 100 Things to Do in Rhode Island Before You Die, though many you’d only recommend to tourists, not friends, like drop a c-note to bloat your belly on Nordic Lodge delicacies, perilously skydive, or surf waves. Blount’s in Warren or Iggy’s in Warwick are eateries to visit before Ye Olde English Fish & Chips in Woonsocket. Aunt Carrie’s in Point Judith allegedly invented the clam cake. Locally all three clam shacks are legendary. You’d think he’d include bona fide attractions of farmer’s markets in Lippitt Park and Pawtucket, Glocester’s Brown & Hopkins General Store, historical houses, leaf peeping in northwestern towns, Memorial day commemoration at Exeter's Veteran's Cemetery, Newport mansions, RISD museum, Roger Williams Park, Swan Point Cemetery on a sunny day, and White Horse Tavern, though may have presumed those things had already been done. There’s no want for events, exhibitions, food, meetups, seasonal attractions, shopping, and things to occupy your time.

Before the next recession is the time to fix bridges, parks, paths, and roads, foster improvements, and realign attitudes. You need not tolerate asphalt overuse, creeping deserts, crumbled roads, sloppy properties, ugly strip malls, or urban blight. Neither should you be bullied by bad advice nobody ought to listen to.

Kicking Down the Cobblestones

Regrettably, admit this blog has been terribly neglected, no posts in over a year, but for a good reasons. Unless readers make comments and show interest, neither does author. Meanwhile, held a full time job, maintained another blog, and wrote two groovy books for publication. Have a feeling that upkeep isn’t a community strength anyway.

According to historian Sophia Rosenfeld, there’s no democracy unless majority communicates and participates. Rosenfeld says, “...highly trained ‘experts’ monopolize the business of determining the truth... end up threatening the democratic process itself... We cannot give up on trying... to find some elemental convictions about the nature of reality that we can hold in common. Our future depends on seeing, as well as living in, a shared world.” Aggression invites retaliation, hate visits hate, oppression consumes oppressors. With eight billion humans surrounding you, you have no choice but to coexist, let live, lest mankind grinds into a dead end.

Rhode Island is the melting pot incarnate, model of diversity, symbol of tolerant society. Conservative fascists prefer to purge anyone with opposing opinions and varied appearances. This leads directly to genocide, whereas pluralism expands economy, opens markets, and works toward social justice. Because of multi-ethnicity and optimal popularity this state hasn’t suffered as much as many megacities along Eastern seaboard. But microbrews and varied startups don’t always amount to a critical mass that spreads prosperity.

You can hardly expect anything would be worth saying about nation’s smallest state. But smallness can serve as an example and stimulate rapidity of change. After loss of Navy presence among other major downturns, Newport quickly adapted into one of top ten tourist spots in North America. After closure of many manufacturing plants, should be encouraged by spontaneous gentrification of once dilapidated neighborhoods flanking downtown Providence, and streets with a mayor who’s not afraid to apply experiences as a bicyclist to inform decisions to meet federal and state codes that demand bike infrastructure.

Regulations specify a bike lane for roads that exceed 24 feet in width, but many begun back in horse and buggy days vary from block to block. Having to get off bike or ride on sidewalks because you’re squeezed doesn’t lead to route continuity or transit reliability. Nevertheless, more now choose to commute by bike, so must be accommodated. Yet bike lanes on Eaton Street, directly adjacent to Providence College, planned for a decade with full local scrutiny, brought ire of a few vocal numbskulls, so must be removed. Sure that hundreds of students use lanes. This is not democracy at work, but corrupt rule akin to conservative U.S. Senate, where approved House bills are sent to die, what’s wrong with America beginning with Nixon’s era.

Broadway not only has bike lanes, as prescribed by law, but several popular eateries and shops have popped up to rival Atwells Avenue, which unfortunately has taken a hit because of recent violent crimes centered on barrooms and hookah lounges. Normally, cities relegate vice businesses - drinking, drugs, prostitution, sex shops, smoking, stripping, vaping - to isolated districts where hours can be limited, police patrols enhanced, and surveillance assured. They don’t allow them to set up imprudently in busy residential neighborhoods with schools and stores to which families bring children. Panderers and pimps prefer close proximity to legitimate decency, because after sunset Allens Avenue is an industrial ghost town that everyone avoids. Murder remains more prevalent in neglected neighborhoods where police won’t patrol and poverty prevails.

Another rising neighborhood is the Jewelry District, which was planned. Expanded by rerouting The Vortex, former interchange of Interstates 95 and195, through the half billion expense of I-Way, and fronted by J&W College, many medical research facilities have settled in. Previous experiment at Davol Square didn’t succeed, but distance to downtown doesn’t matter as much when you work within district. Eateries and shopping have returned despite no large flow of vehicular traffic. District will ultimately span Bermuda Triangle bounded by campuses downtown, East Side, and RI Hospital. No expense was spared to install a controversial bike-ped bridge that angles from center of city toward India Park, which still awaits specific bike path developments to complete corridor from Point Street Bridge to George Redman Linear Park and real tourist attraction of East Bay Bike Path, which lies beyond.

If you aren’t improving, you are declining, because that is how entropy, a proven natural property, works. However, many Rhode Islanders fight any change, prefer to endure rats and grow mold, reject innovations, maintenance, recovery and renovations. Nothing stays the same no matter what you do. Better to guide developments toward significant improvements than stand by pathetically.

If you look hard enough can still find a few colonial cobblestone stretches, a cycling challenge harkening back to pre-Civil War era, though none motorists would be interested rolling over. Remnants punctuate abandoned lanes and backwater alleys in Bristol, Central Falls, Newport and Providence. Developments at Conant Thread Mill will eliminate some, though you might gain a bike-ped bridge to Pawtucket to replace one long since closed. Planners seemed determined to pave last few stones over with asphalt, though ignore state’s numerous dirt roads in rural areas that need more attention.

Pawtucket was nearly destroyed when I-95 tore it in half. Its warren of dark downtown facades scares off state’s million plus population, but should benefit from planned commuter train stop with ample parking, perhaps a RIPTA trolley loop from downtown to terminal. McCoy Stadium might survive as a venue for an A or AA baseball franchise or more popular soccer, realigned to state’s growing Latino demographic.

Northern Rhode Island is also near Gillette Stadium where MLS and NFL franchises play professional sports. International airport and seaport of Boston, with MLB, NBA and NHL franchises, and world class colleges, hospitals and museums, is only an hour’s drive away. Living here you can avoid some of the disadvantages of Massachusetts, especially taxes and traffic, but enjoy employment and entertainment just across border.

Unless state finally moves forward with Big River Reservoir, a long range plan for which all property has already been acquired, it cannot expand Southern Rhode Island residency further. Clean, potable water is crucial to businesses and homes. Well water only works where homes are few and sceptic or toxic effluents are strictly controlled. Such limitations seldom cross most people’s minds in a race to install new housing tracts, solar farms, and wind turbines. Nine turbines can now be seen high upon ridge near landfill in Johnston, which join several in Portsmouth, Providence, and West Greenwich. With all the dams and infrastructure in place on 13 rivers previously used to power mills, you’d think any ecological impact of electric hydro-turbines would be minimal, though utilities summarily dismiss in favor of fossil fuel polluters in which they’ve already invested. Out kicking around you notice how tiny changes are tolerable as long as they don’t overturn totalitarian schemes.