I am moving future blog posts to DaveAtkins.org - read the first post here:

http://blog.daveatkins.org/21-years-later-and-200-trillion-shorter/

Our country might not exist if British soldiers had succeeded in confiscating the firearms of patriots in Lexington and Concord in 1775. But today, guns threaten our freedom and our future.

Of course, I am thinking about the killings at Newtown, CT. My son is in first grade. None of us can get the image of a first grade classroom shot up by a madman out of our minds. It makes us sick and sad and ultimately, angry.

No More Lockdowns

We do not need to make our school fortresses. I do not accept that we live in such an inherently dangerous world that we must assume there are threats all around us we are powerless to counter–except by locking our children up in a place where no one can get to them. That is a sick, negative, freedom-less future that should be anathema to what true patriots in 2012 believe. At Sandy Hook, they had the school locked and the protocols in place. They did EVERYTHING right. Teachers laid down their lives to shield their students. We can ask no more.

What we can ask is, why did that kid have an AR-15? It was his mother’s. So why did she have it? Self-defense? That didn’t work out so well, now did it?

To Keep and Bear Arms

The second amendment says:

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The Second Amendment has come to mean, and is widely understood to support the idea that every citizen has the right to arm and defend himself by deadly force against a threat to his life. Without the right to bear arms, the common law right to self-defense is severely compromised in a world where criminals will have guns.

Some people still believe we need the guns to resist an oppressive government. For those who still believe that argument, I suggest you do a little research into what our government has in the way of technology and firepower and how effectively it was used against small-arms-bearing people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The crux of any debate about the second Amendment is really about self-defense. I grew up in gun culture and as I reflect upon these ideas now…they just do not fit the reality of 2012.

Defense of Others?

I do not want my fellow citizens to be “packing heat.” I now live in a city where there is at least a weekly shooting within a few miles of my house. I ride a city bus–and just week, someone was stabbed in the middle of the day on a nearby bus route. However, I feel safe. Neighbors watch each other and if there is a problem, a call to 911 brings police cars in 3 minutes. I would never feel a need to own a gun for self-defense. If I felt that my family or I were in actual danger, I would move or I would take a self-defense course from an expert I know who has trained commandos. I am more confident in my ability to learn how to disarm some idiot with a gun than I would be to rely on some other idiot or myself to pull out a gun and “equalize” the situation.

When I hear people suggesting that teachers have conceal weapons permits…it just boggles my mind that anyone could be that idiotic. These people have seen too many violence-fantasy movies to think that the solution to gun violence is to arm everyone so that the criminals will be afraid to draw first.

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns

That’s my favorite NRA cliché. Guess what? I say “great,” that is a good start. Then we know if you have a gun, you are probably up to no good.

My father had plenty of guns and told me stories of how he was afraid that some person high on crack would show up at his house in the middle of the night. That was in the apparent crime-war zone town of Hopewell, Virginia. After he passed, we went through the cereal boxes, checked under the pillows, and unloaded all the weapons. (“An unloaded gun is useless when you need it.”) I don’t know, perhaps the loaded 12-gauge sawed off pump gun next to him or the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle  on the night stand helped him sleep easier but today, I wonder how upset we’d all if one of his less stable friends had walked in and borrowed those weapons.

My Dad did not need those guns. But it was a “harmless hobby,” right? Or we were lucky.

Responsible Gun Ownership

I was disappointed to se a few editorials already conceding the “rights of responsible gun owners.” To be clear, I am talking about changing the rules today. I am not saying that anyone who currently owns a gun is wrong to do so. But the logic behind “responsible gun ownership” is increasingly tortured. Just because a person can act responsibly with a deadly weapon does not mean they are entitled to own and use it. If I take a class in raising tigers, does that mean I can have a house full of tiger cubs?

Guns are not the problem, People are

I am not saying that repealing the Second Amendment would have prevented Newtown. Clearly there are some sick people in our society and maybe they will always find a way to do something. But our culture reinforces the idea that guns are a solution to problems. The very defense of the Second Amendment amplifies the importance of guns and adds to their mystical charm which makes them attractive to deranged people.

We do not have a choice of inaction here. The slaughter of 20 first graders is a gaping wound on our culture and an act that demands action. We can continue to fortify our schools and attempt to protect our children from crazy people with guns or we can ask ourselves whether this is the vision of freedom we want for our future.

Patrick Henry spoke long ago about freedom with his classic “Give me Liberty, or Give me Death” speech, asking

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?

Of course his was a call to arms, to violence, to get your gun and fight to the death. But over 200 years later, we should recognize the same imperative and passion must be served in a different manner. Our future is being consumed by violence, and rather than cower in the false security of more police presence, greater reliance on government, and more restriction on what we feel safe to do, we should recognize our right to keep and bear arms has become an albatross that enslaves us to inaction and leaves our children vulnerable to slaughter.

As an early adopter of the iPhone (I remember when there was no such thing as “copy” and “paste.”), I kind of became used to some limitations and never bothered to find out if they had ever been addressed. Many have–years ago, apparantly–including the ability to manage your photos in batches.

Here’s how it works:

Open the photos app and go to your camera roll:

Tap the share button in the top right corner:

Now you select multiple photos and scroll through your entire photo library:

Just tap the photos you want and a checkbox will appear next to them.

The actions across the bottom of the screen will now apply to all the photos you have selected. This is also a much easier method of deleting photos than going through them one-by-one. When you have selected the photos you want, tap the icon at the bottom of the screen to “Share.”

When you tap “Email,” this will open your email with the photos inserted into the body of the email.

That was easy!

As the school year rapidly approaches, we are excited to have all three of our children at the same school in Boston. Marshall, who is 4 1/2 years old, will be starting K1, the first year of kindergarten. All the kids are excited.

I need to update this blog because the last post was so long ago and looks pretty negative by the title. The content here has pretty much dried up despite sort of a plan to blog about improving the Boston Public Schools. But I’ve concluded it’s a waste of breath to opine about the lottery or propose complicated solutions to problems that many other people are busy spinning their wheels about. What has caught my attention lately is what exactly we need to do to help our kids learn.

Almost everyone who talks about education today agrees the industrial model is broken. It makes absolutely no sense to have kids sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture and yet we struggle for years to get the kids to a point where they will do that without acting up.

I was excited to read this article about how Simmons College is “flipping” the classroom by having students watch videos of lectures and then using lecture time to engage in facilitated small group problem-solving. It is far from a radical idea but a recent article in the New York times describes how the concept is taking hold in high school and other classrooms across the country. In addition to video lectures, students are using websites like the Khan Academy to learn about hundred of topics by watching compelling videos where the instructor walks through a topic in an engaging manner that is unlike most lectures I recall.

MIT launched Open Courseware earlier this year, and honestly, I was not impressed. Why would anyone want, and what possible value could someone obtain from being able to download the lecture notes for 6.001? I did not learn anything from attending lectures or reading textbooks. The learning happens in working through problem sets which are impossibly difficult. Students get together in groups to work on them and “tool” for hours into the wee hours of the morning.

But when I looked at the new edX initiative, the light bulb started to flicker on. It’s not just a bunch of materials you can download. The online learning environment is like a regular class where you can work on your own schedule, but there are requirements and online discussions that anchor and stimulate the learning. I was so intrigued I signed up for Berkeley CS course on Software as a Service (SaaS). And then, last night, I found myself playing around with TryRuby.org, a site that tutors you in learning the Ruby programming language.

I have been hearing about the value of group projects for 25 years and how some people prefer video tutorials to learn (e.g. lynda.com for Photoshop, Graphic Design, and many more things now), but when I imagined the “flipped classroom” it started to actually make sense because I began to see how the right structure and tools could support a student’s native love of learning and allow a teacher to be more of a coach.

What if, instead of requiring students to attend lectures where nearly everyone fell asleep and half the students just didn’t bother attending, you told them to watch the lecture in advance and then do the problem sites in class? What if, instead of leaving students to form their own study groups and then struggle through on their own at 4am, you said, “this is what the classroom is for!” Imagine a teaching experience where the teacher is responsible for facilitating learning instead of delivering education? Imagine where tutorials are not just something you go to when you can’t keep up…but they are the real education experience. I think I would have learned much more–and perhaps I’d have even discovered and sustained more enthusiasm for advanced math and hard science if I had an experience like that.

What does any of this mean for little Marshall in K2? I don’t think we are ready to enroll him in 6.001 quite yet, but I think all our kids will face a different kind of education than I did. Marshall will be in an integrated classroom–which means there will be special needs kids along with everyone else. Throughout the school, we have widely varying levels of preparation and at least 1/4 to 1/2 of my other son’s class were English Language Learners (for whom English is not their primary language.) The population is decidedly not “one size fits all.” This requires a more individualized approach.

I do not expect kindergarten children to be getting lectures of any kind and I hope the emphasis will be on play, not preparation for future standardized testing. But I think technology could help teachers deliver a more individualized experience. That could take the form of iPad apps that small groups play together and simple games kids take home. Or it might just be that much learning happens independently. A friend of mine has a startup company that is working to develop true learning apps for the iPad based on guiding principles of individualized learning; I’m looking forward to seeing their beta and how it might work for my kids.

All of this makes me think I should shift the focus of this blog…as my rambling post illustrates, the topic of 21st century learning is full of things to write about and the stakes are high and personal.

At our parents meeting on Monday night, we heard from one parent who must have drawn the worst lottery number–both this year and last. His child got nothing for K1 last year after ranking 14 schools, then after ranking 16 elementary schools this year, remains unassigned. They are wait listed at 3 schools, but at least 50 families are ahead. There is no requirement that Boston Public Schools enroll his child until January. And there just are not a lot of options for a child who is too old for preschool. Even if money were no object, the private schools fill up, have early deadlines, and require hefty application fees and deposits.

But there’s always the Trotter. Trotter Elementary is in Roxbury, on the northeast edge of the West Zone. It’s one of the few West Zone schools that still has vacant seats. City Councillor John Connolly led a group of unassigned parents on a tour there last month and is excited about it as an option for his kids now because the historical poor performance and reputation has resulted in more resources being poured into this historic school As a “turnaround school,” they have been able to hire the teachers they want and improve the facility dramatically. A growing number of parents are taking another look and thinking perhaps there is an opportunity to be a part of a school community on the rise.

I do not have firsthand knowledge of the Trotter and I do not know if the parent who failed to get any of his top 16 choices considered it, so I do not want to make any assumptions there. What I can observe is the effect our system of choice and crisis reform has on systemically dooming Boston schools and disadvantaged families to a never-ending cycle of halfway improvement. Because the Trotter has been judged by parents, through their lottery “votes,” to be one of the worst schools in Boston, it became a “dumping ground” for lottery losers and parents who don’t have time to figure out how to play the school assignment game. Test scores there track income and demographics–and every time there’s a crime nearby, it’s added to the list of fears parents think about when they size up the school. When you see the demand report…and you see some schools massively oversubscribed and others with vacancies, it’s only natural to ask, “What’s wrong with this school?”

The Curley in JP used to have a bad rep too. Then the school was marked for improvement, being designated a “superintendent’s school” in the parlance of the day. It became a K-8 school with advanced work and expanded its “specials” (art, science, music, etc.). Now it’s a top choice and JP parents agonize that they can’t get in and might get stuck at the Mendel…but that one is actually improving too! Meanwhile, as the focus of reform efforts shifts to the new “worst schools,” parents at the Curley scramble to raise money to keep programs intact while they absorb kids from schools closed last year before the district knew there would be hundreds of kindergarteners looking for space this year…is your head spinning yet?

I want to back off a bit from my earlier blog post where I argued to just eliminate choice altogether, but the current regime of illusory choice and procedural insanity is not just an annoyance for parents who want neighborhood schools, but a systemic disservice to the majority of kids in the system. Something I hear again and again is how parents just want some predictability. We want relief from knowing we don’t have to do another lottery and rejuggle our lives every year. In my case, I feel fortunate to have achieved that for our kids at the Bates–and to feel that the Bates is definitely on the leading edge of the improvement curve, but I think this process and cycle is destined to repeat until we acknowledge the role the system itself plays in suppressing performance and undermining improvements that are happening.

I organized a meeting of Boston parents last night to discuss the school assignment process and heard many stories of frustration. We were joined by city councillor John Connolly who is, himself, experiencing the frustration of still having a child unassigned. We didn’t solve any problems, but I believe it was helpful to hear each others stories; all very different, but all the same in so many unnecessarily complex ways.

After we shared our stories, the Councillor asked us to describe what we thought a quality school was. There are so many components to that, but at a very high level, I think a great school would find a way to teach every child to value learning as a way to achieve empowerment. I want my kids to seek out learning because they can see that it provides something of value so they can make a difference in their community and in the world.

I believe that lesson should scale to all levels of income, ability, and circumstance. For those in poverty, it is a way out. For those who are put down and disadvantaged through dysfunctional families and circumstances beyond their control, we must find a way to demonstrate education and learning are not just a thing that has to be done to get through the day, but a tool to seize control of some part of their lives. For students who already “do well” the lesson may be more subtle, but a quality education means all participate in the growing and learning process.

Now such a general standard is far from the day-to-day reality of the classroom. There cannot be a class or standardized test to measure “self-actualization progress.” But such a principle of quality education should serve as a mission against which all our efforts are judged.

We wrapped up April vacation week today in Massachusetts, and it started me thinking about the coming summer vacation. I’m not talking about my vacation, of course, but rather the practice of closing the schools for a week in February, a week in April, two weeks in December, and all of July and August. Why do we do this?

When both parents work, school vacation is time that childcare must be covered. It can be an opportunity for fun–our kids enjoyed an enriching week at the Boston Nature Center. When parents can coordinate schedules it can be a great time for a family trip. But not three months.

Thinking ahead to summer, we have arranged several weeks of camps and planned a family vacation. We are far from “helicopter parents,” but not scheduling is not an option and we want our kids to have a good experience. I don’t mean to whine and complain that schools “inconvenience” us, but…

Isn’t the most important thing in our kids lives learning? Why is there a need for a vacation from what is good? Kids should not be sitting at desks all summer learning math, but they should be learning things about life that they will not get if left to their own. A toddler needs to be watched; kids need opportunities to learn and grow.

Boston has an amazing array of resources and programs for kids in the summer, but most of it is piecemeal. There are even more opportunities offered by private organizations. But you really have to “stitch” things together when some programs are morning or afternoon only or end at 4pm, don’t start until 10am, etc. When a parent works part time, or has an amazingly flexible schedule, or does not have a job…I guess you can make it work. But otherwise, I think most of those programs are an automatic “no.” Ironically, if your kids do poorly in school, there IS summer school–but I doubt anybody wants that.

We need something more comprehensive to keep the spark of learning alive for all kids over the summer that is also practical for parents. When I look at the programs offered, I think, wow, we are almost there. It’s the same reaction I have when I look at the after school programs and organizations like Citizen Schools, a nonprofit that coordinates volunteer parents to go into schools and provide extended learning opportunities by sharing their skills and experience in a way that links school to work.

The pieces are already there…and I think Boston has an incredible supply of opportunity–for those parents and kids who can find a way to participate. Why is there no systematic effort to make these opportunities available to all? What if parents could be assisted in creating a yearly education plan for their kids that would simultaneously solve the childcare challenge? Am I a hopeless liberal planner type to think we need more than just parental serendipity?

Sometimes, Friday the 13th is actually unlucky.

This is not my car:

It’s the scene in the parking lot from Friday evening as we grabbed an unhealthy dinner at the BK Steakhouse on Washington Street in Roslindale.

This is my car:

Around 3:30am Saturday (the 14th) morning, some clown in a white Chevy Impala (based on the fender he left behind) crossed our street and slammed into my car, driving it back about three feet and placing it neatly on the curb. We woke up and investigated in time to scare off the guy returning to claim his fender, but were unable to get a license plate number. I went back to bed and finally fell asleep–only to be awakened by my neighbor at 6:30am telling me about the car. I had slept through my alarm clock that normally gets me up in time to meet up with my Saturday running club in Westwood. I was glad to be re-awakened in time to do our weekly run.

Three miles into the run, along the crubly-paved Thatcher Street, I drifted a bit too far to the edge of the pavement, twisted my ankle, and did an 8mph face-plant on the asphalt. Fortunately, my shoulder,arm, hand, chest, and knee absorbed the fall, and I had friends around to get me up and back to the high school parking lot.

I think, perhaps, I should not cut that tree down I blogged about earlier in the day…

I’ve been fascinated by solar power since I was a kid and visited one of those model “homes of the future.” With the current financial incentives available, especially in Massachusetts, it not only makes sense to put a solar array on your roof, it might even be worth cutting down a tree to do it.

I’d always assumed solar was too expensive and too “long-term,” requiring an investment of at least $40k and 15 years of payback as you save a few dollars a month. I recently learned about “solar leasing,” and quickly obtained a quote from Sungevity for a system that would require no money down and generate enough electricity to at least offset the lease of $45/month. It would not save massive amounts of money for me, but the idea of a no-cost way to reduce my usage of non-renewable energy by more than half was very attractive. But it sounded too good to be true.

I consulted the collective wisdom of the Internet and found plenty of confusing information and opinion which only made me more curious. What is the downside to a solar lease? Given that they provide a performance guarantee, insurance, maintenance, etc., it seems a no-risk, no-brainer. What I eventually learned is that there is not do much a downside as the lack of significant upside when compared to buying.

First of all solar systems don’t cost $40k anymore. A typical system should cost more like $25k to build. Still not an exciting option when there are plenty of other bills to pay and projects to be done, but then there are Federal, state, and local tax credits and incentives that will reduce that cost dramatically.

First, a 30% Federal tax credit will chop $7500 off the cost of a $25K system. A tax credit is essentially a rebate–even if you lack the income to generate the taxes, you can carry the credit forward, so you do not lose the value for lack of taxes to pay.

Second, in Massachusetts, there is an additional tax credit (capped at $1000).

Third, in Boston, through Renew Boston, there are several rebates that could contribute an additional $2000 or more. And you can put your house on the cool map of renewable energy projects in the city.

With these rebates, the net cost of a system is now more like $15K; still not chump change, but starting to be feasible. It’s a project you could finance with a home equity loan over 10 years for around $175/month. To save $50/month? OK, but the real bonus upside that is lost in the lease are the Solar Renewable Energy Certificates. In Massachusetts, the state will issue a certificate for every megawatt hour of power you generate. These certificates can be purchased by utilities to satisfy state requirements that a proportion of their power comes from renewable sources. When they fail to meet the goals, they pay a $600/mWh fine. So the certificates provide a way to avoid that. Currently, these SRECs are trading at $540 with a floor price of $300. You can sell the SRECs you earn…so now you are looking at an income stream, in addition to the energy savings. In my own example with a 3.76kW array, I calculated the SRECs to be worth about $162/month.

When you consider the electricity savings AND the SRECs, you can see how a system literally pays for itself. There are no guarantees about the future of the SRECs, but certainly in the first years of the system, they more than compensate for the cost of purchasing. If you can design a system that produces significant power, you can recognize a payback period of much less than 10 years. Furthermore, if you choose to finance the system, you should be able to structure a loan that will be cash-flow neutral. It’s like buying income properties–rather than buying rental properties, you convert a portion of your home into an income-generating asset. Once the loan is paid off, it’s all profit as you own the system outright.

When you lease, all these advantages and incentives go to the leasing company. It is true they assume all the risks–so it’s still a fair deal for someone who just wants to go solar and stabilize their energy costs–but if you can build a system that pays for itself in 5-7 years, requires only small expenses up front, and then delivers perhaps 25 years of future energy needs, that seems an overwhelming argument to just do it.

Now what about that tree I mentioned? An enormous Norway maple currently shades part of my roof. But all this thought of “going green” has created a perhaps perverse incentive to kill a tree. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one? With the tree, I’ll have a smaller array that will require micro inverters and perhaps even more expensive, higher efficiency panels. That will drive up the cost and reduce the income. Without the tree, the unshaded power of the sun will fuel those panels–and perhaps bake the house prompting us to run an air conditioner more in the summer! I’m waiting to get a revised estimate and system design to see what we are really looking at here.

The solar lease is very attractive for its simplicity. The analysis above is only the tip of the iceberg…the issues involved in calculating a realistic ROI are unending and at some point, you just have to make a decision between 1) do nothing; can’t afford it now, 2) lease and save a little and feel good, or 3) cut down the tree and optimize the system, committing to this for the long haul. I think I’d like to do #3 if I can swing it.

I’m starting a series of posts on education, and I’ll begin with a practical observation that seldom makes it to the top of most education reform discussions: One of the most important functions of elementary education is to provide a safe, supervised environment for parents to leave their kids so they can work. Many parents concerned about improving the quality of education–not to mention highly-credentialed teachers–bristle at the suggestion that school is day care, but for many, it is and has to be, at least that.

I don’t think schools are just day care, but I think before we think about all the things we’d like to squeeze into education, we ought to not lose sight of the fact that school is not just about preparing our kids for the future–it’s also about supporting our present.

I–and almost everyone I knew–grew up with a father who worked a job and a mother who stayed home. Until I was 10, Daddy got up and was gone before I woke up, then arrived at home at 5pm like clockwork–he was on the 7:30-4:30 shift, I think. When I was 10, his union went on strike and things became less like clockwork. Nevertheless, through we went through some tough times, Mama stayed home, got me out the door for the school bus at 8am and was there at 3:15 when I got home.

I’m not nostalgic for that world…it was a different time, a very different place, and it’s not what my wife or I want for ourselves or our kids today. But I find myself comparing to what I know and trying to extrapolate what we should expect. Some parents schedule their kids into tons of activities–but this requires a parent be home to shuttle the kids around. Even with a flexible employer, it is hard to get kids to a 5pm sports practice. A 4pm dance practice? Who the heck can do that every week? So we always look at school and our kids’ activities in the context of how we can manage the schedule.

When parents are making “choices” about what schools to list as preferences in the Boston public school assignment process, practicality and predictability are inescapable requirements. When I hear parents upset about an assignment–or lack of assignment, what I hear most often is NOT about the quality of the school, but the disruptive uncertainty of the process. Some school days start around 8am or earlier; some as late as 9:15. Sometimes there is onsite before and after school programming; other times the kids are bussed somewhere else. If you are eligible for a free school bus, you have no idea of that schedule until August.

These practical uncertainties add to the importance of getting your preferred choice…but then, when the while system is considered, they turn into judgment and bias about the schools and stereotypes about why parents are preferring some schools over others. There seems to be a presumption in a system that asks parents to rate and rank schools that this process will put pressure on schools to “improve.” Maybe I’m creating a bit of a “strawman” here, but I don’t believe requiring parents to rank the schools has any positive merit in terms of educational reform.

We need to make every school safe and supportive. We need to stabilize the system long enough to even know what we have instead of breathlessly awaiting the latest round of standardized test results and then celebrating what’s probably a momentary spike in scores one year while rationalizing bad scores every other year–all the while compared to other schools while things constantly change.

The greatest thing our schools have the potential to provide kids is stability…but we throw that away by giving parents the illusion they can choose and encouraging relative comparisons. Thankfully, once the initial process is over, parents can decide to stay in the same school and make the best of it. But every year, a new crop of winners and losers is cultivated and the bitter taste of false promises and perceived unfairness undermines the real progress and positive change that is happening in schools across the district.

Boston cyclists have taken 15,000 rides since Boston’s bike share system, Hubway, soft-relaunched in early March. Memberships have grown to over 5,000. Today at noon, Mayor Menino and bike czar Nicole Friedman officially reopened the Hubway at a short ceremony/event in front of the Boston Public Library.

What happens if “Obamacare” gets shot down by the Supreme Court? The most troubling part of the law, even from a Liberal’s perspective, is the individual mandate–the deal “we” cut with the insurance industry to buy their support for a system of increased regulation. It has always seemed wrong that the government could require individuals to purchase products from private businesses, and a sort of “devils-bargain” that Democrats and others had to make. It seems like a system of private taxation. Maybe it’s always been that way–if you have insurance, it’s already taken out of your taxes (and away from your employer) almost automatically before you get your paycheck, but at least it wasn’t technically required that you surrender another 10-15% of your paycheck to the corporation of your choice.

An AP article today posits that this is not the first or last mandate, comparing it to the Medicare payroll tax. But the analysis quickly leads down an interesting path…we can tax people to support a system that may not benefit them directly, but we cannot force them to buy insurance from private providers? Well then, it seems the solution is obvious: single payer health insurance. That’s the train of thought Robert Reich picks up today in his article where he sees an opportunity for the potential collapse of the individual mandate to open the door to what we should have done all along.

Reich’s argument is that Obama and the Democrats could turn the tables on opponents of health care reform if the court strikes down the mandate. Because Republicans would not support single-payer, Democrats tried making a deal with insurance companies and that deal may be struck down. So now, the choice (for opponents) can become to make a deal with the lesser-devil (Liberals): in exchange for concessions about what is required to be covered, Republicans could accept the validity of some form of single-payer system–or, if they cannot stomach that, they can just embrace the idea that their party really is just a bunch of angry social Darwinists who would love to see the poor and uninsured die off and save us the trouble of having to deal with them.The key point is that the court may essentially remove the insurance industry from the negotiations.

Once we have a single payer system, we’ll have a radical shift. The waste, fraud, and abuse–secretly perpetrated by the insurance companies–will be cut loose as their product becomes not a required purchase, but a supplement for those who seek better coverage than the basic level to be provided by a National single payer system. Of course conservatives, libertarians, and most Republicans will go apoplectic and cry about how wasteful the government is, but at least we might start with a clean slate and some degree of transparency. In all their hatred of government, they ignore the fact that we have none of that now with the existing system. All the ridiculous technicalities and tricks used to avoid paying out claims could be moved to a single, publicly accountable organization.

Perhaps this has been the plan all along–if so, it’s brilliant. It was critical to get something passed–to move the political football forward in some direction so the other side could make their move. If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare it may actually move us closer to the day when every American has the quality of health coverage the rest of the free world takes for granted.

We had a moment on the bus yesterday. As I sat holding Marshall on my lap, on a very crowded 36 bus leaving Forest Hills, the woman sitting in front of me started confronting a girl with her young child: “Did you just say you was going to hit him?” The girl shot back, “Did you see me hit him? DID you see me hit him?”

“That’s a threat.”

“Did you see me hit him?”

“You’re in public and you can’t be doing that.”

“You put your headphones back on and mind your business.”

“This IS my business. You’re in public now and I don’t know what you do when you get your boy home.”

“I’m his sister…”

“Oh, you his sister? Well I bet you think you’re so tough threatening that little boy like that.”

It went on like that for a couple of minutes until there was silence and eventually the girl got off the bus. I looked back, half expecting to see her smack the boy or something but she looked pretty subdued and relieved to be off the bus. I think, on balance, the lady in front of me prevailed and successfully schooled this girl on what won’t be tolerated.

Now some people would say, “that’s why I don’t ride the bus.” But I saw something positive in this…just like how I see people offering up their seats (occasionally) and generally behaving with courtesy and respect. Don’t think I’m crazy–there are plenty of exceptions and disgusting behaviors that do not surprise me when they happen. But the majority of time, there is a code and you can rely on other people to support and stand up for what’s right. So I appreciate what that woman did…and I was impressed by how she did not back down but also did not escalate things into a real situation.

I am increasingly entertained by blog spam. Since I started reposting (from my phone, no less), I must concede the quality of my writing has declined and yet the quality of spam improves daily. What was once gibberish and quotes copied and pasted from somewhere else has become obsequious pidgin prose. [update: I'm not the first to blog about this...see an even funnier post here.]

Comment spam is when people submit comments on my blog, the sole purpose of which is to receive a reciprocal hyperlink. The comment form allows you to include a URL which is then hyperlinked to your name. This is intended to boost the search engine ranking of the spam site. It is a form of link-building (although, it does not work, since my comments are all identified as “nofollow” to search engines.) Nevertheless, somewhere out there, there are people (or automated programs) breathlessly awaiting my next post, so they can contribute their pensive genius to the stream of consciousness that is my blog.

Check this one out:

Unquestionably believe that which you said. Your favorite justification seemed to be on the internet the simplest thing to be aware of. I say to you, I certainly get annoyed while people consider worries that they plainly do not know about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top and defined out the whole thing without having side effect , people can take a signal. Will likely be back to get more. Thanks

I get 3-4 of these per day which I strive to delete immediately. The one appears to have originated from Kansas City, MO, and linked to a website that looked like it kept a bunch of 5th graders busy cranking out content for weeks.

Now sometimes it’s a bit harder to identify spam. This one is the best I’ve seen lately…it is remotely possible it came from a genuine reader:

Whats up this is somewhat of off topic but I was wanting to know if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding know-how so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

But then I followed the link to the website and found a whole blog of nonsense posts (please hold your clever digs at DaveWrites!). So, in the end, more garbage–and more questions from me. Are these people being paid to do this? Is it fun?

What might be fun is to analyze the patterns of broken English and idiomatic inconsistency. Perhaps people who speak different languages make mistakes in English differently. Or maybe there is a secret code in there…a whole underground way of passing messages between subversive organization via the comments on my blog. I’m sure the NSA is on top of that…but you might need to wear an aluminum foil hat to make any sense of it.

I let myself get into an irritating conversation last night, and it left me wondering what the endgame of our dysfunctional political system will be. The guy next to me started up, complaining about Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, but I could tell Obama was probably so disgusting to him it wasn’t worth talking about. Pretty soon he was talking about the whole corruptness of it all which led to the logical need to cut taxes and get the government out of people’s lives. Then he started the blame game…how the government is bailing out the people who borrowed against their overvalued homes and caused the financial crisis. We are becoming a nation of takers, with hardworking people living paycheck to paycheck to support all these freeloaders.

I marvel at the cognitive dissonance that so naturally sustains valid frustrations of unfairness, while placing blame on our fellow victims. But I can’t even have a logical argument against what sounds to me like a nonsensical stream of illogical “solutions” that must be buttressed by a sort of repetitive conditioning that comes from listening to talk radio and reading conservative blogs. These people are so full of certainty and belief and love to be unhappy.

I look at the world and see an unfair place too. But when I know the amount of money and energy being spent by those who are wealthy and in positions of power, to preserve and expand their lifestyle, and, increasingly, to impose their warped religious and social views on others, somehow a report of a person who cheated to get food stamps does not anger me. The idea that as I make more money, it is “taken away” by loss of access to benefits, increasing health care costs, increasing fuel and food costs, and ultimately increased rates of taxation–it bothers me, but it does not enrage. It does not make me unhappy, because I choose to accept it and worry about the more immediate, personal issues in my life that I can and have to manage. I understand now why so many people just don’t participate in politics.

I was a bit embarrassed by my own irrational response in talking with this man. These kinds of conversations make me want to say things like “I’m just upset that Obama was not able to implement true socialized medicine or at least get us closer to what France and Canada have.” I just don’t see this world that seems to upset them so much.

When times were difficult for me…and there is plenty of blogging around that here as I navigated unemployment, health insurance, and trying many things to eventually land on my feet with my family–I looked for help from the government, found some, and found plenty to criticize. But I never blamed others for my situation and I tried not to blame myself. Things are what they are and the question is not who’s to blame or why it is this way, but what are we going to do about it?

That’s why the conflict-biased politics of today is so frustrating. Is any issue that hits the national political spotlight doomed to impasse?

Last year, we gathered the children together and braved the freezing cold of May and June to play Tee Ball at Pine Bank just up the hill from Jamaica Pond. Popsicles seemed a cruel irony to close the games we did play while rain and sleet cancelled others. But this week in Boston has been surreal. Temperatures in the 80s–and even today, a “cooler day” drew crowds to parks and sent us all in search of shorts and short sleeve shirts. The campus of Northeastern, the esplanade, all over Boston, I rode a bike through a sea of people enjoying summer in March.

I spent seven years in California and the weather was undeniably awesome. But you kind of got used to it. It was so everyday. But in Boston, the exception is celebrated. 83 degrees in March is special. In past years, the ground was still hidden by snow; today, crocuses spring forth and magnolias bloom in an explosion of Spring. People are everywhere.

I think we return to normal this weekend. And perhaps we will get some cruel payback with an April Fool’s blizzard. But this week has been pretty awesome.

Hubway is back in Boston. After the mildest winter I can remember, with barely any snow, the paths are clear and, as the mercury passed 81 degrees today, I found myself breaking a sweat. I leisurely rode from my job near North Station, along the Esplanade to the new bike lanes on Mass. Ave to the bike lanes on Columbus to the Southwest Corridor park. I checked my bike in at Roxbury Crossing–currently the southernmost extent of the bike share network–then hopped on the T for the rest of the ride home.

Five years ago, that paragraph would have been science fiction. I was riding then–a Lycra and Spandex clad warrior of the bike commuter class–and it was a different world. The parks existed, but there were no bike lanes. Plenty of people rode bikes but we were usually solo riders–a few dorky commuters mixed in with students and hardcore messengers.

Today, I regularly see strings of 5-10 riders in the morning…queuing up at crossings and then stringing out again along the 50+ miles of bike lanes that have been added to the city. When Hubway re-launched, I immediately saw other riders. I had worried the success of last summer and fall might see its momentum lapse, but if my anecdotal observations are accurate…the success rides on!

Boston has a way to go still…even with bike lanes drawn on Mass. Ave, I still think it’s a treacherous weave that make Columbus seem like a virtual linear park in comparison. But the progress is palpable…regular people are riding their bikes in the streets of Boston. Their numbers are growing and what was once adventure sport is becoming the new norm. Who needs to move to Portland or Copenhagen…just give our city a decade and watch the world change.

Marshall is set to be a “T”-pro by the time he goes to high school. This year, he’s attending a preschool in Jamaica Plain (the next neighborhood up from where we live in Roslindale) and most mornings, I drop him off on the way to work.

It’s much easier than driving and it makes each morning a bit of an adventure…catching a bus first to Forest Hills, then one stop and a short (but slow with little legs) walk up the hill. I wish I could get him excited about riding in my bike seat, but he’s a bit big for that now and it’s a bit of a production to get all that together vs. walking 5 minutes to a bus stop.

One thing that makes it all manageable is the MBTAinfo app on my phone…so we always know when and where the next bus or train will be. So when you see me walking along and looking at my phone…I’m not updating Facebook–I’m avoiding a meltdown. Knowing what to expect, at least in one area, is priceless.

Four-leaf clovers are not so incredibly rare, but they sure are hard to find. Probably a few years ago now, I started to pay attention a bit more and I remembered how, as kids, we would sit on the ground and search for four-leaf clovers. Somebody always found one and at the time, I didn’t think it was that remarkable. But as an adult, my quest has been futile.

Of course I googled it, and found the actual probability/odds…based on the data (from where?) that 4-leaf clovers are a one in ten thousand sort of thing. And someone apparently found a 56-leaf one once…right. But my rather passive searches–staring at the ground at kids’ soccer or attempting to enlist my kids in the search–have been all for naught…until today.

It’s St. Patrick’s weekend…the parade was today in Southie, but we did not go. We were not even really thinking much about it–although I did don my Ras Na Heireann road race T-shirt from 2007 to take the kids out to nearby Fallon Field on a surreal 70-degrees, wicked awesome beautiful mid-March day. And as we walked along, Jason looked down and said, “look, I found a 4-leaf clover!” Sharon ran over and scoured the ground for about two seconds and said, “and here’s another!” And off they went to something else.

After I suggested a way to fix the Boston Public School lottery process here, I attended the first of a series of community meetings in Boston designed to make good on Mayor Menino’s promise to “[adopt] a radically different student assignment plan – one that puts a priority on children attending schools closer to their homes.” I left the meeting frustrated in different ways than I had anticipated. I saw none of the parental angst I expected, and I did not hear any significant conversations about what real parents want because the exercise was dominated by speechmaking, self-congratulation, and carefully managed participation channeled into a narrow, pre-determined plan of discussion.

The event was well-attended–by facilitators, observers, recorders, media, politicians, and assorted Boston Public School staff along with over 100 parents. But before we could get to a discussion of anything we sat through an hour and a half of introductions and speeches, including an interesting history lesson by State Representative Byron Rushing about race relations in Boston since the Pilgrims.

Finally, a consultant/facilitator announced the plan for the rest of the day: break up into small discussion groups to talk about what worked, what didn’t, and what we’d change about the current school assignment system.

In my room, there were round tables set up with signs. One for “Chinese,” two for “Spanish,” and a third, full table that was presumably for the English-speakers. I thought this a rather bizarre way to start what was supposed to be an inclusive discussion.

I sat down and introduced myself to the person next to me…and then we discovered that everyone else at the table was either an observer, facilitator, or a reporter from the Boston Globe. Other official-looking people with different name tags milled about the room and observed. We moved to a table with a couple of parents and half a dozen high school students.

We were told to review a 2-page document describing how school assignment works in Boston and mark it up or ask questions about it. Then we were referred to a worksheet to write down answers to question of “what is working for you,” and “what needs to be changed or improved.” This led to a fumbling, awkward attempt at discussion.

As time wrapped up, a student summarized our ideas and wrote them on a board for everyone to see. What came out of that didn’t even really make sense to me. As the 3rd hour of my attendance approached and the group went back to the main auditorium, I chatted with one of the candidates I’d met in the city council race and then went home.

I’m not cynical. But this was theatre of some sort. So much effort was put into facilitation to no actual purpose. I have participated in “visioning” exercises like this in my job…it was ambitious to attempt such a thing with a public meeting. But I was overwhelmed at the sheer number of non-productive warm bodies occupying the space.

We did have the opportunity to voice our concerns…I heard two other parents in my group talk about the overwhelming number of choices and agree with my desire for greater certainty (or “predictability” as the facilitator helpfully summarized). I heard a student talk about their concern about being assigned to a particular school that would be better for them as English Language Learners and of the value of having siblings at the same school. I heard an interesting perspective from a student that sometimes neighborhood schools are not so great because the kids will just leave and go home.

But the entire exercise was tightly organized around a presumption of the merit of choice in the system. Our objective is to design a better system for parents to choose their kids’ schools. What constitutes a quality school is something the facilitators seemed to want to take off the table: impossible for consensus. Early on, the facilitator showed a drawing with choice in the center, surrounded by quality and then access/fairness. Focus on choice. That seemed backwards to me.

After the meeting I went home and then to my school’s fundraising event–where I had the good fortune to talk with our city councilor who gave me a bit more perspective. He gets to hear the parents I thought would be at this meeting–unfiltered by a cumbersome process. He said this meeting was very early in the process…the real discussion will happen when the follow on meetings happen in the neighborhoods.

I felt like the meeting was designed around someone else’s agenda. What is really at stake is the fact that nobody wants a choice between quality schools and “not.” The process seems designed to avoid the kind of conflict that derailed things in the past. Good luck with that. These efforts…assembling a blue ribbon panel of experts and hiring consultants to manage the “dialogue,” while casting the whole exercise as a monumentally difficult effort of historical complexity serves only to undermine trust.

Imagine you are at the airport, about to board a plane with thousands of other travelers. Only problem is, some number of the planes will probably crash. It’s not clear how many, but you can tell you don’t want to be on those planes that are missing engines, have smoke coming out of the tail, or have the doors duct-taped closed. To make things fair, the airport sets up a lottery and you get to inspect the planes ahead of time, then submit your preferences. If you don’t play the lottery, you are pretty much guaranteed to end up on one of those duct-tape planes.

Travelers don’t like the lottery. So the solution is to improve the means by which people are assigned to the crashing planes?

In our case, I do not feel like our plane is crashing. I don’t regret our choice to fly this way. I believe the illusory array of false choices undermines community…but it’s not the cause. If we did abolish the lottery and make our schools neighborhood schools, it would not magically result in increased parent engagement and improved schools. As I realized driving home…this exercise is really a waste of my time. If BPS can design a system that will stop these parents from complaining that they have to move to the suburbs if their kids doesn’t get into a top elementary school, that will save me a few minutes of annoyance, but call me back when you have something I can do to answer the complaints of a parent who has no choice.

David Brooks recent book, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, started me thinking again. I downloaded it to my Kindle to read on a recent cross-country flight. I had forgotten who David Brooks was–then remembered his other annoying book, Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, that I defiantly critiqued here several years ago. With that book, I thought, “I’m not like that!” But with The Social Animal, I found significant truth buried in an awkward and contrived story.

Brooks uses two fictional characters to take us through their entire lives with many digressions to explain their behavior in terms of the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience. His point is to tell a story not from the historical perspective–the perspective that in hindsight chronicles a successful person’s march through life achieving goal after goal on a path to fulfillment, but instead to show how much of life is unplanned and more a consequence of the unconscious than a directed effort. Bits and pieces of the details of his made-up story fail to convince because they sound like clichés rather than real life experience, but there are many moments that fit my own experience. One major insight made the whole thing worthwhile.

It really is ALL about perception. How we perceive a situation is more important than the analytics and problem-solving we apply. The great challenge throughout most of life is adapting one’s perspective towards success.

Many people fail or don’t try. They complain and feel trapped because they literally cannot see their way out of a bad situation. Put more simply, a lot of people don’t know to be happy with what they’ve got.

I’ve seen many shifts in my own thinking over the past 20 years–at a big level and at the micro level. At the micro level, perception is how you run a marathon or make it through a 2-hour meeting at work. The great creative challenge is to resist unhelpful perspectives and find a way to see things in a more positive light. I used to think it was just something to be done in negative situations, but really it’s something we just do unconsciously for small things all the time.

Running is a great illustrator of the choices we face every second in the battle against boredom. On the treadmill, I put a towel over the timer and run for what seems an hour…then reomve the towel to see that only 4 minutes have elapsed. But once when I was training for a marathon, I ran for 3 hours in the predawn hours–and remember it as an epic run that I wish I could go do now. Every second there are things to think about, to notice, to experience, and to live.

That state of flow is not chance nor is it objectively a happy one. (I doubt many people would think a 3-hour run in the dark sounded like anybody’s idea of a good time.) But sometimes we can perceive things differently. It’s not a force of will–granted, that is definitely a part of it–when actually running the marathon and the leg cramps kick in at mile 20, there is no joy in those last 6 miles. But at that point the perception is one of inevitability. Failure is not an option. The motivators shift to more negative flavors, but the point is they are there…the unconscious is working to survive and the thought of quitting is not on the table.

People who are successful at life know how to make these powers of perception work for them. It’s never enough to chart out a plan for what you are going to do…to create, for example, an “editorial calendar” for this blog in the hope that I will be able to write more often and more frequently again. That happens when something else has already moved inside.

It occurred to me as I was thinking about perception and the unconscious that perhaps great artists are not simply able to draw the world differently, but can make themselves see it differently. When Van Gogh looked up at the sky, I doubt he always saw the Starry Night. But for a moment, perhaps he did and perhaps he was able to hold that perspective and return to it again and again and record it. Mostly, we glimpse beauty in fleeting moments; perhaps it is only our lack of ability to hold the perspective. When someone captures that perspective and shows it to us…it is art and greatness. They do not create; they show what we cannot see.

But skill is also necessary. I am painfully aware now of the difficulty of sharing in writing some of the ideas I have. It’s not about writing a solution to some problem or explaining complicated concepts–or even developing the ability to craft creative fiction. It is figuring out how to put together the perhaps 200 words that matter in this 800 word blog post and finding things to write about where a unique perspective can resonate with people and cause others to start thinking.

I remember reading Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery when I was ten or twelve years old. It’s a great story that cleverly foreshadows danger, building to the unexpected climax and conclusion: the “winner” of the lottery is stoned to death in a small town ritual to ensure a good harvest.

In Boston, we have our own annual ritual and rite of passage for 4-years olds: the Boston Public School Lottery. Starting one year before children are eligible to attend kindergarten, parents visit prospective schools and choose the “best” school for their kids. Parents submit ranked choices and then assignments are made with priority awarded to siblings and people in the “walk zone” with a random number lottery used to break ties.

There is no neighborhood school based on address. Instead, the city is divided into 3 geographic zones. Parents can choose any school in the zone. In our case, we are eligible for 21 different elementary schools. In addition to these 21 schools, we can also apply for a spot in a public charter school (in a separate lottery).

The process is confusing for Boston residents and incomprehensible for everyone else. First of all, Boston is unique in offering what they call “K-1″–kindergarten for 4-year olds. There are not enough spaces for every child, but if you do get in, you have the opportunity of a free public education for 2-years of kindergarten before starting first grade. It is great that the city can offer that–but because it’s not universal, a lottery is necessary to determine who gets a spot.

K-2 is universal in Boston…but you will find that if you are not already in a school and moving up from K-1, there may be many fewer openings at the school you want…

Let’s stop right there. The school assignment system process begins with a “showcase of schools” and continues thorough the Fall with “preview days” when parents can tour the two dozen schools they might choose from to determine what school is the right fit. It ironically reminds me of my first days at MIT when we went through Residence/Orientation and chose our dorms or pledged fraternities. The feature of choice was a powerful element of beginning to establish an identity and develop a personal connection to the community.

But in Boston, choice subverts community and undermines parental involvement by encouraging a system of year-to-year decisions and an artificial diaspora of children who are bussed from their neighborhoods to innumerable destinations across the city.

But there is good news on the horizon! In the annual State of the City address, Mayor Tom Menino said:

I’m committing tonight that one year from now Boston will have adopted a radically different student assignment plan – one that puts a priority on children attending schools closer to their homes.

Apparently, it’s been said before, but it’s about time we challenge some of the fundamental assumptions that keep this system alive. We should start from a new set of priorities that recognize ameliorating racial strife from the 1970s is no longer a valid reason to subject our children and their parents to a crazy game of chance. But neither is a quasi-free market system of competition and choice.

We are not making education better through this regime of false choice. We test kids who barely speak English and wonder why they don’t pass. We have schools full of special needs kids–and other schools with advanced work programs. We offer minorities the opportunity to be bussed out of Boston to suburban schools and we use taxpayer dollars to fund an increasing number of charter schools that are virtually impossible for existing students to enroll in. Then, we bus kids all over town to make this mess work.

And yet, in many cases, our local schools are doing just fine. I attended a talent show at my daughter’s school last year about a month after we moved to Boston and I was amazed at the enthusiasm and positivity of the students. I’ve gotten to know teachers and the principal and feel more connected to our school than I did when we were going to an elementary school in the suburbs that is one of the top schools in the state. But every year, there is a new lottery for the incoming kids.

I’ve been trying to write this blog post for a couple weeks now…and I keep running into the endless complexity of explaining the system, why I still believe in the school system that my kids are a part of, and yet why I think this approach needs to be radically-scrapped. Many others have complained. Some have been labeled racists for desiring a return to neighborhood schools. Some become so frustrated they feel they have to leave the city and move to the suburbs.

We moved to the city and I want to make things better. I think the challenges of diversity will enrich my kids and my own education as we navigate this system. I believe a classroom of kids from all ranges of background, interests, motivations, and family is more like the real world than a classroom where all are the same and success is scoring the highest grade. In life, credentials do not matter and no one makes your life fulfilling for you. We must constantly deal with a world that is not fair and does not care what our expectations are. We must learn to find the passion in life, find what is interesting, and motivate ourselves always to learn–not just to compete or win approval.

But we ask our kids to navigate this mess in a sea of instability. Schools do not serve the community because they are not of the community. We need to find a way to make our urban schools grounded in community before we can build them up to the standards we would like for all.

I have a suggestion for implementing the radical reform Menino promises. Eliminate choice.

Take away the fundamental assumption of the lottery process–that parents have a right to choose their kid’s schools–but replace it with a commitment to ensuring that kids are guaranteed the right to attend a school close to their homes. Allow exceptions for special cases, but limit those cases to justifiable situations.

How would this work? I would start by simplifying the registration process and moving it to later in the year. Instead of having a month-long period starting in January where parents submit preferences, there is a deadline in the Spring for parents to submit their intent to enroll and prove residency.

Then, in an initial assignment round, kids would be assigned to the nearest available elementary school until 90% of the seats in that school were full. Existing data could be used to model the impact of this on the most recent group of enrollees to determine what a neighborhood map would look like. Re-running the assignment at higher percentages would generate multiple possibilities for families.

This system would not result in a “boundary-based” school district plan, but a probability map. If you live half way between the Sumner and the Bates, then you would know that you have a probability of attending either school or the Conley (also nearby)–depending one whoever else is applying this year. You have zero probability of attending the Lyndon or the Trotter however.

In my example, I held out 10% of the seats in each school…that is to allow some degree of adjustment. Parents receive an initial assignment and may accept it or apply for discretionary transfer in the next round. So, we receive a notice that our son is assigned to the Sumner, but is also eligible for the Bates or Mozart. We can return the form asking to transfer to the Bates. When the next deadline arrives, all the parents who resubmitted are preferentially-reassigned and the enrollments are adjusted to 100% of available seats.

This modified lottery is not just an effort to preserve some choice, but recognizes the reality that enrollments are not stable. Apparently, in some schools in Boston, they do not know who will be in the classroom until a few weeks into September when kids actually show up. I think a modified, limited choice approach to assignments could help that uncertainty sort out without resort to waiting lists and the current system of cascading re-assignments.

Now there are a million other issues…what about the city charter schools? What about METCO? What about how we have advanced work classes at some schools which result in enrollment shifts from 3rd grade to 4th grade? What about the K-8 schools and the Roslindale K-8 “pathway” to the Irving Middle School? What about the fact that K-1 is not guaranteed? What about schools that are fully integrating special needs kids vs schools that are not? We can’t solve all the issues at once! We cannot scramble the current enrollments either. So this whole approach needs to be limited to one cohort of students to begin. As Mayor Menino promised, “one year from now Boston will have adopted a radically different student assignment plan – one that puts a priority on children attending schools closer to their homes.”–so let’s limit the solution to one year from now, not try to change everything at once.

I’m afraid the only solutions we’ll see are tweaks to the current model–increasing the walk-zone priority percentage or increasing the number of school assignment zones to limit, but not eliminate choice. “Radical” is necessary to break from the incremental and unsatisfying creep away from the 1970s.

Our choice is a weak one at best. Because there are no guarantees, the “choice” parents currently have in the process is often a false one. Sure, you can choose to list the most popular school as your top choice, but you could just as well end up in a school across town that you know nothing about. I would trade meaningless choice for the right of my children to attend a nearby school.

I got a job and this blog died. We moved and I really had no compelling reason to keep updating http://westwoodblog.org either. My life is pretty full but I do miss expressing myself and creating something here.

Partly, I’m also in transition. As we adjusted to a new rhythm of job, home, schools, etc. I dialed back to some of the personal things that mattered to me and found time for some more easily than others.

First, I started to read again. When I was working for myself or looking for a job, I don’t think I read anything of significance. Then, in January, faced with a cross-country airplane trip, I seized the opportunity (and my wife’s Kindle) and read The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. From there it was a short leap into fiction with The Help,  The Kitchen House, and back to nonfiction with The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

On this blog, I’ve written reviews of business and social nonfiction, but it was refreshing to read stories of lives that mattered rather than opinions of semi/self-important people. Last month, I finished John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and–perhaps in a different “class” of literature–the Hunger Games trilogy, but fundamentally, I found myself happy to have re-ignited my interest in the substance of great story. There’s a lot you can do with a 30-minute ride on the Orange Line every day.

Next, I got a bit more serious about running. Thanks to my weekly run with friends in Westwood, I have not let my conditioning totally slip, but I’ve found it hard to get out and do those runs except on Saturday morning. But soon after we moved, I was slogging through the Boston snow to manage a run around Jamaica Pond or up and down the many hills of Roslindale. Running remains one of the most accessible activities–and again, something I can do significantly in 30 minute increments.

I bought a pair of Vibram fivefingers and enjoy the sort of “protected barefoot running” these shoes allow. Running on grass is awesome–I literally feel like a sprinting gazelle. Running on pavement changes the way I run and benefits my feet by putting less impact on my heels. Running on gravel…not so great. The gravel tends to get between the toes and you do feel every sharp rock through the shoes.

So perhaps there is another marathon on the horizon this Fall. First 10 miles a week. Then 15. Then 20. If I have time.

Now that the snow if finally gone, I’ve started riding my bike again and carved out an awesome commute that takes me up and around the “emerald necklace” of Boston.

Today, I blasted home with a tailwind in 41 minutes. The days of 3-hour rides in the country are rescheduled for sometime after the kids are in college I think, but it is great to be back on the fixed gear bike riding around Jamaica Pond and along the Charles River in the morning.

So what about the writing? It will come. I think the commentary on social media and even community news projects is something I need to branch away from. Reading fiction and comparing to the nonfiction I consumed before convinces me there is more truth in the fiction. There are stories to be told with passion that can change the way people relate to one another and change the world more effectively than identifying and solving problems.

So for me the challenge is not to just return to blogging but to find the story that must be told and then time to write it. It’s not a 30-minute task. So in the meantime, I read, run and ride to connect with the flow of energy that will find its voice eventually.

I watched the documentary Race to Nowhere Sunday morning at the Dedham Community Theatre with a crowd of parents and educators concerned about the direction of K-12 education. Through the stories of students and parents, the movie makes a compelling case that we are headed in the wrong direction.

Race to Nowhere profiles students, teachers, and parents across the United States who are increasingly stressed out by the demands of middle and elementary school. The title is a quote from a young man describing his frustration at the growing sense of pointlessness he felt as he was driven to do so much homework and participate in so many sports and activities…for what? We usher our children towards a high-stakes, low probability endgame of competing to get into expensive colleges. We assign impossible amounts of homework–beginning in elementary school. We expect performance from our teachers and measure it by how well they coach our kids to take minimum standards tests.

I started out watching this moving feeling ambivalent because it’s not news to me. What the kids describe is similar to what I went through over 25 years ago. I knew exactly what grade I needed on every test to maintain a 94.5 or above average in every class and ensure I maintained a 4.0. I was on a race to get accepted into MIT from a rural community in southern Virginia. When I got to MIT, I experienced the proverbial “firehose” education, but it taught me about prioritizing and choosing to do the things that really mattered. It was an impossible workload, but we learned to “punt” less important things and focus on getting what we needed to get by.

Today, the race is on for EVERYONE it seems. Kids are freaking out about everything as if one mistake dooms them to a life of failure. Parents are overwhelmed with keeping up with each other. And schools are pressured to “get better” or lose money or be closed as failing schools. But I don’t think kids are being allowed to learn the lessons I did. And why should they have to?

I chose an extreme path. I have no regrets, but I don’t think it’s the right path for everyone. As my kids start school, I want to help them find what is right for them.

After the movie, there was a great audience discussion in the packed theatre. But the most interesting comment came at the end, in the form of a question from a very involved parent. He simply asked “what’s the alternative?” What are parents supposed to do? If the race is wrong…if we are freaking out over whether our kids will be able to get into one out of a dozen schools that aren’t even on the top 25 U.S. News and World Report list…what is the alternative? We don’t want to limit their choices; we want to give them better than we had, so what are we supposed to do?

We bought a house in Rozzie, and we finally move this Friday. It was not an easy choice to leave the town of Westwood where I’ve been active in several town boards, developed many friendships, and started our oldest daughter in the school system. (And authored the Westwood Blog for the past 3 years.) It was not easy to move past the neighboring town of Dedham either, where we also have many friends and probably would have purchased a house had it not gone under agreement the day we scheduled to go look at it. But I am excited about where we are moving and am thrilled we decided to do it.

It shouldn’t be a surprise we’d be attracted to really living in Boston (Roslindale is a neighborhood of Boston) for anyone who has followed the urbanism thread of this blog. I was excited about the Westwood Station project because it promised to bring some urban advantages to our community. I created a town board to promote active transportation–walking and cycling–because I believed we could really enhance the community by connecting our village centers and making it easier for more people to get out on the street. I commuted to work in Boston on my bike (14 miles or so) and via the train not only because I didn’t want to sit in traffic or park my car, but because it made me feel more like I was a part of the city that has called me to come home ever since I was a college student at MIT in the 1980s.

But what about the schools? It was our biggest concern. I found a blog, started by a Roslindale parent, called Braving the Lottery, which details her journey through enrolling her kids in the Boston Public Schools. My daughter is eligible to attend any one of more than a dozen elementary schools but transferring mid-year, there will not really be any choice or lottery. We submitted a list of our preferences and we’ll see what we get–hopefully later today or tomorrow.

I’m optimistic we will be happy as long as we get one of the schools we know have openings. Because class size is limited by law, the popular choices are full and have wait lists from the last lottery process earlier this year. But families do move (the people who sold us their house moved to Dedham) and parents don’t necessarily yank their kids from one school to another this late in the year, so it’s not necessarily an automatic as to where we will be assigned. Once we get in to a school, we hope that our sibling priority will be able to pull along the other kids who are currently in preschool.

Over on Westwood Blog, I recently noted how Westwood was featured by Great Schools.org as one of the top 5 school systems in the country. When you look up my daughter’s current school, it’s a ’10′ on a 1-10 scale–based largely on the fact that everyone passes the standardized tests. And we know from our own experience that it’s a great community school for many reasons other than just the test scores: parents are active, involved, and engaged and teachers and the principal are great.

Where we are moving…no 10s. But those numbers are all about the pass rates for standardized tests. We talked to parents and attended meetings to learn about our potential schools and heard mostly positive stories–and a great deal of energy from parents, teachers, and administrators who are working hard to improve their schools. The lottery does cause the schools to compete and attempt to differentiate themselves. In the end, we concluded 1) we will need to be heavily involved in our kids education and 2) it’s more about the specific teacher and classroom year-to-year.

I see some advantage to engaging in system that is trying to improve. When everything is already great, sometimes we miss the opportunity to see how our efforts contribute to positive change. Learning is more than just passing tests–I think it’s also about an experience of growing and adapting. I think we have set ourselves up for many of those opportunities in the coming years.

Several years ago, we discovered the First Church and Parish in Dedham. When we first attended, we were concerned that although the people were welcoming and the community was obviously strong, we weren’t sure if there was a critical mass of young families like us. We wanted our kids to be a part of a church community with other kids. But in the course of only a few years, the church has grown dramatically in this respect. Every Sunday, I am amazed at how many kids go to the front for the “story for all ages” and then depart to their classes–leaving the church back at about the capacity it was when we first attended.

Yesterday was the annual Fall Fair. It’s still not a big fancy production but I’m happy about that. Here’s a video of my daughter decorating her caramel apple.

The video is only 30 seconds long, and I know a video like that for non-parents (and maybe anyone not me) can kind of seem like forever, but as I was standing there watching her decorate her apple, it struck me how “right-sized” this community has become. I’ve been to plenty of seasonal family events and a more typical situation is a line of kids and perhaps pushy parents trying to get their turn at whatever is up next. We don’t have that vibe here. Kids had fun in the “bouncy house” and petted the barn babies. There was face-painting and various other activities that we’ve become familiar with as parents of 6/4/2-year olds. But no rush, no line, no problem.

It’s a tough balance…of course if there is not a critical mass of people, then things can be, well, rather lame, and unviable. And then if the “hidden gem” becomes popular, you have lines of people coming to check it out and crowd out the folks who built it up. But I think this community is in a good place now and growth means more people to help and more capacity to create good experiences and connections.

I’m not sure what starting me thinking about New York City again, but yesterday, somewhat impulsively–but with a little planning–I decided to visit. By myself. Cheaply. Without a concrete plan, I did a lot and spent just a little over $100.

I’ve been to NYC about half a dozen times. As a freshman at MIT, I took the train down from Boston, stayed at the West Side YMCA, did a quick sightseeing tour and hopped the train back the next day. A couple of years later, I followed the Gary Hart campaign to New York and camped out on someone’s floor in a Central Park apartment for a week while we rode the subway trains gathering petition signatures. I think that experience imprinted on me not just the “grit factor” of doing a crazy thankless task but also the geography of the city–enough so I feel “comfortable” in the immensity of it all. In 1992, I spent a week in the city with the Democratic National Convention–commuting back to a friend’s house in Staten Island every night.

Perhaps this trip began by watching one too many episodes of Louis C.K. Maybe it was cabin fever after my family went up to Lake Champlain while I started work on a new contract project and continued my job search. I thought I would bike and run every morning–but then it rained for 3 days. As the weather cleared I decided it was time to do more than just another bike ride or 6-mile run.

Fung Wah!

In Boston, there’s an infamous way to get to New York: The Fung Wah bus. Twenty years ago, they had a booth in Chinatown with a sign: “New York: $10.”  Sometimes I saw crowds of Chinese people and students lined up outside. When I moved back to Boston in 2002, I heard stories of how they now had a counter at South Station. I also heard about their bus crashes and fires on the local news.

The trip now costs a whopping $15. You can’t beat $15, especially when you are looking to go cheap. So I bought my ticket online and purchased a return ticket for the last 11pm bus. I drove to a 24-hour parking lot ($11 for 24 hours!), walked 5 minutes to South Station, checked in and hopped on the first bus of the day at 6:30am.

Born To Run

The bus ride was uneventful. No fires, no rollovers, no raucous partiers. I brough along my wife’s Kindle to read Born to Run. Christopher McDougall’s book is about the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s Copper Canyons and their incredible endurance. But it’s more about the joy and love of running and at a deeper level, the power of joy and love to enable us to accomplish things that seem impossible. The miles flew by and three-and-a-half hours later, we were in New York’s Chinatown.

TKTS to Broadway

I wasn’t completely without a plan when I left Boston. I had some things I was thinking about doing and one of those was to see Green Day’s American Idiot. It’s a 90-minute show that starts at 8pm though and I wasn’t sure I would really be able to pull that off. But I thought I’d see what developed.

TKTS sells day-of-show 50%-off theater tickets starting around 3pm in Times Square. From my 1980′s visit, I remembered long lines and could only imagine what that would be like 25 years later, but there is a satellite TKTS office in South Street Seaport that opens at 11am. Perfect. I walked from Chinatown and arrived just as they were posting the available shows. I stepped into line to wait half an hour–and got my ticket.

So, ticket in hand–and firmly committed to a 12-hour day–I set out across lower Manhattan.

Ground Zero – World Trade Center

I didn’t know anyone who died on 9/11, but after that day, we started to think about how our life on the West Coast separated us from our parents. We started  thinking about starting our own family. Now…my daughter starts 1st grade in two weeks. 9/11 didn’t “cause” things to happen, but it made us reexamine our lives and put some perspective against what had seemed important to us before.

I remember the World Trade Center from the late 1980s. Somewhere around that time, I rode to the top for the “worldview.” Later, in ’95, my wife and I had some of the best falafel sandwiches I can remember from a vendor in Zuccotti Park. Yesterday, as I made my way across from Wall St, I remembered the park and begin to feel a sense of things different.

As I looked into the construction pit–now full of cranes and rising steel–it looked like any massive construction project. But then I looked up and tried to see what was no longer there. What once had blotted out the sky was now filled with light. Visually, it was wrong. It is hard to capture what is missing in pictures or words without the memory. I wonder as we fill that space with newness and as a new generation imprints on the newly built environment–will they feel the absence of what was? I can only imagine that feeling for the thousands affected by the gaping hole ripped not only in the sky or earth, but in their lives from the pain of those lost.

The photo I should have taken was as I ascended the Liberty bridge. One man crouched on the stairs, hands grasping the chain link, face pressed up close to peer through a small gap to see directly into the main pit. I wish I’d captured that moment. Whether he was fascinated by the construction or thinking about 911, who knows, but it stood in contrast to business of life moving on around me.

MoMA

I made my way north through what seemed and endless sea of shopping malls and shiny affluence and boarded a #2 train to head uptown.

When I was thinking of visiting the city, I thought of museums and remembered a rather stuffy tour of the Museum of Modern Art in 1992 when I was staying in New York for the Democratic National Convention. But I remembered the Monet water lilies and that they had a number of other impressionist works, so I figured if I had one museum to visit, this would be the one.

I’m no art history major. I don’t have a clue actually. But even since high school French class, I felt an affinity to the Impressionists. That was reinforced in 2005 when my wife and I took a biking trip in Provence and rode through the fields Van Gogh painted. So it’s kind of cool to have been where this was:

The feature exhibit was Matisse. Yawn. Sorry, I really tried to get into it, but his stuff just doesn’t do anything for me. I left the exhibit wondering if maybe I do need an art class to appreciate this stuff. But then I found Picasso, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet…

Nearly everyone in the museum was taking photos of the art which seems kind of lame to me. You can just go online, right, and download a copy. You can look at the photos in a book, right? Well, yes, but…

There is something more to the experience in person. There is a three-dimensional aspect to the canvas and also a situational aspect to viewing things at a world museum where hundreds of thousands come to regard what has stood the test of time as defining art. The camera…we document the experience, not so much the art. I was there; I took this photo. I captured the image and in my memory I can reconnect the experience through the photo. The photo in a book has no context for me.

It is similar to the olive trees. We were there. We felt the wind and breathed the fresh air as we rode through the fields of Provence. We took photos. I absorb Van Gogh’s work. I connect it all in a tapestry of ideas and experience that spans time and space and creates something rich within. The artists do all that and then express it in a way that millions can connect.

Central Park

I spent a few hours at the MoMA, then left and headed north to Central park. It was a spectacular day–mid 70s, clear blue sky, hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds out enjoying the park. If I lived here…I’d be on a bike or running or something, but I didn’t exactly line up a shower stall for my day visit, so I just walked through the park and started to think about my evening plan. I wanted to go back downtown to Greenwich Village. I wasn’t sure what I’d do there, but I didn’t remember much from my last visit. So I hopped on a 72st subway and rode down to Washington Park.

In the Shadow of Jane Jacobs

The plan at this point was to get something to eat, then head back up to Broadway for the 8pm American Idiot show. It was still before 5pm, so not even the senior citizens would be eating dinner yet, but I walked around a bit and eventually ended up at the White Horse Tavern. It was the only place that had people at this early hour, so I secured an outside table ordered a beer and burger and drank in the scene.

Now I started thinking…Hudson Street–that’s significant, right? It has been a while since I wrote specifically about urban planning and economic development, but as I recall, Hudson Street is where Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities lived. I read the book only 2 years ago–it’s now almost 50 years since it was published, but it remains an inspiring call to arms for those who would change society through architecture and planning. I think if I’d read that book in college, I’d have gone to architecture school instead of law school.

I did a quick search on my iPhone–noticing the battery was about to fail–and located an article on Jane Jacobs’s townhouse being sold recently for $3.3 million. And the address–555 Hudson St. I looked across the street to see where I was and saw 554. Yes, I’m sitting practically under her windowsill.

2010 Hudson Street is nothing like the world described in 1961. But step off what is now the main drag and you can still sense the vitality of what has become a pretty gentrified urban environment. There are playgrounds and neighborhood stores. But it’s not like the Freewheelin’ Bob Dyan album cover. Students hang out at the bar but instead of talking about how Dylan Thomas died here or whatever, they are talking about their job interviews and how their friends moved to Brooklyn where they can afford to live.

American Idiot

I was a bit nervous about the whole Broadway adventure. I knew that if I missed that 11pm bus…I would be screwed, stuck in Chinatown at midnight with no ride home. So as my iPhone battery continued to go red and show 20% or less remaining, I double-checked the subway path home and set out a little early to give myself plenty of time before the show started at 8.

Earlier, I had downloaded iTrans, an iPhone app which gives you a map of the subway and helps you figure out how to get around. It was marginally useful. Mainly, I just looked at the map, but I did figure out there was a B/D train from 42nd St/Bryant Park that would take me to Grand St–about 2 blocks from the Fung Wah bus. That should work to get away from the theater around 945pm and leave plenty of room for any Fung Wah surprises.

So I hopped on the 2 Uptown to 42nd Street and walked the route from the St James theater on 44th St to plan my exit strategy: across 44th St to 6th Ave and down 2 blocks. D to Brooklyn, but make sure to get off at Grand or plan on taking a trip to Brooklyn.

With the exit route prepared, I grabbed a beer and then went to the theater about 1/2 hour before the show.

It’s a great show. It’s kind of confusing even for someone who has been listening to both albums (the show includes songs from 21st Century Breakdown and American Idiot) for months, but you know…these things are “non-linear.” It’s an emotional experience, not a story with a neat solution for angry depressed youth. So like those Picasso works–I can’t tell you the meaning or the why of it all, but I can tell you the feeling.

The opening is the most powerful. It’s an all-out assault that captures the overwhelming and confusing media barrage of conflict that kids today grow up experiencing. My eyes are watering because it really hits me in the face. Our media culture exposes so much violence and conflict to us all that we are left wondering “what am I supposed to do with this information?” Especially when we are young and idealistic, we want to DO something but it is just overwhelming. I think watching this production shares that feeling across what might be a generational and memory divide.

We worry about the future we are leaving our kids. Perhaps we should worry more about the present.

When the show ended, I found my way to the subway and headed back downtown as planned.

Fung Wah encore

I arrived at 139 Canal St with plenty of time to spare, but the scene grew testy as more and more people arrived for that last bus. We stood on the sidewalk next to the off ramp from the Manhattan Bridge, and observed an incessant ritual of taxis angrily blowing their horns at cars unfamiliar with the concept of the flashing red light at Canal St. (Turn already!)

The crowd appeared to exceed what would fit on a single bus. The bus operators began to run back and forth, counting and recounting us and yelling at each other and into walkie talkies. Then they told us to go. Everyone picked up like a herd of antelope started by the sight of a lion and ran towards the bus. They stopped us and told us to line up in a single line. Then the counting continued while people in line started to worry about standing or being left behind.

It seemed clear to me that we’d be OK. There were at least 30 people behind me in line and they are not going to send us all home, right? Then, they told the people in line to get on the bus…but stopped at me and told me and everyone else to wait.

Eventually, I think we all got on the bus. I grabbed a seat and settled in for a three-and-a-half hour ride home that I mostly slept through. My car was there. I was home and in bed by 3:30am.

What a great trip!

A few days ago I wrote about an idea for a web-based debate between candidates. When I met with other bloggers in our community, we had plenty of good ideas…but we kept looking at that calendar and realizing we had very little time and no guarantee the candidates would even respond. So we came up with a better plan. We are starting by posting this:

What question would you ask Congressional candidates Stephen Lynch and Mac D’Alessandro to answer if you had the chance? The editors of community web sites from Milton (02186 MyTownMatters), Dedham (MyDedham), and Westwood (Our Westwood) are inviting you to submit your questions as comments below from now until August 31. We will select 10 questions and submit those to both campaigns, then publish their responses online before the September 14 Democratic Primary.

If you are a constituent, go to one of our sites to submit your questions.

I wish I had a time machine to go back about a month because I really think a regional effort like this could make a difference in how we debate issues. I wish I had time to find more sites in the neighboring communities and talk to more people. But we’ll start with our 3 towns and see where it goes…

Over at Our Westwood (http://westwoodblog.org) I recently expressed my frustration that candidates in the upcoming September 14 primary for U.S. Congress and State Senate were unlikely to debate. I have a proposal for doing this online that will serve our communities, respect the candidates and voters, and increase participation and interest in the political process.

This needs to be local–sponsored and endorsed by real people with a stake in their communities. I’ve contacted the people I know in the area who run community sites like Our Westwood, and I am assembling a coalition to invite the candidates to participate. We will take on the responsibility of moderating and facilitating the public participation to avoid having the debate hijacked by extremists and “trolls.”

I think the format should be a hybrid of structure and openness. The debate will consist of three phases:

Phase 1: Developing Questions

During the last week of August, we will use “crowdsourcing” technology like IdeaScale to collect suggestions for questions and then vote the best questions to the top of the list. This phase will be “wide open” to anyone with an idea–i.e. no complicated registration, no verification of identity, anonymous participation OK. Then, our organizing committee will select 5 questions from residents to form the basis of the debate. If we can manage video interviews with those people, we’ll go out and record their questions directly using a Flip video camera.

Phase 2: Candidate Responses

We will set up a content management system with a structured commenting policy:

The questions will be posted by the debate moderator one per day at 9am. The candidates will have a window of 4 hours (the response period) before any response is published. This allows each candidate to respond but does not allow them to see their opponent’s response first. No public commentary is allowed yet.

After the initial responses are published (1pm), an additional window of 4 hours will be provided (the rebuttal period) during which candidates can respond to what their opponent said. At 5pm, the rebuttals are both posted and then the issue is open to public commentary.

Phase 3: Public Commentary

Public commentary will be available to users who register and provide basic identifying information and agree to a code of conduct. First name and town will be publicly displayed, but the person must also provide a last name, phone number, and email address for potential verification by the debate organizers. Anonymous comments will not be published. Comments can be text or video submissions, display a photo of the user if desired, etc.

If the candidates wish to continue participating, they may add their own comments. The candidate accounts will be officially verified and highlighted–i.e. no impostors allowed.

5 Days in September

I envision the debate cycle as consisting of a total of 5 questions–one per day–starting Labor Day, September 6. The public comment on question 1 will overlap with the response and rebuttal periods of subsequent questions, but I think it will be less complicated than that sounds.

What is needed?

Candidates – What I am suggesting here is a much more effective venue for communicating with voters than television, radio or a town meeting. We really need the people (see below) but if we make this work, I think it’s a venue of tens of thousands who will be able to really get a sense for why and how they should vote. I have not formally invited the candidates yet but I’d like to do this for our local Democratic primaries for State Senate and the 9th Congressional District of Massachusetts. With what we learn from this…perhaps we can cover more elections in the future.

People – I’m reaching out to bloggers and activists across the region because ultimately, we need to drive people to this. We can all post our little “you should vote” public service announcements, but I think a more effective way to stimulate civic participation would be to send people to a site where they can actually get useful information to help them make a decision about the primary. Also, I think the discussion itself will create interest and make it more likely people will vote.

Technology – There is definitely a big technology element to this project and although I can spec it out and could probably build it–I could really use help from a Drupal or WordPress guru who could create the site that powers this. Managing it is going to be “hands-on” so I don’t need a bulletproof fully automated software application here, but I need someone who really knows how to set up these kinds of user profiles and custom workflow rules in a way that is super easy for participants to use. I want an open source solution here–something you would be willing to describe to others–not some proprietary system or custom-coded application. This is something that should be possible to create in a day or less. If it takes longer than that, you are over-optimizing.

Draft

I’ve sent a few emails and talked to a few people–now I’m blogging for feedback. I’m open to suggestions and modification by anyone willing to help pull this off.

Thanks to my diligent monitoring of my online banking account, I caught $2700 of errors in the past 30 days. Sovereign Bank (Santander) is still in the process of fixing the last mistake, but two strikes was enough for me to move my business to a local bank.

The first error occurred when David Adkins walked into the Salem, MA branch of Sovereign Bank and withdrew $1500 from my account. When I saw this withdrawal online I was surprised and clicked on the link to pull up an image of the withdrawal slip. That slip–handwritten with a drivers license number for ID verification–gave me a clue as to what had probably happened. He walked into the branch and asked to make a withdrawal. He didn’t know his account number, so the teller looked up his name (misspelling it) and found my account number. After visually verifying his drivers license (still oblivious to the misspelling), the bank handed over the cash.

I called Sovereign’s customer service and was told not to worry about it; they would investigate it and if there was a problem, they’d fix it. They said not to worry–if there was a problem, the would retroactively credit the account for any fees, etc. They did not seem to understand my concern that while they were “investigating” this potential fraud, my checks might be bouncing. Fortunately, I had money to transfer from savings and cover the mistake until it was fixed a few days later.

A few weeks later, a corollary  type of mistake happened. I noticed a $1200 “DEP RET” withdrawal on my account and a $10 fee. When I first called, the transaction was still pending, so I was told “that department isn’t open now–call back in the morning.” So I did. The automaton who handled my call engaged me in the following frustrating dialog:

Me: What does “DEP RET” mean?

Him: That’s a deposit return.

Me: What is a deposit return?

Him: That’s when a deposit is returned.

Me: But what is that?! Is that like a bounced check?

Him: Yes.

Me: But I haven’t even made a deposit recently.

Him: You deposited $1200 from an ATM a week ago. Because you did it at the ATM, I can’t tell anything about it.

Me: So what am I supposed to do here?

Him: We’ll send you a copy of the check…or we might try to cash it again. Maybe it will clear. If not, we’ll send it to you.

Me: So then I can go figure out who I have to track down?

Him: Yes.

Unable to help me with this problem, the agent then informed me of a new policy going into effect immediately that I needed to “opt-in” to. It seems a new law prohibits banks from covering your overdrafts anymore, but if I agree to opt-in, nothing will change and it will be great. So he read me a bunch of legalese and I said, sure, why not? Nice upsell, but I digress…at least I’m not banking with Wells Fargo.

Well it turns out I did deposit a check for $1200–from a relative. Before calling her up and starting the wheels of financial worry turning, I figured, let’s wait and see that returned check.

Well, I didn’t have to wait long–the check arrived on Saturday morning. It was a $1200 check drawn on the metavente.com bank and made out to a woman in Rhode Island. It was marked “Return Reason – Stop Payment.” The key fact (which I spent about an hour trying to explain to 4 different people on the phone) was that the check was NOT made out to me. It had nothing to do with me! I did not deposit the check. The check I had deposited had cleared just fine.

So…4 people? Yes. The first person on the phone asked me if perhaps I had taken cash from someone to deposit their check. No…I can see her endorsement right here on the back. Then I said–I think this Metavente thing is a bill paying service. So she transferred me to Sovereign’s Online Bill Payment department. After about 10 minutes that person said, “wait, you don’t seem to have online bill paying set up with us.” I said–right…I never said I did. I think this check came from some other bank.” OK, transfer back to customer service. By this time, I had a better idea of how to describe my problem and the person I spoke to “got it” and opened a ticket for me–then told me to take the check down to the local branch office on Monday morning. She said, “this is a one in a million type thing”–I said, funny, let me tell you what happened a couple weeks ago…

On Monday morning I got to explain it all again to the branch manager. I’m done.

Here’s what I think happened: When that stop payment hit Sovereign, they looked up the history of transactions on that day and clicked on the wrong one, resulting in the withdrawal and fee to my account instead of the correct payee.

It’s been three days and I’m still waiting for this error to be credited to my account. But in the meantime, I’ve opened an account with a local bank and am in the process of transferring everything out of Sovereign for good.

Monitor your finances. I would have eventually caught the stop payment problem because they mailed me the check, but that $1500 withdrawal could have gone unnoticed until a check or autopayment of mine bounced. These types of errors should NEVER happen with a financial institution. More importantly, my experience with customer service should not be a defensive struggle to justify and explain myself. We all assume competence in these banking transactions (these types of mistakes should literally be inconceivable), but that is an assumption we can no longer take for granted.

In a twist of irony, I received my bank statement today which contained a notice that the returned items fee is increasing to $15.

My career is a search for opportunities to use my talents to help make a difference in people’s lives. My resume does not adequately make that connection. Much of what I enjoy writing involves connecting the dots between related but nonlinear ideas, so today I apply that to my own story:

I began with an interest in politics and ideas when I was inspired to go on the road with the Gary Hart campaign while I was an undergraduate at MIT in 1988. “Democracy, not Media-ocracy!” A similar motive led me to organize and lead Paul Tsongas delegates in Washington State in 1992 while I was in law school. In between, I created or improved student publications like the law school newspaper or the MIT Course Evaluation Guide. The common thread of my engagement was that I threw myself into–I committed myself 100%–to causes where I combined the tools I already had internally (communication, empathy, passion) with skills I rapidly developed (technology and presentation) to advance ideas for making something better.

Now that was a long time ago. But throughout my career I made choices based on my unique combination of talent and skills in pursuit of creative, innovative ideas that I believed would change the world.

At Smart Valley, Inc., I used technology to improve quality of life in Silicon Valley. I created an online database of volunteers to wire the schools to the internet, then build PCs for low income schools. I brainstormed the idea to create a voter information site–SmartVoter–that is still active today.

At Decisive Technology, we believed we could do surveys better online (instead of phone-based surveys). We could more accurately serve the needs of customers and employees by giving executives a way to hear those voices effectively. So I built a team of web engineers and we created EnterpriseView–a web-based analysis tool for survey management.

At ConsumerReview, we had dozens of websites driven by passionate enthusiasts like mountain bikers (MTBR.com) and audiophiles (AudioReview.com). To scale the company down to a survivable state, we need to consolidate. So we learned C# and .NET and rolled out a new publishing platform. Many were laid off, but the consolidated company has kept those user communities going for over a decade.

At QuitNet, we supported thousands of people trying to quit smoking by building, maintaining, and pioneering the online delivery of smoking cessation services through www.quitnet.com. As the business grew to serve a complete wellness and behavior change model, we managed the technology and community–from “servers under a desk” to a virtualized hosting facility and geographically-distributed telephone counselors. Now the service is part of a national health care company.

At Spire, I stepped into a role that quickly turned into the launch of a “spun-off” startup company. The core challenge was to provide a publishing and interactive experience where members could help one another. I improvised technology, integrated workflow, and promoted social media to support our efforts in growing the community.

Along the way, I acquired tech skills and titles. But I was always jumping into the trenches. I faced a challenge and I learned what I needed to get through it. I am not constrained by what cannot be done or what I lack experience in today.

So when people look at the individual items on the resume…and ask me if I am a manager, engineer, writer, marketer, or lawyer…I have trouble answering that. Yes. Well, OK, which one do you want to be? It depends on what I need to be to solve today’s challenge.

I thought, when I switched over to Firefox a long, long time ago, I had left behind the indignity of the whole pop-up ad banner. Perhaps I simply began visiting fewer porn sites (just kidding!). But whatever the reason, I began to notice that when I shut down my browser I would find half a dozen additional windows open–mostly containing ads for Netflix.

Now Netflix was a great idea in the late 1990s–I was a charter customer. But I think video-on-demand and just plain market saturation has driven them to scrape what they can from the remaining customer pool by running these incessant, annoying red pop-under ads that get around the built-in pop-up blockers. As my laptop began to slow down, I suspected these ads were consuming resources and decided to shut them down.

To my pleasant surprise, I found a voluntary opt-out process that did not require installing or purchasing a pop-under-plus-blocker. Here’s how I found it–so you can repeat on other responsible media networks.

First take a look at the ad:
I noticed the url of the ad began with http://cdn.optmd.com – which sounded to me like it was probably “Content Delivery Network” of something…so I went to http://cdn.optmd.com to see what was there.

I found “Optimax Media Delivery” a website with a lot of dense copywriting rationalizations and a video about the horrors of a boring Internet without advertising…but then, in prominent bold text, “CLICK TO OPT OUT.” Awesome. What judge ordered that as part of a settlement deal? Just do it. This will set a cookie–a GOOD COOKIE–on your computer that will tell optmd.com not to pop under any more ads for you.

All snarkiness aside, this is a breath of fresh air of responsibility, ethics, and accountability in the world of online advertising. But after you click that opt-out button, you will see this dire warning:

WARNING: by choosing to opt out you are taking an active position not to support the publishers whose websites you visit and whose content you consume free of charge. In doing so you threaten the long-term viability of their operations.

How dare you!

Update: No sooner had I killed those ads than I found more ads appearing from Casalemedia. To opt out of these annoying ads, go to http://casalemedia.com/optout/.

As an avid runner and cyclist, I wanted to track my workouts more effectively. So about 3 years ago, I purchased the Garmin Forerunner 405–at that time, a brand new product. Several thousand miles later, it is still the best choice for me.

The Garmin Forerunner looks like a regular digital watch–not an oversized data console. It fits under a long sleeve shirt like a regular watch. But it contains a GPS antenna and wireless data transmitter to accurately and effortlessly records workout data. That data is then automatically uploaded to a website which displays a google map of the workout and graphs displaying the workout data.

I still have not taken advantage of all the features of the watch which include the ability to configure a “virtual training partner,” but I have found the following features useful:

• Most features are managed through a “touch ring” around the bezel. You tap the bezel to change display screens and scroll through options. The touch ring is not perfect–it does not work through gloves in zero-degree weather, for example–but it is a simpler and less confusing interface than watches with too many buttons.
• The digital display can be customized. You might choose to show the total distance, average pace, and heart rate on one screen while showing current pace or heart rate in large numbers on another screen. As you run, you can quickly tap the bezel to cycle through these screens.
• The watch recharges through a simple clip. A full charge contains enough power to record long events like century bike rides and marathons.

The only criticisms I’ve had with the Garmin are:

• Removing the USB stick abruptly from a computer can sometimes cause a reboot.
• The watch could be just a little smaller–it still looks big on my scrawny wrists.
• The menus and navigation of features can be a little intimidating. The simplified interface of two buttons and a touch bezel makes routine tasks easy, but it can take some work to figure out what is in all those menus.
• The GPS elevation is not very accurate for relatively flat terrain. But I think it is about as accurate as possible and better than anything else I’ve tried.

My strongest recommendation for the Garmin is based on its simple durability and reliability. I tried other products like RunKeeper–a free/upgradable app that turns your iPhone into a tracking device and then posts your workouts to social media sites. However, I found the GPS much less accurate–dropping whole sections of trail runs–and the battery life unacceptable–leaving me lost in the woods with a dead cell phone.

The Garmin just works and works well. After nearly 3 years of running and cycling, it keeps on working and has never lost data or died in the middle of a race. I’m not afraid to take it into the shower with me OR wear it on a job interview.

Disclosure: The hyperlink to the Garmin Product is an Amazon associates referral link–I receive a small commission if visitors follow the link and purchase the product. I have no connection to Garmin.

Remember last year when the the Mayor’s office was routinely deleting emails? Policy chief Michael Kineavy said he assumed the emails were being backed up (blame the IT department!)–and described his practice of emptying his inbox every day and then emptying the deleted items folder for good measure. Kineavy defended his actions as just his way of being neat and not an intentional circumvention of the public records law, but many viewed the behavior as classic “double-deleting”–making sure there was no data available to be backed up when the nightly backups ran. The Mayor’s office quickly improvised a recovery strategy and found over 5,000 lost emails from backups of other people who had corresponded with Kineavy, but warned that a complete recovery would cost over $250,000 to do a forensic reconstruction of the hard drive.

New software and services are quickly making the whole story sound like an unsophisticated, pre-Internet tale of backwards bureaucracy. Companies like Needham-based Sonarian now offer a hosted email archiving solution–and tools to archive instant messaging and social media–that will eliminate excuses and make it reasonable (and accurate) for a staffer to say, “I assumed it was all backed up.”

These tools are also changing the business–and arguably career–model for information technology professionals. In the past, companies invested a ton of time and money in hardware and redundancy in-house to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery. The first wave of change came through software as a service (SaaS)–the idea that instead of say setting up my own perfect backup plan, I could just pay someone else to provide the service. We quickly transitioned away from swapping tapes and installing software to configuring lightweight agents on servers to push the backups out to some offsite backup farm. Personally, we discovered services like Carbonite and Mozy to ensure our laptops were safely backed up without having to think about it.

But cloud-based services take it all to the next level. At Carbonite…I suspect there is a server room somewhere in Boston with row upon row of network storage array devices where all those backups (including my own) live. In this sort of set up, a handful of engineers are responsible for building a bulletproof system and monitoring it constantly to make sure it works. The cloud approach forgoes the server room altogether in favor of Amazon Web Services. I assume there are no employees of Sonian loading tapes or swapping out failed RAID controller cards at 3am. Instead, the systems architect builds a solution of services in an environment of redundancy and scalability instead of having to create and manage that environment.

From a business model perspective, the company looking to provide a valuable service is liberated from the hardware and “spontaneous human combustion” type problems endemic to life as a systems administrator. They can focus on the service, not the exceptions and crazy, unpredictable failures.

From a career development perspective, the systems administrator’s role is changing. It has been a long time since anyone could lock themselves in an IT room and segregate from developers, but increasingly, if you see your job as performing miracles and keeping things working smoothly–your days are numbered. We have to build solutions today–and the mindset of assuming everything will fail, so we must plan around it–kills the creativity needed to architect exceptional service. Instead, we need to find systems in the form of services we can trust and develop solutions. If you are still trying to figure out how to get Microsoft SQL Server log shipping to work reliably…it’s time for you to reboot. It doesn’t work reliably enough.

Cloud computing is not magic. I’ve been hearing about SaaS and “the cloud” for years–mixed in with a bit of talk about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Lots of buzzwords and excuses to have industry conferences, but what does it all really mean?

• It means if you, as a technology professional, are still banging your head against the wall solving stupid problems, you need to stop. Find services you can trust and create solutions that you are proud of instead of collecting war stories about how things all worked out in the end. Let other people manage the things you cannot control instead of trying to build redundancy everywhere.
• It means that if your business is pouring money into capital expenses and extreme specialists to build a system that won’t break…you are focusing on the wrong thing. You need to build a business that can be exceptional, not one that is less likely to fail.

Yesterday, Patch (the hyper local news publisher funded by America Online) launched a Westwood, Massachusetts site–the 11th town so far in Massachusetts. I met the editor and am impressed that they are making an effort to cover the news in this town of 15,000–potentially filling the void left when the Daily News Transcript stopped being daily. A few people have asked me what does this mean for my site, WestwoodBlog.org?

The short answer is that is a source of more news and that’s good. Paul Gillin analyzes the Pew Research Center’s report on the differing priorities of bloggers and journalists and observes how bloggers need the mainstream media to provide source material for discussion. Although I have probably done more “original reporting” on my site than a typical blog, my goal has always been to stir up conversation and share information–not to be a reporter or investigative journalist. The site is a service for residents–to empower them to post their own news.

I think that local connection to the community is what is missing in most news coverage. You can send a reporter to every meeting of every board and commission, but when you don’t live in the community, you don’t see or hear what people are talking about and you don’t develop a sense of what matters. The news reporters can find stories–and tease out the facts and events or what is going on, but there is no feedback. Comments on news stories are not really participation because the story has already been written. Conversations on blogs are ongoing discussions. Blog posts in the form of citizen journalism can be biased–but that makes them better in some ways because they represent not what an outsider observed, but what a resident experienced.

Blogs and news, proceeding independently, are unsatisfying. The blogs can’t cover everything and can degenerate into opinionated diatribes. News stories can miss the context and move on to the next story. But together, these forms of media can create a “news ecosystem” that is mutually supportive.

A number of citizen contributions on my blog have led to news stories. In one case a resident blogged about the preservation of a school building–and then, a few days later, was interviewed and quoted in the newspaper. Another posted an article about a school music program being cancelled due to budget cuts–and again, ended up quoted in a mainstream news story. In many cases, I post articles that direct people to more specific stories in the media or to resources on the town website. As content contributors and community participants we share in the value not of any one source of news and information, but in the evolving ability to participate through this medium.

Yesterday, New Jersey hyper local blog Baristanet announced it was expanding to cover three additional towns where the New York Times has withdrawn from the local print publication market. It will be interesting to see how Maplewood Patch and Baristanet compete, coexist or cooperate. But whatever the outcome…print left town.

I think the best outcome here will be a sort of “confederation” of content. I wish I had the time and resources to create something like Baristanet–to pull together the independent voices of writers and residents not only in Westwood, but in Dedham, Norwood, Walpole, Milton, Canton–something I would call “Neponset News.” I think several sites like this could be destination sites–like Universal Hub in Boston–where people start–and then find what matters to them via links to source material (news) and community perspective (blogs). But I need to find a job.

Most of the hyper local news initiatives like Placeblogger and Outside.in start from a “tell me where you are” perspective. I will never go to some generic web site and enter my zip code as a means to find out what is going on in my community. I am unimpressed by technology-driven sites that just pull a bunch of localized data into one place. I am disappointed in sites that crank out a templated advertising vehicle for every town. But if regional hyper local sites can develop clear, localized brand identity–they can become destination sites that informally mediate the discussion of what matters in the community.

Significant changes to Massachusetts Open Meeting law take effect on July 1, 2010. The new rules do not directly promote collaborative technologies–e.g. how a town might use a wiki to improve governance, for example, but some common sense clarifications do open the door to removing some anti-technology sentiment. And I think the documentation requirements will push more towns to an electronic–and shareable–approach that increases the practical transparency of government by making data transmittable. The major changes in law are summarized on Mass.Gov–with the biggest being how enforcement has been moved from local District Attorneys to the AGs office. The Town of Littleton also has a good summary with links to more resources. The substantial changes of note to local boards and commissions are:

Notice must include agenda – Notice of public meetings must be posted 48-hours prior to the meeting, excluding weekends. So, if the Board of Selectmen wants to meet Monday night at 7:30pm, they must post the notice no later than 7:30pm on Thursday night. Previously, Saturday night was “good enough.” Now there is also a new requirement that this notice include “a listing of topics that the chair reasonably anticipates will be discussed at the meeting.” That is a small, but significant change since most meetings are currently posted without agendas–or agendas are posted the day of the meeting if at all. I’m guilty of this omission myself–it’s not part of a vast conspiracy to hide the truth or anything, just lack of advance planning.

This is huge progress. Attending town board and commission meetings is a low probability exercise in irrelevance since most members of the general public will have no idea what is going to be discussed and no context to contribute in a meaningful manner. Under the new law, residents will learn, by Thursday night, what topics the Selectmen will be discussing on Monday.

All documents become part of the record – Section 22 of the new law specifies that meeting minutes include “the date, time and place, the members present or absent, a summary of the discussions on each subject, a list of documents and other exhibits used at the meeting, the decisions made and the actions taken at each meeting, including the record of all votes.” Subsection (e) goes on to say, “The minutes of any open session, the notes, recordings or other materials used in the preparation of such minutes and all documents and exhibits used at the session, shall be public records in their entirety and not exempt from disclosure…[references to employment contracts, etc. omitted]”

Speaking from the perspective of a town advisory board chairman, this is a burdensome requirement, but it fills a huge gap for the citizen seeking to understand what happened at a meeting. Every meeting of our Board of Selectmen is punctuated by the three members referring to materials contained in large binders compiled by town staff prior to the meeting. Sometimes a Selectman will make a point of “reading into the record,” if there is a letter of commendation or something. Now, ALL that material is a public record. Ideally this information should be made available to the public as soon as it is distributed to the members of the committee. I do not see language in the law that anticipates such pre-emptive publication, but the knowledge that whatever is prepared will become a public record should remove objections to its early disclosure.

I contacted our Board of Selectmen and learned 1) we are already in compliance; having saved 23 years worth of those packets for posterity and 2) no one has ever requested to look at them.

Remote participation is possible – One of our Selectmen was injured last winter but, thanks to a special agreement worked out in consultation with the District Attorney, was able to continue participating in meetings from his hospital bed. The new law allows the Attorney General to propose regulations that would allow remote participation by members of boards if everyone can hear everyone else and a quorum is physically present. No more excuses to miss meetings–we can Skype you in. This change will not take effect until the regulations have been proposed and approved.

Email usage is clarified – it is still impermissible to use email to develop policy. The valid policy basis for this is that the public can’t see what committee members are talking about when they prepare for a meeting via email. However, the new law spells out a number of specific clarifications to make it clear that emailing agendas, meeting minutes, materials for discussion at the meeting, and for procedural issues–is permitted.

Finally, I believe the centralization of administration makes it much more likely this law will be able to adapt to the changing needs of communities. When I inquired about how much of my committee work could be done online, I had some guidance from the town based on the AGs opinion…but ultimately I would need to call the Norfolk County DA for a ruling. I think they are busy prosecuting real criminals. Now the AG has created a Division of Open Government…I’ll have to send them a link to my article on wikis…

Drupal is one of the most popular and free content management platforms used to build sophisticated web sites. A new service, Drupal Gardens, provices a hosted and simplified version of Drupal so you can start without the installation and configuration tech tasks that put this out of reach of most users. Drupal Gardens is not “magic” but it does create an opportunity that did not exist a year ago, and it clears many roadblocks that can stand in the way of a person with a vision for what they want to create.

A content management system or platform allows a person creating a website to combine many types of content from different sources without having to write code.  My community website, http://westwoodblog.org was built with Drupal and required no “programming work.” But it was not easy. It did require a great deal of technical troubleshooting and persistence.

There are many things I would like to change about how WestwoodBlog looks and works. I end up doing many, many Google searches to find technical descriptions of what to install and how to configure it. It would be terribly misleading to imply that a non-technical person could have created WestwoodBlog. You cannot escape the time or expense required to work with Drupal effectively. But Drupal Gardens may change that.

This detailed review of Drupal Gardens provides a nice step-by-step illustration of building a site. But as you will quickly see from that review, you still kind of need to know what you are doing. It’s easy to start, but hard to finish. As soon as I started trying to implement more advanced things, I found myself right back in the same old Drupal administration pages I have become familiar with on WestwoodBlog. I became sidetracked trying to figure out how to embed an RSS feed from a Twitter list into the news aggregator–whoa! TMTI: too much technical information.

Drupal Gardens is a bridge to your proof of concept site. In 15 minutes I had a new website up and running. I successfully leap-frogged over things that took me DAYS to get past when I was first setting up WestwoodBlog. I was able to start thinking about more difficult aspects of the website I wanted to create instead of dealing with the systems administration challenges. When I’m ready to deploy, I could export the site and work with a developer to optimize it.

Without Drupal Gardens…no matter what sort of “one-click install” your discount hosting provider may have, you are going to run into a roadblock when installing your own Drupal. It will be stupid stuff–can’t figure out why it can’t read the database…uploaded something to the wrong folder…lots of little annoyances get in the way and it’s like trying to pack up the minivan with 3 little kids for a vacation trip. You never leave on time and then somebody needs a diaper change. Drupal Gardens gets you on the road fast.

Drupal Gardens will be at the July 14 Mass Innovation Nights. Vote for them to present and perhaps we can hear first hand about their vision for bringing Drupal to the masses.

Electric bikes have been around for years but recent advances in battery technology and Bedford, Massachussets company Pietzo, may have finally made them practical for commuters seeking an environmentally-responsible alternative to gridlock. I test rode several today, and I encourage others to hop on one of these bikes and learn how it could change your life.

I’m a serious bike commuter–I’ve blogged about my commute into Boston on my fixed-gear, but I haven’t found too many takers on that urban adventure. I think these bikes could change that.

A hybid electric bike is a “bike with a boost.” It has a battery-powered motor that can assist pedaling or be used to exclusively power the bike. The smallest battery will hold a charge for a minimum of 20 miles–more if you are also pedaling. The Zephry model pictured is also a folding bike–allowing you to take it on the commuter rail or easily wheel into a workplace and up an elevator.

I was not sure what to expect as I hopped on this bike on a hot, humid June morning, wearing my khakis and Doc Martens. Usually my bike commute would involve “gearing up” into spandex, special shoes, etc. and planning on a 2nd shower (or just not riding on a day like today). What I found was an easy experience that left my shirt far dryer than it would have been if I had walked 3/4 of a mile. All in all I rode about 3 miles to test it out. And I’m still wearing the same clothes.

When I started pedaling, I felt the electric assist kick in–which helped me quickly get up to a decent speed on the busy Great Road in Bedford. I was not doing the typical “accelerate to avoid angry motorists” start. I tried the electric-only option for a while too, but I really enjoyed the simple assist coupled with my leisurely pedaling. At one point, when I needed to make a U-turn across a 3-way intersection, I was glad to have that extra electric acceleration so I could quickly and easily get going, get out of the way, and focus on navigating the traffic instead of pedaling up to speed.

Pietzo has a nice blog post about why avid cyclists would ride a hybrid, but I was more impressed by how this bike should appeal to the non-cyclist:

• No sweat. Seriously. Having walked to the commuter rail station many times in the heat of summer, I can honestly say this bike is better than walking and it extends your range dramatically for other short trips.
• Lightweight. The folding bike in particular is really just like a regular bike but with a battery. It’s not going to tip over and it is easy to maneuver out of the garage, out the back door, etc.
• Multi-modal opportunity for suburbanites. I live about 3 miles from another train station that has 15-minute trains to Boston. That is about a 15-minute bike ride (in cool weather, with special shoes, etc.) But on the Zephyr, I could simply choose the bike over the car and save $5 parking. Then I’d take the bike with me on the train for an easy ride from South Station up whatever hill I need to climb. That combination would be faster than any method of transportation I have been able to dream up in the last 5 years.

Electric hybrids make economic sense. Use the Pietzo savings calculator to see how much money you could save by bike commuting. I’ve done that calculation myself, but I had to add back in many other costs like bike clothes and lost time due to a mandatory wardrobe change on each end. The beauty of these bikes is they make everyday commuting feasible for the Lycra-averse professional.

Pietzo will be exhibiting at tomorrow’s Bike Friday in Boston and at the July 14 Mass Innovation Nights event in Waltham. More information is available on their web site at http://www.pietzo.com/

Meat is overrated. After several weeks since I ate meat as part of my diet, I’m not really missing it. So I guess I am coming out as a vegetarian. It’s no big deal. But it wasn’t something I decided, planned, or forced myself to do. It just happened.

My family started thinking more critically about food after reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. For a time, the image of filthy cows crowded into feedlots knee-deep in their own excrement and doped up with antibiotics to counter their sickness to the unnatural corn diet we force upon them–did give me momentary pause as I ordered the occasional Double Whopper with Cheese. But I got over it and did it anyway. For awhile. But at some point, it actually did stop tasting good. One day I looked at my half-eaten Whopper–and threw it in the trash.

I am not going to say meat is evil–and I do still love a great steak or a bunch of fresh roasted pulled pork barbeque. But most of the time, what we eat for meat is not special. It’s bulky and poor quality with little or no taste other than salt. I started to notice how I kept adding more and more spices to my spaghetti sauce. I started to notice how the chicken cubes in the stir-fry were only distinguished from the tofu by their grisly, rubbery nature. We did try better quality meats–including grass-fed organic hamburger…but along the way, we just started to realize–this is optional. It’s not that much better.

We started cooking with vegetables. We already loved garlic and I discovered that more and more, what I enjoyed in a stir fry or melange of squash and peppers was the taste of vegetables and spices. We joined a Community Supported Agriculture farm and tried what they gave us. We found that grilling peppers and squash gave them a great char taste we liked. And ultimately, when we looked at the price per pound on the meat we were buying…the question became, why are we bothering with this junk?

It’s not about deprivation or fooling yourself. We tried many of the mimic products along the way and I’m not going to recommend tofu dogs or most types of “meatless meatballs” to anyone. If you compare to what you imagine you are missing, you will always come up short in your expectations. But take a critical look at what you are really missing. When you do find a great steak, by all means, go for it. But those chicken nuggets…you might was well be eating tree bark–as long as you can dip it in some high fructose corn syrup, you won’t know the difference. So why not just say no?

Say yes to more creative ways of cooking and eating. Nobody is going to pick up a brick of tofu and take a bite, but you can marinate it in sesame oil, soy sauce, and garlic, then bake it in the oven to create tasty flavorful cubes that go well in a mix of vegetables. You don’t need to put a slab of fat on those green beans–just steam them fresh and enjoy the flavor of what they naturally taste like. Have you had fresh beets? There is flavor to be found.

I came from a meat-lovers background so talk like this sounds pretty radical. But it is all about preference. I do believe my diet is healthier for me. The fact that I enjoy it allows me to avoid participating in the demand for meat products that results in all the food industrialization we hear about and ignore. But I don’t obsess on the details and conflicting studies or micro advice. I’m not going to publish a guidebook: The Meat-Lovers Guide to Going Vegetarian but simply suggest people eat more of the natural healthy things they like and see where it takes them.

Westwood Community Access Television is using a simple, but powerful combination of old and new media technology to jumpstart their efforts to bring public access TV to Westwood, Massachusetts. While the administrative and technical details for taking control of local origination programming are still underway, we are using Ustream to livecast from our minimalist control room in the basement of Town Hall.

The signal below is a taste of what you will see when we do go live. It is very much a work in progress and may not always be on, but we wanted to get something up and running and start to gather feedback–and demonstrate the progress we are making.

The truly clever idea our Director, Greg Moberg, came up with–after we successfully did a live webcast of a town meeting–was to take the output from our video server and use it as an input to the equipment (a NewTek Tricaster) we had used to webcast. We created a free account on Ustream and configured it to livecast directly from the Tricaster. This allows us to operate all the equipment in the basement as if we were live…and then just route it to the web. One day, we swap cables and this signal will be broadcast on the local cable channels too.

In the meantime, we have a sort of alpha soft-launch. We can share the site with people and begin to develop our schedule, programming calendar and start generating interest in the community. We have a long way to go–if you watch the channel now you mostly see canned content from the video server vendor–but we will soon be broadcasting the public meetings we have taped.

Life was good when you had your iPod all synced up with your old computer. Then, you lost that computer somehow. You didn’t care because you had 8 GB of songs safely stored on the iPod, right? Then, you bought a MacBook and thought, “I’ll just plug the iPod in and sync it back to iTunes.” You were greeted by this message:

Now hopefully, you had the good sense to click cancel right away and start googling “how to copy music from your iPod to your Mac” and landed here. I did that and found many confusing, involved tutorials. I knew I was in trouble when I had to start typing in linux man page commands to figure out what the tutorial authors were asking me to do.

If my tutorial does not work for you, try this one. But hopefully, these instructions will work for most people.

Apple does not want to make this easy because then bad people would copy other people’s iPod songs and commit digital piracy. That is not my goal here. I just wanted to get my songs back and consolidate what I had on my Mac (I had ripped dozens of CDs already into iTunes) with what was on the old iPod. Here’s how I did it:

1. enable disk use on the iPod
2. use the Terminal application to access and copy the source .MP3s from the iPod to the hard drive
3. import the MP3s into the iTunes Library

First, connect the iPod and cancel the message asking you if you really want to erase it. Then, in iTunes, select the iPod and click on the summary tab. Check the box to enable disk read. Confirm that you want to do this and understand you will need to eject manually. Click the Apply button to save this change.

Now launch the Terminal application. This puts you in a command-line shell–the opposite of what you might ever expect to see on a Mac. From this point on, you will be typing unix commands, but they are very simple:

• cd – change directory
• ls – list files
• cp – copy files

Type

cd /Volumes

then type

ls

You should see the name of the iPod like this:

new-host:~ daveatkins$ cd /Volumes
new-host:Volumes daveatkins$ ls
Macintosh HD    USER'S IPOD

If you do not see the Ipod, make sure you clicked the Apply button after checking off enable disk use.

The music files on your iPod are stored in a folder under USER’S IPOD (or whatever yours is called): iPod_Control/Music. They are hidden from the Mac Finder and they are in folders with cryptic names like “FA, FF, FC, etc.”

Copy the music files from the iPod to your hard drive using the following command:

cp -r -X USER\'S\ IPOD/iPod_Control/Music/ ~/Music/copiedstuff

To make this easier, take advantage of the command line’s ability to “autocomplete” text as you type by matching files and folders it knows are valid. Type “cp -r -X US” then hit the TAB key. Then type “ip” followed by TAB. Then type “M” and TAB. Now, type “~/Music/copiedstuff” and hit the RETURN key. This will ensure that the command you enter matches the specific names of folders on your system.

The -X option in the copy command removes extra information from the files that, among other things, make them hidden. There are other ways to accomplish this task, but this seemed the simplest to me. It does not remove digital rights management, it just makes the copies of the .MP3s visible so you can attempt to import them. It is also “safe” because you are making a copy of what is on the iPod so you can verify it works before you risk deleting anything on the iPod.

If you have many music files, the copy command may take a few minutes to run before returning you to the “shell prompt” of “new-host:~ daveatkins$”

When the copying is done, close the terminal application. Go back to iTunes and uncheck the box for enable disk use. Remember to Apply the change. You should now be able to disconnect the iPod without having to manually eject it. Set it aside for “safekeeping.”

Now go to iTunes and choose File…Add to Library and locate the “copiedstuff” folder you created.

Import the music. You may see some messages like this if the files are protected:

Cancel these screens unless you have a password. The rest of your files should import and be added to your Library. Verify that the songs play.

Now we are ready for the fun part. Plug the iPod back in and do an erase and sync. The old music from the iPod and whatever you had on your Mac should now be merged on the iPod.

You might think painting a crosswalk is only slightly more complicated than putting a yellow line down the middle of the road. Take a look around at the faded and nearly invisible crosswalks in your community and you can begin to appreciate that it’s not that simple. I had the opportunity to watch a demonstration of a new surfacing technology a few weeks ago in Boston and found it fascinating to literally watch paint dry…no, seriously!

Nature and automobile are hard on Boston streets. I’d argue a greater hazard to cyclists than cars is the unpredictable but uniformly bad condition of pavement where potholes appear even before construction of new roads and bridges ends. The roadway is in a constant state of flux. To attempt to apply a layer of an additional material (paint) on that surface is destined for eventual failure.

The solution I saw demonstrated is called StreetPrintXD. At 6 1/2 minutes, my homemade video is long–if you want to see a short, complete install demo video, you can watch the one produced by Integrated Paving Solutions instead. But mine does put it in some perspective as you can see the workers installing on a busy Boston street in 90-degree heat.

First, the asphalt surface must be evaluated–if the road is more than a year or two old, you will need to do a “mill and fill”–to lay down a fresh coat of asphalt where the crosswalk will be. In the video, you can see how the roadway around the crosswalk is older and lighter.

The mill-and-fill is a big deal that will add to the cost of any project because a machine must be rented and traffic disrupted for half a day…and of course you will have to hire a police detail.

Once the surface is ready, a heater is used to soften the asphalt so the paint will stick. The “paint” is aggregate-reinforced thermoplastic. By incorporating aggregate into a plastic mixture, the material is made more like the asphalt surface in terms of its wear characteristics. Regular thermoplastics have glass beads instead of aggregate which mean they will move differently under stress and lack the irregular reinforcing characteristics of roadway materials.

Once the asphalt is soft, rather than simply apply the coating, a mesh template is hammered into the pavement. In the final product, this creates a look of brick, but it also creates valleys of indentation that will be shielded from the immediate friction of automobile traffic. This feature is a key attribute of another product, DuraTherm, which has been used to create more elaborate, patterned crosswalks instead of the traditional brick look. These patterns hold up well because the pattern is impressed into the roadway so car tires do not contact it.

After stamping out the pattern, the coating is applied as big plastic sheets, heated, and stamped down into the indentions in the pavement.

A coating of sand is applied while the coating is still wet to more closely match the traction of the asphalt. Maintaining traction is critical for safety–remember the Tour de France time trials in the rain a few years ago with cyclists spinning out of control on pavement markings? The key is to maintain the same coefficient of friction across the surface–not to create either an extra slippery or suddenly extra sticky surface. Changes in the coefficient of friction turn the momentum of a moving object into unexpected horizontal forces that can start a skid.

The final product is expected to last as long as the roadway surface.

Most crosswalks will not be able to afford this treatment. In the video above, we are looking at Melnea Cass Blvd which sees 30,000 vehicles per day. When it’s not that busy, it’s probably being salted, sanded, and plowed. So a quick spray of Krylon isn’t going to last a day out there.

But even on our less busy town streets, I see how quickly the traditional paint jobs fade. Each spring our DPW goes back to repaint lines and crosswalks as needed. Roughly speaking, for a 2-lane road, the treatment above should cost about $5-10,000 including the preparation work. A newly-paved road would be cheaper–the actual materials cost is $13-17/square foot and if you avoid the mill-and-fill, it makes everything faster and easier.

A fair question to ask–especially given this cost–is “why bother?” In the case of our town, we don’t have the funds and are applying for a grant. But the objective is to get the attention of motorists who blow through crosswalks even when school crossing guards are present. We have “knockdown” signs in the road which do in fact get “knocked down” all the time. Perhaps if we only deployed the beacons I blogged about yesterday, it might make enough of a difference. But part of the goal is to increase awareness and respect for walkers overall. As the paint fades we face a long winter/spring season before repainting eventually happens…unless it rains too much that year. If we could make a permanent infrastructure enhancement in the most critical locations, I believe we could begin to affect behavior norms by telling everyone: this crosswalk is here to stay.

For about $10,000, a community can install an eco-friendly system to make crosswalks safer for pedestrians and much more visible to drivers. A new type of lighting system, the Rapid Rectangular Flashing Beacon is proving even more effective because the flashing lights–more like police and emergency vehicle lighting–get the attention of motorists.

As my town’s Pedestrian and Bicycle advisory committee researched ways to improve crosswalk safety, we noticed existing, effective crossings in neighboring towns. In Wellesley, busy route 135 can be crossed much more easily thanks to this crossing:

A newer technology–with a solar-powered option–is described below:

I obtained a quote for a similar system from Electrotechnics Corporation (ELTEC). Because the system is solar-powered and wireless pushbutton-activated, the installation could be as simple as planting two poles in the sidewalk. There is no need to run power to the system or trench the roadway for wires. Just install the poles and go.

RRFBs are new, but they have been embraced enthusiastically in St. Petersburg, Florida where, after obtaining interim approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation, RRFBs were installed in 19 locations. A study of some of those locations and other deployments in Chicago and Washington, D.C. indicated “a highly significant level change following the introduction of the RRFB that showed no sign of decay over time.” A full report from St. Petersburg is available here. A video about the crosswalk program really punctuates their commitment to systemic, infrastructural improvements citywide.

But for smaller communities who are simply looking for ways to make particularly problematic crossings safer, this technology could be the answer on multiple fronts. The modularity of the solution eliminates a few hurdles–there is no need to coordinate with the electric utility or dig up the roadway. The deployment must still be “designed,” to ensure it complies with local and state standards. And it’s still at least a $10,000 project which can be tough to fund given the reality of level budgets and cost-cutting required in the current economy.

Google maps have helped our town’s Pedestrian and Bicycle advisory committee by allowing us to project a satellite or streetview image on the wall for discussion. Using screencast software, I recently incorporated this into a presentation for a grant application to fund enhancements at two crosswalks:

I was looking for a simple way to share these ideas. I used Camtasia Studio from TechSmith because it allows for greater editing of the video, but an even easier solution is to install their free Jing software. Then you can capture a screen video–along with the audio you narrate. It will upload the resulting tutorial (5-minute limit on the free version) to a website and give you a short URL you can email or instant message to someone.

The coolest feature in the video above is the web browser integration with Google Earth. Simply click on the button at the top right of a map for “Earth,” install the plugin as prompted, and your map will turn into a 3D-ish representation that you can “flyover” using your mouse and scroll wheel to zoom in for greater detail. If a streetview exists, you can even drop down to the street level perspective and step through an intersection. In our meetings, this was invaluable to show members of the committee the automobile perspective approaching the problem intersections.

Another advantage of integrating this information into an online video is the power to share. I played the video (about 4-minutes) at the presentation I made to the group that decides what programs to recommend for funding, and although I think standing there next to the video of myself talking was a little strange, it was effective to be able to email that link out to other members of the group who were not present. Most presenters brought easels and cardstock, or handed out multi-page printouts.

The project was recommended to proceed to the next level. Tomorrow I will post examples of how technology can be used to actually improve the safety of these crosswalks.

The iPhone 4 is out and while mobile and tech gadget gurus will analyze its features, this 2-minute video describing the “Facetime” feature deserves the Oscar. The video pulls all the right heartstrings and makes the case for why you just have to buy your grandparents one of these NOW. From the Apple website:

People have been dreaming about video calling for decades. iPhone 4 makes it a reality.

For thirty seconds, we have a predictable application–Dad away on a business trip in his hotel room alone. He watches baby crawl then Mom and the kids laughing and playing. Life is so good it’s like you don’t even have to really be there.

Then we move on to the grandparents watching daughter and granddaughter prepare for graduation.  A different daughter away at college shows Mom (or older friend?) her new clothes…but then Apple really pulls out all the stops…

A pregnant woman talks to her serviceman husband…and shares the sonogram. She switches to the second camera so he can see the baby on the monitor. He is so overcome with emotion…they start signing each other. It’s a beautiful mini-opera of empathic consumerism.

I’m not being cynical or facetious…well, not entirely. I’ve hooked up my iPhone with Ustream and called my mom to show her the kids on Christmas morning. It would be cool if it were so easy and if we could get her hooked up with Skype or something to do a 2-way video call. But there are a couple of practical issues.

One is the wifi–this Facetime feature only works between two iPhone 4s that are on a wifi network. It is not transmitting the video over the cellular network; you need access to an open wifi network that doesn’t mind you video streaming on their bandwidth. If you are at home, no problem, but it’s not quite a no-brainer.

Two is just the fact that everyone has to have an iPhone. That must be why Dad is working all the time and sitting in that hotel room watching his baby crawl via the iPhone parental link.

But it is cool stuff; you just can’t deny it. The video chat will not replace or patch relationships any more than friending your relatives on Facebook.  But it fills an undeniable need. The advertising is perfect to offer a solution that is far more enticing than just the gadgetry. We dream about the Star Trek communicators and transporter beams not because we want to go where no one has gone before, but because we want to be where we should have been all along.

This blog started in 2006 as the writing anchor to many of my endeavors. I am simplifying, consolidating and focusing my online presence to more clearly define the DaveWrites “brand” around what I do best:

• notice opportunities to use technology to make our lives better,
• research how it works, and
• write about it in a way that everyday people can find value

Someone asked me what the heck “DaveWrites” was/is the other day…and I just said, well…it’s where Dave writes. But it is a little more than that. I realized that most of my work–although it involves a very significant technical element–is more about creating content and sharing information in context to drive action. Many people become frustrated when they cannot make things happen. I write. And things happen.

Saturday, I ran the Harpoon 5-miler here in Boston. Thanks to a new technology, this was the simplest and easiest race ever for tracking my time. The race bibs had ChronoTrack B-Tag strips–completely eliminating the hassle of a timing chip. I did OK:

Nettime  Pace  Name                   Race# City/state
=======  ===== ====================== ===== =======================
 40:19   8:04  David Atkins           2566  Westwood MA

For those unfamiliar with road races, the technology has evolved dramatically in the past few years. When there are 3000 people in the race, it can take a person standing at the back with the walkers and strollers, 3 minutes or more to cross the starting line. You cannot count on the actual (guntime) timing from when then starter’s pistol goes off to when you cross the finish line to know your true time and pace. So most races now measure “nettime” the difference between when you cross the starting line and when you cross the finish line. But how is this done?

Until a few years ago, it wasn’t. Runners came to the finish line, tore off a tag from their race bibs and handed it to a volunteer. Other volunteers stood by with stopwatches and called out the times. Someone wrote all that down. That is still how its done when a race cannot afford the more sophisticated electronic tracking systems.

Until this year, those systems consisted of a timing chip you tied to your shoelaces. At the end of the race, you would bend over and remove the chip (don’t pass out!) and put it in a bucket to be collected by the race organizers. Fail to return the chip–pay a fee. Last year, that system was replaced by a disposable tag you threaded through your shoelaces. But, even with a video and instructions, those tags were hard to figure out.

This year, the tag was embedded in the race bib itself. No confusion. No delay. Just pin the bib to your shirt and run. A few minutes after crossing the finish line, you go to a results wall where the real-time numbers are being posted.

The technology behind the bib is called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The start/finish line is covered by mats containing radio transmitters that emit an electric field and induce a small current in the tag you are wearing which then broadcasts back your ID code. It is the same idea behind Fast Lane transponders and keyless entry systems. The transmitter/receiver creates an electromagnetic field around a highly localized area. The materials in the tag act as an antenna to collect the energy from that field and reflect back a unique electronic signature which is then detected and recorded along with the timestamp.

The link to RFID above provides a full, technical description of the electronics involved, but the advance for the purpose of racing timing appears to be in reducing the weight of the transponder so significantly that it can be unobtrusively added to the back of a race bib. There are just two plastic strips on the bib–antenna material far enough apart to be able to pick up the very high frequency signal from the mat and yet still resonate back an accurate and unique signal.

For those who can remember televisions with “rabbit ears” for antennas, you may also recall how frustrating it was to adjust the antenna, then step away and lose the reception. Perhaps someone was appointed to hold the antenna or stand nearby during critical moments of football games, etc. The principle is similar–a high frequency electromagnetic field is influenced by other conductive materials which generate interference by “reflecting back” some of the energy. Sometimes this enhances the signal; other times, it gets in the way. But the challenge for RFID is to do this in a reliable, predictable manner so that 100% of the time, the system will activate your race bib and then get the right number back–all done simultaneously with dozens of other runners who might be crossing the same field at the same time.

ChronoTrack seems to have nailed it with these race bibs.

This past weekend at the Burlington, VT ECHO Center, I saw this curious sign:

Once I downloaded the app reader described on the sign and pointed my iPhone camera at the honeycomb pattern, the software decoded that pattern into a web address and started playing a video about a tree planting with the Missisquoi River Basin Association in Highgate, VT. (It works off the image displayed here on your screen too–try it out!)

Watching the video on an iphone while standing in front of a museum display case was a bit awkward (better with earphones), but because I took a photo of it, I was able to access it later. That is much easier than bookmarking a URL or keeping track of a paper brochure.

It worked smoothly–the app install on my iphone went quickly and then it was just as easy as snapping a photo. The app viewfinder displays a frame that turns green as soon as it recognizes the pattern. Then, it sends you straight to YouTube.

My mind started racing. The code/patterns are free and easy to create on the BeeTagg web site. The process is very similar to a URL shortening service like bit.ly–just go straight to the BeeTagg Generator, enter a url and even add your own logo…then save the resulting jpeg image:

Then post that up on a billboard, right? It makes more sense than putting long web addresses on billboards or reading them over the radio.

But I was thinking of other applications–local content for my community. It’s fun to embed user-generated content like YouTube videos into a blog post, but how do you get people to the blog in the first place? I’ve written travelogues like this bike trip in France report but what if I could leave posters with codes on them behind at stops along the way for future travelers to watch?

I could design a walking tour of the historic district of a town with these codes posted at the various stops. How hard would it be to go around town with a Flip video camera, record short narrations by local people who grew up here, then print out some laminated signs to post? A project like that could be done in an afternoon and then it would be a free resource for the community.

How about a scavenger hunt? Find the BeeTagg and watch the video that leads you to the next clue.

How about tutorials and assembly instructions? Scan the code on the IKEA box and watch someone put the dresser together. Many times. Repeat. Try again. Recharge the phone. Better idea: snap a photo in the store, then go home and launch the product page in your web browser where you can visualize it in the room, then click a button to order.

What makes this revolutionary is that it shortcuts the cumbersome process of remembering and typing a web address into a browser. In the same way that bit.ly and tinyurl made it possible to quickly share links on Twitter, these BeeTagg codes can take links off the computer and into the physical world where a person can simply snap a photo.

Real estate listings. Forget about those “talking house” signs that ask you to sit in your car and listen to the am radio for a narrated Realtor pitch. Just scan the code off the for sale sign, go home, and load up the listing. Like this:

The potential applications are endless…and liberating because they can be done by people for free without complicated software. Having a Smart Phone with a camera IS a bit of a barrier, but for now, this is a low to no cost technology that might connect a few more people to their communities through a clever use of technology.

If you would like to see more Federal money spent on local projects to promote and make safer more bicycling and walking, call your Congressional Representative and ask him or her to be a co-sponsor on H.R. 4722, the Active Community Transportation Act. It is important to make the call this week, in support of the National Bike Summit.

Perhaps it is ironic that I follow an angry post about generationally-irresponsible recovery spending with a call to borrow more money against the future, but there is a big difference between investing to leave something for the next generation vs spending money to help the current generation cover the mistakes of the present.

The Active Community Transportation Act would make grant money available to communities for investments in infrastructure that promote walking and biking.

I want to keep this post positive, but I cannot ignore the sense that many people feel biking and walking are recreational activities and should therefore be lower priority. But in fact, because the impact of small investments here can be so large, they should be a higher priority.

The types of projects grant money like this could support could include components as small as improved crosswalks. For about $10,000, we could install a solar-powered pushbutton-activated flashing light and repaint a crosswalk so that dozens of kids and their parents would feel safe walking to school. We could deploy several of these across a busy, wide stretch of road that serves to divide part of our community and effectively “knit” the town together and reduce reliance on car trips. We could make it easier for people to choose to ride the commuter rail and walk to church by bringing the focus down to the sidewalks and streets and investing is small things that pull our communities together.

The benefits are not just aesthetic. We have a childhood obesity epidemic to combat. We have a national health crisis that, regardless of what insurance companies may or may not be doing, is driving the cost of health care higher and higher. We have recurring cycles of foreign oil dependency and occasional bouts of awareness with global warming, carbon emissions, and general sustainability. Do more than buy a Prius. Thank about ways to change the way we live to be more sustainable and more responsible to the future and then ask what stands in the way?

Active Transportation is a path through the obstacles. It’s a part of the solution that, unlike many government projects, is more efficient and has “externality benefits” rather than costs.

It’s efficient because this kind of grant program encourages community-based action. Our local advisory committee would gather information, talk to our neighbors, participate in the grant application process and assist in project managing and monitoring the implementation. The overall grants will be designed to support networks of improvements costing $5 to 15 million each.

“Externality benefits” are the intangible things like improving the strength of a community. It would be impossible to measure the economic impact on house prices down to such a micro level, but I would bet that over time, the increase in walking and perception of safety across a divisive roadway would translate into higher home values. I know we moved from one house because the street was busy and didn’t make an offer an another because it was “on the other side” of the road that we’d have to cross to get to school. Not everyone will share these valuations…but when small projects like these are happening all over the country, the sum effect has to be a net gain.

Will there be boondoggles and “bike paths to nowhwere?” Perhaps. But at least then we can start talking about the best way to do things. How many bike paths could have been built with the money that was used to make it possible for me to drive to the airport in 30 minutes instead of 45? I’m guessing a few hundred thousand.

This week marked the 1-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act–the stimulus bill that pumped $787 billion into the U.S. Economy to avert financial catastrophe and a 2nd Great Depression. We can debate all day about could have, should have, would haves with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but I do believe, on balance, the actions taken by the administration over the past year probably did avert disaster. But…

Today I saw this quote from Governor Patrick:

“When you talk about what you do for your son, that’s what this is all about.”

Governor Deval Patrick, to Derek Lilly, a father of five, who had been describing what it feels like to be a role model for his son now that he has a job thanks to a Stimulus-funded job development program at Boston ABCD.

How can anyone defend the bailout of greedy bankers and free market enthusiasts as something we did for our kids? We did it because the cost of all other alternatives was far worse. We borrowed the future of the next generation to pay off the failures of the present and ensure that angry mobs of unemployed people didn’t burn down the Capital.

What does the future look like? I believe the next generation will find a way. As someone who is in Generation X, in my early 40s, I worry not so much that people like me and younger will simply suffer under the burden of higher taxes, long-term high unemployment rates, and increasingly diminished opportunities that result from paying off or not paying off this huge debt…I worry about what future bad choices we’ll be asked to make.

We are setting the stage for a generational war to replace the so-called cultural war. Instead of Red and Blue states, we will have Green and Gray states. We will see policy choices that increasingly “pay back” the current leadership generation for their abdication of stewardship. We will see a world where policy makers don’t have any sympathy for the “lazy” 70-year old who wants to retire or expects to receive a pension. Out of necessity, younger people will take charge of this mess they have inherited with solutions from their own perspective that is shaped by this world that is unfolding over the next decade.

I’m not saying young people are or will be heartless or seek to actively punish anyone. But the world of choices we are shaping will force harder and harder decisions that will hurt those who do not seek and maintain power.

There is already anger in this country and there should be more. We averted disaster. Great. But don’t tell me this benefits my kids. Tell me what we are going to do to ensure a future worthy of our stewardship. Tell me what sacrifices we are going to make now and then have the guts to lead on those issues.