Me, Jaimie Lynn and Aviva pose with hoops before Eris

Mardi Gras in New Orleans was a strange and wonderful time. Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, but the celebrations leading up to the actual day last for about two weeks. Besides the celebrations around the Super Bowl, the peak of Mardi Gras for me was marching in the Krewe d’Eris Parade on Sunday the 14th of February.

Eris is an unauthorized parade, as described on NOLA.com

“As Sunday night slithered out and Lundi Gras scuttled in, The Vieux Carre was swarmed by the filthy vermin of the Krewe of Eris, a wild and phantasmagoric walking (and bicycling and wheelchairing and shopping-carting) krewe dedicated not to misrule but to no rule at all. Unorganized, unauthorized, un-permitted, and unconcerned, the Krewe of Eris is an open-membership tribe honoring Eris, the goddess of discord and strife. In the mythology of the Greeks it was Eris who threw the golden apple that sparked a feud between vain deities, revealing the pettiness and weaknesses of the powerful, and thus the Krewe of Eris gives the lie to the grandiose and flashy motorized superkrewes, mostly by being much, much more fun.”

I was part of the Hula Hooping corps, coordinating with our friends in the flag corps. We marched at the front of the parade along with a luminous dragon and a marching band. The theme of the parade was “light and pleasure” and along that vein my friend Aviva and I both got LED hula hoops, and our third hooper Jamie Lynn marched between us to catch some of our light. We all decided to dress in costumes of white and gold. I had a fun marching band hat with gold horns made by a talented woman named Jade. The rest of my costume I got from second hand shops.

Marching for about three hours with a hula hoop was both exhilarating and tiring. I had so much fun tossing it as high as I could and catching it, watching the swirls of light making pretty patterns in the sky. The crowd loved us, and was us. People seemed to wander in and out of the parade, adding to the chaos and beauty of it. We had rehearsed a routine but found it impossible to carry out. It was all just fun and celebration.

Since I was hooping I could not photograph the parade itself but I found some cool photos online on the Wandering Dreamers blog and also on l*ght//motion’s flickr page. The slideshow below is of the photos I took before the parade…

A float full of Saints

On Tuesday I biked out to the famous Louisiana Superdome to watch the New Orleans Saints Parade take off. I propped my bike up against a palm tree and stood on the seat to get myself above the crowd to take these shots. I started daydreaming about building a bike with a photo stand or maybe just a really tall tricycle. But for me it always comes back to stilts. Gotta get me some.

I have been here about a month and have enjoyed watching the Saints mania build to a ever pitch, explode during their Super Bowl victory, and leave us with an electricity in the atmosphere around New Orleans that is palpable. I am normally not one to wax poetic about sporting events but this team has brought hope and renewal to this city in a way I couldn’t understand had I been living anywhere else during this time. I am grateful to the universe for arranging my visit.

Double Dutching in Jackson Square before the Super Bowl

In looking back upon my life, I have noticed a strange pattern. I have lived in the geographical fan base of successful football franchises much of my adult life. The first time it happened was kind of heartbreaking, living in Syracuse and Rochester (NY) while the Buffalo Bills played in and lost 4 consecutive Super Bowls in the early nineties. At the turn of the century I moved to New England in time to witness the Patriots go to 3 Super Bowls, winning two of them. Now here I am – a new decade, a New Orleans, and at the epicenter of the wildest football scene in the history of the universe. And yes, the Saints victory over the Colts in Super Bowl XLIV has beaten the shit out of every other football experience I have ever had. WHO DAT!!

Aviva hooping it up!

It is really funny because I am not a football fan, per se. I have watched a handful of Super Bowls and playoff games over the years, but here in the Big Easy there is no way to avoid the Saints mania. This is a city only five years out from being nearly destroyed by Katrina and the Saints seem to represent something beyond sports. They are the Phoenix rising up from the flames, with all the aura and legend of that mythical creature. Even my yoga teacher waxes poetic during class, prophesizing that the Saints’ victory is going to end the Hindu Kali Yuga and usher in the Dvapara Yuga. She tells us that we are all about to become beings made of light, and if my quantum calculations are correct she just might be right.

I spent the day out with my new friends who love to Double Dutch and hula hoop. We rode our bikes through traffic jams and dog parades (Barkus) to get to Jackson Square in the early afternoon, where we set up shop and drew a huge crowd around us. The Saints fans (aka all of New Orleans) were all out in their black and gold, some wearing more elaborate costumes. The sun was shining and our little boom box was playing upbeat music and it was all pretty picture perfect, as my perfectly pretty pictures hopefully convey.

For the game I went to a party, with the usual anarchists and artists you find at random parties around New Orleans when you are a freak like me. I sat inside an old warehouse building of some sort on a dingy car seat watching the game projected on a giant bed sheet. The setup would occasionally lose reception and about half way through someone put Saints Radio on instead of the CBS audio, making the famous Super Bowl commercials seem even more surreal. There was no heat and so I went out at half time to warm up by the fire while The Who played and we all secretly wondered if they regretted the lyrics in “My Generation“.

The second half of the game was epic, up to the point in the 4th quarter when the Saints made the game’s only interception and ran 70 yards to victory, and into history. After all the hugs and victory cries and high fives our posse once again rode out towards the French Quarter, busting out the jump ropes and hula hoops on the corners of Frenchmen and Royal. Once again a jubilant crowd gathered around us, while cars drove by honking and the whole city took to the streets in celebration. Everyone yelling “Who Dat!!” over and over again. All people united by one event, a celebration well deserved by this amazing city. I am blessed to be here, and to be a part of it all.

Giddy Saints fan holding my hoop

Saints Cycle

Here is a slideshow of the Daytime photos:

And here is one with the Night-time photos:

New Orleans 'Totally Vegan Potluck' in chalk

I have been here in New Orleans just over three weeks and have landed my first job, as the New Orleans Vegan Examiner! The Examiner is an online news and blogging site that deems itself “the insider source for everything local“.  They have hubs in most of the major US cities and recruit people like me who have a passion for writing about interesting topics to do columns. The pay is based on the popularity of the column and any advertising we can help them secure.

While I do not expect to become rich talking about veganism in New Orleans, I think that it will provide some other nice benefits. I am hoping that I will be able to use the column to encourage restaurant owners and chefs to try vegan options and add them to their menus. I hope it will bring more people to the vegan events being held here in New Orleans. I am also aware that Examiner articles get high Google rankings, so I think that it will bring more publicity to my other vegan projects and perhaps even my personal website. Beyond all that it will help me to hone my writing skills so that I can someday write that New York Times bestselling book I have in me somewhere…

If you would like to help out, please subscribe to my column, post comments on my articles, and keep coming here to check out this blog. You will get so much good karma you won’t know what to do with it all, and you will have to pass it on to others.

http://www.examiner.com/x-37530-New-Orleans-Vegan-Examiner

photo i took on my iphone through a gallery window in the French Quarter

In my last post I spoke of giving selflessly and building community as paths that can lead us out of our own drama and suffering and into a better future. After writing it I felt an awkwardness, wondering if my thoughts and actions really measured up to the things I had written. It is great to be able to write and perhaps inspire people with words, but it is in the realm of action where we are truly tested. I heard a small voice in my head telling me that perhaps I was promoting ideals that I wasn’t quite living up to.

I have been in New Orleans less than two weeks and I am sure nobody expects me to be a community leader or the patron saint of reaching out to neighbors at this point. However for the first time in about 15 years I am a minority in my neighborhood, a pale white face in a sea of darker skinned people. Coming from a far less diverse community in Northampton, MA I find myself plagued with white guilt. Our culture is the operating system that runs in our minds, and even after years of disk maintenance, software upgrades and attempts to understand the problems that cause racial divide it is difficult to transcend it. I feel a bit unsettled when I walk out my door, as if my neighbors all distrust me and perhaps I should distrust them. It is a fear I knew I would have when I moved here and one I wanted to confront in my life so that I can evolve my being.

David Hammond with his snowballs in NYC

There is an artist named David Hammond who I learned about while studying Fine Art Photography at RIT back in the mid nineties and the lesson of his performance piece has stuck with me since then. In the middle of winter in New York City with snow on the ground free for the taking, he set up a spot on the sidewalk and began selling snowballs. In googling the work now I find that the concept behind his piece was to mock the commodification of the art world. But what I remember is a deeper lesson. In selling snowballs Hammond was able to connect with people that would normally walk by him with eyes averted, who now were curious and ready to strike up a conversation. He said something like “two strangers are naturally going to be uncomfortable around each other, but given a common object they can make a connection”. I wish I could find his actual quote about that now, because I am sure he said it more eloquently than that.

At any rate, yesterday proved to be a turning point in my evolvement. I brought a small toy guitar here with me because I wanted to reignite my passion for playing but could not fit a full sized guitar in my luggage. I am typically quite shy about playing publicly, but yesterday I wanted to play and it was too stuffy in my apartment. I somehow overcame my fear of being the cracker playing folk songs in the hood and went out onto my front steps to play. Within a couple of minutes the kids across the street took notice and came closer to watch me. I had assumed that street musicians were so prevalent here that no one would care much, but something magical happened for me. People were noticing. An old black woman came over and stood next to me with her eyes closed and her heart totally open to my music. The kids across the street were now dancing and a few more people had come out. I realized then that this talent was one of my gifts, something that can make people happy. I realized that all the street musicians are down in the French Quarter trying to get money in their hats, but there is no money in my neighborhood, so this was more unique. The shared experience of the music turned me from stranger into a new member of our community.

Later that night I went out to the Hukah Club with my landlord and his partner. It was Hip Hop night and once again I found myself a grain of salt in a pepper shaker. Perhaps because of my earlier experience I did not feel the usual discomfort. The music was like a steam engine propelling my bootie barge into motion. My inhibitions dropped once again and I lost myself into dancing. I hopped around and shook my hips and all the while looking people in the eyes and smiling. I think that it moved people to see this white boy unafraid even though I don’t have the requisite moves usually performed in the hip hop genre. The men started giving me various secret handshakes and teaching me little shoulder pops and hip thrusts. People were smiling with me.

I ended up at the edge of the dance floor near a raised platform where some women were sitting and dancing. They started taking pictures of me and then dancing with me, posing with me, laughing and letting loose. They even started doing that grind thing where they would bend over and put their fine booties into my groin area and move it them all around. Jump up jump up and jump down. So I started doing it too. All the yoga I have been doing has gotten my quite limber and flexible, and these girls loved dancing with me. I was dancing with the guys around me too. It was some of the most fun I have had in a long time. I was aware of the difference in our skin tones, but the dancing and celebrating transcended the cultural baggage in my mind and set me free. We are all one people after all, with many variations and flavors.

I feel like time is speeding up for me, like there is some great force propelling me onward. There is no more profound spiritual fulfillment than to be finding ones purpose in this life. I am so grateful to have these epiphanies coming more and more frequently, like I have opened up some channel for the universe and it is starting to flow more easily through me. I keep getting this deeper and deeper sense that we are all on the cusp of some great change. I also have a sense that I am meant to play some small roll in bringing it about. I believe we all are, if we can open up and let it in. At night I walk through this beautiful city and I can feel the trees speaking to me, I can hear the voice of the Earth, feel her warm breath in the air. She is my lover and my friend, who sustains me as I go. I make my promises to her, that whatever it is and whenever that time comes I will be ready. She in turn brings to me the experiences I need in order to grow. All the while she cultivates this love in my heart, shimmering and effervescent, that flows out from me to all sentient beings

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At the end of the night I came home and recorded The House of The Rising Sun on my guitar with my new Samson USB mic, it is one of my favorite songs about New Orleans and I would love to share it with you:

House of The Rising Sun

Dukkha – “the Buddhist concept of suffering, a Pali term roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration.”  ~Wikipedia

I got on a train to come to New Orleans on that same day that Haiti was devastated by a terrible earthquake. The news came to me in broken bits as I traveled, passing through the landscapes of small American towns, sleeping and awake, checking the Internet on my iPhone in those places where I could get reception. World events seem surreal while moving through time like this, ungrounded and alone. Still the death toll seemed unimaginable, and reminded me of the destruction that nature had inflicted on New Orleans five years ago.

My journey to this strange city I now inhabit was brought on by a personal disaster, one that rocked my inner world and has caused me to feel the deaths of many of my hopes and dreams. I had spent the previous nine months or so of my life in a state of bliss, in love with a woman who I thought I would grow much older with, who embodied so much of what I had been seeking in a relationship. Then one morning I woke up and she had torn herself from my life, for reasons that did not make sense to me. I pleaded and begged her to change her mind but she would not even respond to me at all, leaving my heart devastated and all the plans I had made of moving to New Orleans to be with her in ruins. In the absence of her ability to communicate with me I decided to come here anyway, because I felt the city calling, because I needed an adventure, because I had some small hope she would change her mind.

Swan River Yoga on Chartres St

Upon arriving here I bought an unlimited month of yoga at the Swan River Yoga Studio in order to keep my practice going and to ground myself. New Orleans is where she lives and where we spent some of the best moments of our relationship, so I knew that I would have memories haunting me that I would have to deal with. I knew the yoga would help. In the first class I attended the teacher began by speaking of Haiti, and how disasters of such magnitude are humbling to us. How they make our own troubles seem smaller, and how they give us pause to be thankful for what we have. I had thought of this myself of course, but the mind is so adept at keeping our own drama in the forefront and the greater dramas at bay that it was good to be reminded by someone else.

It is difficult to internalize the suffering of people in other countries who we have little physical connection to. The news is constantly full of stories of death and tragedy, and we necessarily numb ourselves to them in order to be present in our own lives. Yet in our own suffering we can understand the suffering of others. If I did not feel the loss of this relationship so poignantly it would be harder for me to imagine any loss.

One of the reasons I decided to come to New Orleans was because of the loss suffered here. I knew there were many people still recovering from Katrina, and that there was lots of volunteer work to be done still. I had a realization that by helping with this rebuilding I could also help rebuild my own heart. We are all connected in this way, through our ability to hurt so deeply and to long for transcendence.

As I planned my move I connected with Burners Without Borders, an organization related to the Burning Man festival and its concept of a gift economy. At Burning Man there is no exchange of money, people survive in the harsh desert climate by giving and sharing. This opens people’s hearts and builds community. In the aftermath of Katrina the Burners Without Borders formed to help out along the Gulf Coast, applying lessons learned at the festival to devastated communities in need. Since then the organization has spread throughout the world and is involved in many projects. There is still one woman here, an amazing soul named Summer, who is organizing volunteers to help in the Lower Ninth Ward. She is working with a community organization called Lower Ninth Ward Village. I have connected with them and will be volunteering as much as I can while I am here. While I have barely begun, I already feel a sense of being part of something larger than myself. I can already see that this will help to heal me.

We all wish to stem the flow of suffering in our own lives. Some of us deal with it by trying to shut the world out with anger, drugs, television, or feigned indifference. Some turn to organized religion, hoping that there is an afterlife reward for humbling oneself to the proper deity. I believe the true spiritual path calls us to be present in this moment, to experience the sadness of life and to transform it into action. Human civilization’s greatest flaw is our hoarding tendency, our inability to share resources and compassion. We walk around daily looking for compliments or understanding from others, yet are reluctant to give it. We need to overcome our fears of others and the cultural baggage that gives us excuses to turn away from those in need, in order to make ourselves whole and fully human.

If our greatest flaw is greed, then our greatest evolvement is compassion. With the tragedies in Haiti still being revealed, there are fund raising efforts going on everywhere.  It is helpful to give money, it makes us feel good about ourselves. Money is very impersonal though, it builds no connection between the giver and receiver. It is easily redirected into the pockets of the greedy. Since most of us can not go to Haiti to volunteer it is still better than doing nothing. If you want to donate I would recommend researching the organizations you are giving to, and trying to ensure your money goes to an honorable organization. Two that I recommend are Food For Life Global (A vegetarian/vegan food relief program) and Doctors Without Borders.

Beyond that I encourage you to help Haiti from within your own community. The beauty of practicing compassion is that it is a renewable energy source. Helping others plants seeds of gratitude that grow compassion in the hearts we have helped. You can start by reaching out to your friends and neighbors, and once you have the strength of community you can organize people into action. Collect clothing or other goods to send to Haiti instead of money. Use your creative energy to imagine ways to help that middlemen will not be able to diminish. Or join with others who have already begun.

We need to move away from the crumbling paradigm of governments and corporations and towards reliance on the people around us. It all starts with each of us, learning to be giving. All the accumulation of material goods and wealth is just building walls around us. It is freeing to take all the things you don’t use and give them away. To give whenever you can, as much as you can. Wether it be time or service, art or love, food or hugs. Build your community, support your neighbors. When the empires fall we will need our communities in order to survive.

The next time you step in dukkha, realize that it is the same dukkha we are all stepping in. Honor your heart and spend a moment with your own sadness. Then breathe in the air that we all share, the air that has been cycled through the lungs of all of the animals and the plants and the oceans. Take a vow to find a way to make the world a better place, to reduce the suffering around you. You are a stone cast into the pond of being, and your actions will ripple out into the world around you. As we build empathy and compassion our own sorrows will diminish, because our lives will serve a greater purpose. It is the true path to liberation.

I'm getting toasted

It has been a surreal time for me. An asteroid slammed the firmament of my psyche, knocking me out of my orbit, into some parallel universe. I have always been drawn toward celestial bodies, galaxies, the distant light of stars. I am at my core just a mystery unto myself, unexplainable by modern physics or ancient psychics. I have gotten to know myself better over the years but I have no good explanation as to why I am now sitting in a cafe in New Orleans blogging instead of amongst my dearest friends and community in Northampton, MA. My heart got broken for no apparent reason, and there has been no apparent reason for anything since then. What is just is. Yet there is this feeling there is something more…

the two Megans. Need I say more?

All that is clear to me is that after the asteroid hit and my dinosaurs died off there was a new life on my surface. Perhaps born from some sort of mushroom that stowed itself away in the craters of that mythical rock. Perhaps evolutionary. It took me a while to get my bearings and when I did there were these two words like drumbeats from alternating palms. New. Orleans. New. Orleans. I was in mourning but I knew there was something deeper going on. A new vision of the future forming in my third eye, inaccessible to the other two.

I found myself burning photographs and love letters. Purging my life of all the things I lugged around for years and decades. Selling stuff on Ebay, then on Craigslist, and finally just giving it away on Freecycle. It felt amazingly right. Quitting my jobs, giving up my office and apartment. I put all of my remaining belongings into a 5′x10′ storage space. I found it disheartening that I could still fill that. So much crap one can accumulate in a lifetime!

It is hard to leave such amazing people behind...

I found a sobriety too, cleansed myself of lingering bad habits. Delved further into yoga, started reading mystical literature again. Clouds cleared from my atmosphere, encouraging growth. My oceans became deeper, my valleys more fertile, and my peaks more radiant. From this new clarity I began to understand why this path has chosen me. I have long felt some deeper purpose for my life. Each decade I have grown towards it, and the fourth one seems to be the most profound. I am here in New Orleans to build a base for the Evolvegan project, a home in the south, the most inhospitable of places for veganism and sustainability. What better place to bring the evolutionary imperative of compassion? A city needing to be rebuilt the same as my heart. Here I will work on them together.

On the eve of my departure over forty of my dearest friends came out to share a final meal with me. It was so moving, so sweet. I am so grateful for such a community, and I promise I will not leave you behind. These times are moving more quickly, there is rapid change ahead of us. The Earth is calling forth the spiritual warriors and we must heed the call, who have ears and hearts. I cannot pretend to be someone less than who I am. I am here to fight for the survival of all the misguided monkey race, and all the species we think even less of. I have a vision coming through me, of unity. A song I must sing before my voice dries up and my bones turn to dust. I follow my muse and pray she is not just another siren singing me to shipwreck. But even if she is, tonight I am blazing bright as I shoot across the sky and into the unknown future. One thousand miles away from everyone I love, still connected through our hearts.

………………………………

I made a music mix in the wee hours of the night on the train that brought me here (a train they call The City of New Orleans). I made it to share with my friends, feel free to download. I added little voice intros to the songs with my new podcasting mic, to make it more special. It is in enhanced podcast format, with photos embedded and so you can skip from track to track on ipods or itunes…

Train To New Orleans Mix (AAC format – 55MB)

And here is a slideshow of my going away party… after clicking the play button click on the little “four arrows” icon to get fullscreen mode. You can also visit the photoset on flickr. As always, please leave some comments below to help my google ratings!

the sacred path

I spent New Year’s Eve at a ceremony of letting go and welcoming in. Just where I needed to be. Burned a pile of old old letters in the bonfire at midnight. Howled at the beautiful blue moon, shrouded in fog. 2 lunar months since my heart got broken. 12 days before my journey into the south begins. oh one oh one one oh. numbers are sometimes poetry.

Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Make room for the new by exhaling the old. Let go of judgement. Be in the moment. Community. Emptiness. Endless cats and one armed beavers.

I cannot fathom what it is that speaks to me. Grandfather spirits, ancestors, drumming, singing, togetherness in our aloneness. Shedding possessions feels like stretching my wings. Ready to fly. Passion into obsession, compassion into love. Flowing with the water, burning in the fire, reflecting in the moon. A collision sends my spirit into orbit, shifts my magnetic north, humbles me completely. Suddenly it is a new decade. Suddenly it is just the present moment over and over again.

I would like to share with you the list of spiritual goals we were given at the ceremony. They are well conceived and relevant. This is the time to evolve again. Evolvegan.

2010 Sacred Reminders

• work together to make a better world
• honor the light in all beings
• take turns leading
• be grateful for the wisdom you receive
• celebrate the wonders of nature
• take care of the children
• laugh, sing and have fun
• have faith in the higher plan
• bring in the magic
• revitalize your life with healthy food
• rejoice in the passion of love
• dance with all of creation
• remember our celestial home

May you all have a meaningful new year, centered in the now, with your hearts open. This is a strange and important time to be alive. Make it count.

Things are looking up for this Pedal Person. (photo by Selena Dittberner)

I am not sure if it was the original plan, but the business quickly became centered around picking up residential trash and recycling and taking it to the Northampton Department of Public Works Transfer Center. Because Northampton doesn’t have a municipal trash and recycling pick up we have competing garbage truck companies. This is a particularly wasteful way to gather garbage. Each company travels down the same streets with giant trucks burning fossil fuel and belching toxic crap into the air as they continually stop and go picking up individual customer’s waste. The genius of Pedal People is that the same service is offered on bike, reducing the carbon footprint of residential waste removal drastically. Because Northampton is a Liberal enclave the idea really appealed to the townsfolk, and the business took off.

A photo I took of founders Alex and Ruthy back when they were getting started.

Since I was friends with Alex and Ruthy I somehow got involved as a sub early on, meaning I would occasionally cover a route for one of the actual collective members when no one from within the collective could do it. I pretty much did it once or twice a year for about five years, and only in nicer weather because I didn’t have any fancy gear to ride in the winter. Over this time I watched Pedal People grow and become hugely popular and always thought about what it would be like to do it full time. When thoughts like this came into my mind I considered the reality of New England winters and quickly ushered them out of my head.

Yet as I grew older and my vicissitudinous lifestyle etched lines of character into my personality I started to romanticize the idea of working out in the elements and becoming a bicycle activist. As fate would have it one of the Pedal People got hurt (off the job) and called me to sub. He left the collective shortly after that and offered me his routes, which he wasn’t actually allowed to do according to the collective’s procedures. This chain of events did, however, allow me to wedge my foot in the door, and since I was technically the sub with the most seniority I got to audition for the part, and somehow they allowed me to join.

Joining the collective entails nine months of apprenticeship that must include one winter. I started in August of 2008 and gradually accumulated the gear I needed as well as the muscles and endurance so that by winter I was ready to face the snow, slush, sleet and frozen diapers. People are always amazed that we do this every day no matter what the weather is like. During the winter of 2008 I think there was only one day when we called customers to postpone our pick ups. Most of us have studded snow tires on our bikes as well as all kinds of crazy clothing to deal with different situations. For me the hardest part is making sure I don’t sweat too much. With a loaded trailer and a 3 mile uphill ride to the transfer center it is easy to start sweating even on the coldest of days, and once your shit gets wet its all over as far as being comfortable is concerned.

Pedaling fast on the bike trail. (photo by Selena Dittberner)

At 42 years old, I am currently the oldest Pedal Person. I am also the newest Pedal Person because I was voted into the collective in September. I made the cut! I contribute it all to my amazing vegan diet. All you silly people who ask vegans where we get our protein can bite me, and then you will get yours. I haul some crazy heavy shit up hills and all over town. I have been vegan 14 years and I am still as strong and fit as I was when I started, and twice as good looking. I honestly don’t know how I keep so humble and modest with my multitude of qualities.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly…

There are some very conscientious customers, and there are some customers who make our jobs less enjoyable.  So much recyclable stuff ends up in the trash it is sickening. On the flip side some people will try to recycle everything, and then we are stuck picking garbage out of recycling bins. We have a contract to do the downtown trash in Northampton and it is particularly bad there. There are recycling receptacles next to almost every trash can, and inevitably people still throw their cans and bottles into the trash. That along with thousands of disposable coffee cups. At this point the Northampton landfill is almost a landfull, and we need to stop producing so much trash. At Pedal People meetings we often talk about ways to encourage people to be more conscientious about their waste, and in the near future we will be doing trash audits to help people learn ways to recycle more and produce less.

Another thing, meat stinks! It attracts maggots that completely cover some peoples trash bags by the time we get to them. We offer a composting service for vegetable waste, meat goes into a landfill. As a human and vegan activist I believe it is definitely time for us to evolve from our carnivorous ape phase and become more spiritually enlightened beings. The planet can’t sustain us all the way we are living. It takes lots of vegetation to make food out of animal flesh. The existence of factory farms calls into question the very notion that we are civilized. We are all complicit in allowing atrocity as long as they lurk in giant shadowy sheds around the country hidden from sight with their manure lagoons and animals gone completely insane from being constantly and relentlessly tortured. All to save a few dollars and for brief moments of pleasure on our tongues. The free range-organic -grass-fed-happy-meat ideal is faulty in that there isn’t enough land to support all of our billions at our current level of flesh consumption. Furthermore there are no real regulations on the use of humane labels so it boils down to being  a marketing ploy that encourages us to pay more so that we can relieve our consciences, even though many of the same inhumane practices are employed. Capitalism breeds inhumanity, same as it ever was. As far as seafood is concerned the oceans are nearly depleted of sea life, and many of the fish we like to eat take several years to reach maturity, so it is hard for them to make a comeback. We are pretty close to going over the cliff, and most of us still have our foot on the gas. Time to get off the meat-mobile and ride a bike!

Bicycle Acrobatics on the bike trail. (photo by Selena Dittberner)

In spite of these gripes I really love being a Pedal Person. Working in a cooperative has been an amazing life lesson on how a group of people with common goals can work together and achieve far more than any of us could as individuals. I encourage anyone who is starting a business and wants to contribute to a better world to consider the collective model. It ensures that workers all get treated equally and are valued. It keeps everyone honest and teaches us how to respect each other.

I love biking in the rain. I love biking in the snow. I love my big overshoes that make me look like a superhero. I love the big mass of muscles I have grown around my leg bones. It makes me feel so good that nearly every time I work some stranger will tell me how great they think the Pedal People are. I love that my job is also a form of activism, that it inspires people to think about the waste they produce and the way they commute to work. I took my own car off the road after about 5 months of being a Pedal Person. I love biking, feeling the wind around my face, flying by cars stuck in traffic, jumping curves, ringing my bike bell. It is real freedom. It keeps me in shape and makes me smile. I am one lucky bastard.

Thanks to Selena Dittberner for taking the awesome photos of me. I still owe you dinner!

A large load of trash, ready to go!

Jackie pedals through the flood (photo by The Republican)

Pedal People Ben and Myke meet on a snowy day (photo by Robin Barber)

Dumping cardboard into the recycling dumpster. Photo by Selena Dittberner.

Bringing compost to Montview Farm. Photo by Sarah Peters.

Group photo of all of us, circa November 2008. I took this with my fancy remote.

View more photos at PedalPeople.com

As winter casts grey clouds over the landscapes of New England I am preparing my escape, packing my belongings into boxes, cutting the rigging of my safety nets, and falling into the arms of the universe. I have been selling and giving away much of what I own. Ebay, Craigslist and Freecycle have connected me to strangers in local and distant places, who now own what was once mine. Every day I feel a little lighter, and soon I will be taking a train south to New Orleans into an unknown future, following the whims of my heart. Down deep into the Lower Ninth, to help those who have lost more than I can imagine.

I have had a sweet little office in Northampton on the corner of Main and Masonic, above the Broadside Book Shop, for the last four years. It has been the hub of much of my social life, a place where friends come by and interrupt my work, which I never really mind so much. I am leaving it behind. Since the beginning of November it has been a mess of boxes and wires, packing supplies and camera equipment, toys from my childhood, books, chairs, and all sort of weird shit. About three days ago I finally organized the space into what was ready to be put into storage and what was left to find new homes for. And then I got a call from my friend Bobbie who wanted some photos of her tattoos.

I already had a backdrop set up to photograph things I wanted to get rid of and so when she came over I started photographing her, lighting her with my dedicated Nikon flash system. I was unhappy with the initial photos, my fears of studio lighting starting to grip me. Then I remembered my cheap studio lights, constant lighting that heats up the whole room. I took them from the pile of things I was going to sell and set them up, cutting the intensity of the main light with a diffuser. Suddenly everything was transformed, the light was beautiful, perfect for the session. Warm golden tones without any need to enhance them in Adobe Lightroom, just perfect and lovely.

Bobbie was fun to work with, very comfortable in her tattooed skin, playfully finding poses and following my contortionist directions. She wants the photos for some tattoo contest on Tataholic.com, and promises to split the money with me if she wins. I am excited just to find this new inspiration, a different way of lighting to explore. I considered taking the lights down to New Orleans, but I can throw together a similar system for less than $100 once I get there so I probably won’t. I am in love with the idea of simplicity, of living with less.

I think I will be photographing lots of tattooed people down south, illuminating them up with simple lighting. I don’t fully understand why my heart is pulling me away from my comfortable community into the unknown. I have something to face, something to learn, some trial by fire to go through. I have premonitions and dreams that the world is going through some kind of transformation too. I think we all can feel it. It is etched into the skin of our beings. When properly lit we begin to remember our ancestors, our true purpose, our calling. Love has destroyed the city of my heart, a hurricane has torn down a mythical city, and to rebuild one I must rebuild the other, knowing that over and over they will be washed away again. Ahhh love… Anicca! Anicca!