the cassandra pages

Winter Mysteries

If there is an ultra-typical view of central New York that feels like it embodies the sense of "home" to me, it's this sort of scene: pastures bordered by hedgerows, wooded hilltops, tall deciduous trees and scrubby brush, all arranged in a zigzagging patchwork that carries the eye up and down and across the rolling hills. It's beautiful in every season, but you can see the shape of the land better in the winter, when the contrast is greatest between the fields and the trees; in the summer, pretty much everything is green, or shades of green, brown, and yellow. After this winter's deep dive into the landscape, I'm sure I will be making paintings or doing pastels in the more colorful seasons too, but I'm learning a lot about looking and about what has always attracted my own eye, attention, and heart to this particular type of terrain and its ecology. 

The picture at the top of this post was done after the one below. These are two views of the same range of hills, north of Hamilton, NY, as you're heading toward Rt 20. 

The top picture took a quite a bit of time - an hour or two -- but the bottom one was a deliberately fast 13-minute sketch. In the video below, you can see the whole sketching process condensed to a minute and a half, which I find both amusing and also mystifying; I've watched it a number of times and still can't figure out how the brain and eye, intellect and intuition actually do this. There's a lot about the arts, as well as many other human endeavors, that will always remain mysterious to me, and beyond the realm of what we "learn" to do or can explain. 

For instance, this weekend we watched Mikaela Shiffrin break Ingmar Stenmark's record for world cup skiing victories -- a record many thought would never fall. The qualities that set her apart are vastly more than flawless technique and great physical conditioning; there's her uncanny feeling for the snow in a wide range of conditions, her ability to "see" the course in her mind, and then ski it tighter, faster, and more perfectly than anyone else, and the whole constellation of mental and emotional mastery that's necessary to win so consistently over a period of years. My husband was a ski racer in his youth, and we both skied a lot in our 30s and 40s; he was incredibly good and taught me a lot about the sport, while I became a rather foolhardy advanced intermediate. We stopped, eventually, after some injuries that threatened to become chronic problems as we aged -- and also because skiing with people with cell phones began to take away the solitude and quiet we loved in that other world of the mountains. But those long, cold, sunny, foggy, snowy days remain etched in my mind, and in my dreams I am sometimes still skiing -- and it still feels fantastic.

I never understood exactly how the mind and body managed to coordinate themselves in order to allow this. You learn "how", but then there is a kind of letting go, where you aren't thinking about it in the same analytical way all the time. For me, that was always a tenuous balance, because I didn't grow up on skis, and I was never that good at it, but under optimum conditions, sometimes I could experience the freedom. The gulf between me and a top racer like Schiffrin is, well, about as big as the distance from here to Switzerland, and yet I can appreciate what the human body is capable of doing, both for someone like me who grew up among little un-skied hills like these, to learn to ski on much bigger ones, and for the people at the top of the sport -- or music, or art, or dance, or many other disciplines. It's nothing short of amazing. The thing is, we all do many things every single day that are an astounding combination of learned and intuitive actions. We seldom stop to think about them, but we should marvel at ourselves now and then, for simply being able to read, brush our teeth, cook an egg. It is not insignificant at all.

Squalls

Squall line on autoroute 15, south of Montreal, Quebec.

Thursday, December 1: We had to cross the border into the U.S. this morning to do some errands. It was dry, windy, and quite cold when we left the city around 9:30 am, but no frazzle ice was yet to be seen on the St. Lawrence River. The sky looked like snow, though, and sure enough, as we got out into the flat countryside south of the city, we could see a definite squall line -- blue skies to the right, and a line of leaden snow-filled clouds to the left. Soon we were driving through pelting, blowing snow that was sometimes lighter than air and drifting fast across the already-white fields, and sometimes beating a staccato of tiny icy pellets against the windshield, which cautioned us to drive very carefully, because that kind of ice can act like ball bearings under the wheels. And then, suddenly, just before the border crossing at Champlain...nothing at all. Tan, bare fields with green hay still coming up in places; nonchalant geese pecking in dry cornfields, and no snow to be seen. 

Two hours later, on the way back, the day had turned to beautiful blue skies, and the roads were bare. Those of us who live in the north are quite familiar with this phenomenon of squalls: short-lived, intense bursts of rain or snow, often accompanied by gusting winds, that can feel like a blizzard when you're in the middle of them, but which -- unlike blizzards -- pass quickly, often bringing high-pressure and blue skies in their wake.

It made me think about how life has felt lately: unpredictable and buffeted. But then again, all the disturbances in my life have been mere squalls compared to the relentless and devastating storms of war, starvation, oppression, homelessness and displacement, illness, loss, and death that millions of people face. And yet -- no matter what, some of these remarkable people manage to adjust their attitude and still find joy in their daily existence. I try, but I still have much to learn.

--

Angel-wing begonia with wooden angel. Fountain pen drawing in sketchbook, 6" x 9".

Friday: Late fall in the north: this is the stripped, dry, testing time at the end of the year. Short days, distant pale sun, bare trees, and an increasingly penetrating cold. Ironically, when there's more snow covering the ground, it often seems warmer, and easier to be outside: during these current weeks, though, the landscape feels like a bed without a blanket. We are all driven more and more into the interiors of our homes, and of ourselves. 

I swam, early this morning. Sleepy and not in the best of moods when I pushed myself into the elevator, into the locker room, on with the suit and cap and goggles and into the water, the rhythm quickly took over and after five laps I was already feeling better; after twenty-five I felt renewed, at home in my body in spite of its creaky and achy parts, ready to face the day.  A couple of afternoons ago, I rode down and walked back up the many flights of stairs to my apartment -- this is something I should, and could, do regularly. And while swimming does stretch and use most muscle groups, some yoga focused on balance and strength would be good this winter too.

For someone who tends to be pretty consumed with thoughts and words, I know that I can't live entirely in my head, or let myself become distracted and immobile for hours on end. I need to use my body to make music, make art, knit and sew, chop and cook, move from place to place. It helps to feel my lungs breathing and my heart pumping blood. I think that one of the problems of living in harsh winter climates, especially as we get older, is the feeling of enclosure and constriction which can lead to a lack of embodiment. I can't ski anymore, we no longer shovel snow, and I have to be careful not to have a bad fall on the ice; this is just being prudent. But being outside in winter has always been invigorating for me, and a joy, so I have crampons for my boots, and a ski pole for when the weather is really dicey, and we make a point of getting out. It requires effort and discipline to build movement into my schedule, but I know it's not optional. How do you deal with this, you who live in a place with definite seasons? And how is your mood these days?

Watery

The clouds and sky continue to fascinate me, especially when storms are brewing and the clouds become full of water. They inspired me to get out my acrylics and do this fast sketch on paper the other day: brushes full of water and pigment, making marks to depict clouds and sky, which actually have no pigment at all, just light and dust and water in various forms, from vapor to droplets to ice. It's curious when you think about it.

Water has also entered my life in another way recently: I've gone back to swimming because we have a pool in our new building. During the pandemic I haven't swum at all, and even before, it was really hard for me to keep it up as a regular practice. The best routine for me at the moment seems to be settling into every other day, around 7:30 in the morning. There's seldom anyone else in the pool then, and I can swim my laps in an atmosphere that feels extremely meditative even when I'm working hard. It feels great to enter the water, and after a few laps, everything sort of melts away as the rhythm of the strokes, the breaths, and the turns takes over.

When I began to do it seriously, a month ago, I started out fairly easily, trying not to strain my shoulders or lower back, and now I'm swimming about twenty minutes straight, and will work up to thirty. A couple of times a week I've also been doing yoga, and we're walking and biking quite a bit in the new neighborhood, which, once you get away from the main streets where there's busy traffic, is much quieter and less congested for cycling than our old one.

Moving more always feels better, but I certainly don't think of myself as an athlete, and like many of us, I've sometimes tended to do something new for a while and then get out of the habit, though I've walked regularly for years and years. However, as I've considered my father's long life, there's no denying that regular exercise played a huge role in his physical and mental well-being. Being able to make swimming the central activity would be a very good fit for me. It's hard to express how happy and comfortable I've always felt when I'm in the water. Being able to swim regularly, without the obstacle of commuting to a distant pool, feels like a great privilege, as well as doing my body a lot of good. I hope I can keep it up.

Hermit Diary 57. Winter Scenes in the Park

Pandemic notwithstanding, this has been one of the loveliest winters in Montreal, weatherwise, that I can remember. We've had two months of velvety snow, temperatures mostly in the 10s or 20s, lots of bright sun and blue skies, and essentially no rain. That's the crucial difference: when the weather alternates between freezing and thawing, with periods of rain, the whole city turns to ice -- and that's become normal in recent years, thanks to the changing climate. But not this year. I've been out for long brisk walks in the park every single day, which has helped save my sanity during these longest months of winter confinement, as well as keeping me in somewhat decent shape. I've also seen a lot.

The city provides two hockey rinks, so the thwack of slapshots and sticks hitting the boards is a constant rhythm, and the players somehow work out a system to rotate both older players and kids on and off the ice so that the game doesn't exceed a certain number of people, and everyone gets a chance to play. As I draw closer, I can also hear the decisive slicing of their blades: sprinting, changing direction, pivoting to a rapid stop.

To help provide recreation for people stuck in the city, the park service has also laid out meticulously groomed cross-country ski trails, and they're being used all day long, though the trails never seem crowded. It's fantastic, and gets my former-downhill-skier blood excited; if we could count on the weather in future years we'd consider investing in equipment.

But I've never seen so many people free-skating on the lake: some weekend days it looks like the whole city has shown up. I walked to the eastern side of the park on a less-crowded weekday, and stood on a high bank above the frozen surface, watching as the skaters slowly made their way up and down the serpentine lake. It was a dreamy kind of dance, seen from an aerial perch, and somehow the feeling encapsulated how I have felt much of this year: a lone observer, standing off to one side, as others, mostly younger people, engage in a life I remember but in which I don't participate. That doesn't make it less beautiful, but it's melancholy too. I gave my skates away to a young neighbor this year -- it's not the pandemic that keeps me off the ice, though those crowds don't appeal: it's being long out of practice, and the accompanying fear of breaking my wrists, which would be a disaster for me!

The dog park is another scene entirely: manic and chaotic, with a lot of individual characters, both canine and human, who I've come to recognize. At dusk it seems almost Bruegelesque, with dark shapes moving against the snow, but in the sunlight there's an ever-changing tableau of leaping and barking, sniffing and chasing, while the owners chat with each other, consult their cell phones, throw the occasional ball, or sit alone on the tops of picnic tables at the far periphery, capturing a few precious moments of solitude while their charge runs free. The purebred dogs all have their distinctive attitudes: some haughty and proud, others friendly to a fault. The well-trained dogs obey their owner's commands to heel or sit, and come when they're called. the popular huskies and malamuts look like they've just gotten off a sled run, while standard poodles arrive in expensive tailored coats, and little lap dogs in their winter booties. Meanwhile the eager mutts just get on with playing as hard as they can.

Today, in another part of the park, I heard someone whistling in the distance, as if calling a dog, but when I got closer I saw it was a man with a bag of seed or breadcrumbs, whistling to call the squirrels, and sure enough, there were dozens around him on the snow and climbing down out of the trees.

And I admit I wondered: if I still lived here when I was really elderly, or really alone, would I turn into an old lady who wanders through the park, feeding the squirrels?

Cold Hands, Warm Heart (or: "Swim Nerds Meet for Coffee and Then Freeze Their Tails Off")

This morning I met a friend for breakfast at one of Montreal's little neighborhood cafes: the sort of place where you can have excellent coffee - we both had bowls of latte - and a fresh croissant or chocolatine or muffin, and sit at a pleasant table in the sunlight for a long chat. She and I met through singing, but now we're both swimmers too, and we spent a good part of our time together today being swimming nerds, talking about goggles and suits and stroke mechanics, and alternate-side-breathing vs one side, and how our necks aren't symmetrical. You would have loved it. No? Well, that's why we needed to get together.

We caught up on family stuff and singing and talked a little about politics, but agreed not to dwell on it. It turns out that we're both thinking about studying another language, or taking up a new instrument. It was a great way to start a day, and reminded me of the importance of seeing the people you love, and continuing to do the things that you're passionate about, regardless of what's going on in the world, as much as you can, for as long as you can.

Then we bundled up, and she walked back to her place, and I walked back to the studio, and, I swear by the leaping polar bears, was it ever cold! There's a storm system approaching from the south and it's damp as well as cold; I was OK in my body and head underneath layers of down and fleece, but my legs felt the way they used to when I was a kid walking home from school - first cold, then almost numb. I had on leather gloves and woolen mitts over the gloves, and even so I kept having to stick my hands in my pockets. For long walks on days like this, I told myself, I need to wear tights under my jeans, or an even longer coat.

I ducked into the sheltered entryway of this flowershop, to warm up.

I stopped at the market and bought a couple of cans of tunafish, to warm up.

I stopped at the artisanal bakery and bought a loaf of bread, to warm up.

You've really got to be crazy to live up here, I thought, as the wind howled down the alley. But there's something so exhilarating about it, too: the extremes, the survival, the memories you accumulate of adventures in winters past, and the delight of going into the warmth of an interior after being out in it, as you thaw out and the feeling returns to your skin and something warm to drink spirals down your throat.

On the street, I watched a young mother and her child as they approached me and went past. The mother, bubbling with enthusiasm, carried a bright orange plastic sled, and had a small dog on a leash; they must have been going off to the park. The little boy, only 2 or 3, trudged behind her, all bundled in his puffy snowsuit and boots, and wearing a red hat with an animal face on the brim and little floppy ears. He looked up at me and grinned, his cheeks so red from the cold, but without a hint of complaint, and I thought, yep, he's already Canadian.

Pool

The competition pool at Montreal's Stade Olympique

A couple of weeks ago, I started swimming laps again after a hiatus of nearly twenty years. There's a neighborhood indoor pool in easy walking distance of our studio, run by the borough of the city in which we live, and it's free, so I started out there. I was surprised to discover that, after six or seven sessions, I'm approaching the same distance I used to swim, which probably has more to do with general conditioning than anything else -- I've been in much better shape in the past ten years, since moving to the city and having to walk or cycle to get places.

Last week I discovered that the Centre Sportif at Montreal's Stade Olympique was running a special offer - a free week for those who'd like to try the facilities, and a significant discount on a yearly pass. The Olympic Park is not too far from us - a twenty minute bike ride in good weather, about the same distance as downtown, in the other direction. So I decided to try it out: how often does anyone have a chance to swim in an olympic pool? I felt a little intimidated, but toted my red gym bag of gear, including new prescription goggles (who knew you could buy these now, inexpensively, in off-the-shelf diopter measurements?) over to the iconic stadium, got my temporary pass, changed in the very nice locker rooms, and plunged in.

The Centre Sportif is a complete fitness facility offering many classes - the weight room is under the walkway in this picture, to the left of the pool.

It's a beautiful pool. To my surprise, the lanes were less crowded than at the neighborhood pool: one day I had a lane entirely to myself. Competitive divers were practicing on the 10m platform, and swimmers honed their strokes in a closed-off section of the competition pool, accompanied by their coaches. After my laps, I sat on a bench and just watched for a while, fascinated. Then I went back to the locker room and took a shower and sauna before going home.

The famous tower, like most of the rest of our fair city, is currently under repair, and the worksite means access is closed off - after parking on a nearby street, I ended up walking twenty minutes and finally sliding down a snowbank just to get to an entrance!

The problem for me is that this new activity takes a big chunk of time out of my working week. On the other hand, it has made me feel ten times better. I love swimming, always have, and the moment of slipping into the water and pushing off, weightless, always feels like a return to a natural element. But there's more to it.

When I'm in a worried or agitated state of mind, as has been the case since the U.S. election, and even before, I gravitate toward repetitive, meditative activities, often without really even thinking about it: quilting, knitting, drawing, practicing the piano. I've been knitting a good deal lately, and I walk a lot, but it's been hard to draw or do art, and hard to write. I hadn't thought of swimming seriously again, though my recent swims in Iceland and in the cold Cascade Lake in the Adirondacks filled me with longing. This Christmas, though, J. gave me a new swimsuit - a sleek black fitness suit with wide criss-cross straps in the back - and, as he had suspected, that was all it took. I researched the goggles online, bought two new silicone caps - one blue and one orange - and a couple of days after the order showed up, I was in the water.

Of course, my body hurts! I'm getting older. I have some slight lower back issues, and my shoulder and neck are protesting a bit, but the discomfort is manageable and not getting worse, so I think I can keep at it. I certainly hope so, because besides the cardio benefit, the mental and emotional benefits are huge.

The time in the water is time apart. My breathing and strokes settle into a pattern that slows my mind and suspends time into a series of present moments; for me, it is definitely a form of meditation -- and walking or moving meditation has often worked better for me than sitting still on a cushion. Swimming has allowed me to regain some equilibrium, and with it my focus for work; my mood is better, and it's easier both to accept certain aspects of the world as they are, and find the emotional space to tackle what I can try to change, without the two being constantly all mixed up.

Fr. Richard Rohr, whose reflections from his Center for Action and Contemplation I usually read each morning, always stresses the distinction between the dualistic mind -- which categorizes everything as good/bad, right/wrong, black/white -- and the nondualistic mind, in which, as he says,

"mind, heart, soul, and senses are open and receptive to the moment just as it is, which allows you to love things in themselves and as themselves. The broad rediscovery of nondual, contemplative consciousness gives me hope for the maturing of religion and is probably the only way we can move beyond partisan politics."

It is impossible for most of us to exist in our daily lives without dualistic thinking. But it is equally impossible for us to abandon that dualistic mindset without some actual, lived experience of nondualistic consciousness, which is why meditation/contemplation is so important and so helpful for seeing past the polarization that entraps present-day society. You can't "will" it to happen, however; you just have to do the practice(s) and open yourself, as this quote from James Finlay expresses so perfectly:

“I cannot make moments of nondual consciousness happen. I can only assume the inner stance that offers the least resistance to being overtaken by grace.”

Water: less resistance. We come into this world from a watery place, and I have often wondered if my attraction to water is partly a deep memory. My most significant dreams usually involve water, and in those dreams water is never a source of fear, but a place that represents hidden, deep knowledge, whether as a symbol of the subconscious itself, or a source of wisdom beyond this earthly world.

R.I.P. Muhammad Ali

This is a drybrush watercolor illustration, about 16" square, that I did for my portfolio around 1980, never intending it for publication because it was copied from a photograph. I always kept it because of my admiration and affection for the man himself: his courage throughout his life, his love of humanity, his refusal to bow to authority, critics, or the media -- as well as being the greatest in his sport.

My dad was a boxing fan, and I grew up watching Ali's fights as well as listening to the media interviews, most notably with Howard Cosell, who continually baited Ali and used him to further his own career - I thought those interviews were harder to watch, and crueler, than the boxing matches. I was a Vietnam War protester and greatly admired Ali's refusal to fight, in spite of what it cost him. It was with real sadness that we learned of his Parkinson's diagnosis, but he conducted himself to the end of his life with dignity and continued to try to help people in need. It's easy to be cynical about celebrities, and the way the public falls in love -- and just as rapidly discards them. I always felt Muhammad Ali deserved respect, and he showed -- at a time when it was even harder for African-Americans -- that personal dignity, even with humor, could be maintained in the face of all kinds of criticism and attack. He must have suffered a great deal, especially in his later years, and yet he will be remembered not for that, but for what he did with his life and what he stood for.

Rink

 Yesterday was cold, but bright enough to slice the eye. I left the studio around 4 and walked through the little neighborhood park, where the snow now reached half-way up the red-painted wrought iron fence around the play area. No one else was out. At the other end of the park I looked at the empty skating rink as I walked past, then stopped and climbed up on a bank of snow to examine it more closely. The ice, made by flooding an irreegular circle of piled-up snow, was smooth, with a light dusting of snow. Three dark trees, with snow left around the base as an optimistic cushion for flying bodies, stood in the center.

It all reminded me of the rink my father and grandfather made in the backyard of the big house in Sherburne several years when I was young. The ice, as I remember it, was always perfect. On the back side stood two tall spruce trees, and in the front, a huge sugar maple that dominates that street even now. My cousins and friends all skated there, staying out until we were blue with cold; we had wool sweaters and nylon snowpants but no fleece or down, and our feet inside our white figure skates would ache for an hour after we were finally ordered inside. We never played hockey; we just skated under the trees.

There were other places, too; the school rink on the playing field behind the shop and band room, or a town rink in the park downtown, and later on the lake where my parents built a house. Sometimes, in a very cold winter, we'd skate on the brook that ran through my cousins' farm, which gave the excitement of a journey rather than going round and round, as well as the fear of falling in. We knew the spots to avoid, around willow trunks and branches emerging from the ice or places where there were rocks and faster currents in summer, and so far as I know, no one ever fell through.

I took a few photographs from the far end of the park and then decided to go back to the northern side. The snow crunched under my feet with a specific sound, as accurate a gauge of the temperature as any thermometer. I looked up at the icicles hanging from the eaves of houses, knowing what sound they'd make when knocked off with a broom handle, or when shattered on the ice after being used as mock swords: a brittle glass harmonica.

In fourth grade, I remember there was a book about a little girl who had an accident while skating; something happened and she was cut badly with the blade of her skate and had to go to the hospital in an ambulance. It must have been written to teach children about the reality of hospitals. But somehow, I realized, it had become conflated in my mind with another book about a girl who had become a saint after dying in some unexpected and heroic way. Where did these books come from? They weren't the sort of thing my mother would have found in the town library, and the second one, it seemed to me, must have belonged to one of my Catholic friends who was taking catechism classes. Oddly, though, they had joined to create a memory of childhood injury, death, and saintliness, illustrated with vague mental images of white skates, blonde hair, ambulances, and a child in a field of flowers.

When I reached the north side of the rink again, there was a young woman sitting on a bench. She wore an off-white coat and was lacing up her figure skates. On the path in front of her was a wooden sled with a curved back, and on the sled, a swaddled baby. The mother wore headphones, and smiled at me. I wondered what she planned to do with the baby while she skated, all alone on the frozen rink under the trees, and was tempted to walk around the rink once again, to be able to see. But it was getting late and I needed to go home, so I continued down the street, imagining the tall dark trees with their white skirts, like dervishes frozen in mid-twirl, above the baby resting in its sled on the ice, next to a bank of snow -- an arctic version of Moses in the bulrushes -- listening to the rhythmic slash of its mother's skates cutting the ice.

 

Still Rolling as the Temperature Drops

(originally written on Thursday - it's pouring at the moment!)

Well, on to cheerier thoughts. We've got a bright-ish day here, and are still on our bikes even though the city is starting to close the bike paths for the winter. Of course, Montrealers being who they are, some people continue to commute by cycle throughout the entire winter, each with their own combination of clothing and equipment - like studded bike tires. Not I. Once there's ice on the pavement, I'm through. It also becomes more dangerous because drivers and pedestrians aren't looking for bikes as consciously in cold weather, and you're much more likely to get clipped or have someone step out in front of you. Of course I do have my equipment (all pretty inexpensive and low-tech) - lights, mirrors, gloves, bike lock, a helmet with a wool liner these days, a windproof parka and a scarf that can be pulled up over my mouth, a plastic bag to go over the seat in case it rains while the bike's locked up outside, a backpack for the computer, a couple of paper towels to wipe off the handlebars. I guess for a lot of people this would be too much hassle, or too much work, but I'm in much better shape now than I was in the country, and the fresh air and tour through the neighborhoods almost every day feels great. It reminds me of being a kid, when my friend Lorry and I spent lots of time riding around our little town on our one-speed bikes, feeling free, and checking everything out that was going on.

For me, the bike represents both exercise and freedom - it's so wonderful not to have the hassle of a car, having to find parking spots, and then being tied to that spot rather than able to roam around freely. We're going from owning two cars to one that we use fairly infrequently, and saving substantial amounts of money as well as feeling like we're doing our bit for greenness. In spite of being a city where cycling is difficult or impossible for four months out of the year, Montreal does a great deal to support and encourage it, extending bike paths and this year starting the BIXI program for short commutes, and I'm grateful.

I took my first ride on a BIXI bike a couple of weeks ago. We bought a subscription when the program began, to support it and to be able to offer a bike to visitors, but we found that once in a while it was convenient for us too. I think the day I used one it had been raining hard earlier and so I didn't have my bike at the studio, but later I needed to do an errand. There are a great number of conveniently-located BIXI stations all over the central part of the city. You just choose a bike with the seat at the right height, put your "key" in a slot, release the bike, and you're ready to go; at the other end you just dock your bike into a station and your ride-time is registered as terminated; all the stations are solar-powered and the bikes include digital microchips so they can be identified and found. The BIXIs are super-sturdy, with the chain enclosed so you don't have to worry about pant legs getting caught or anything; there are three gears, lights, and a basket with attached bungie cords. The system has been very popular in its first year, and I've heard that Montreal has sold its high-tech home-developed BIXI system to two or three other cities - which is good, since it took a lot of money to develop and launch.

Sometimes I reflect on how totally unaware I was of the problems of city transportation when I lived in the country, where we just got in the car and drove everywhere we couldn't walk to -- and there's the problem, of course. Moving millions of urban people every day and trying to do it responsibly is an enormous issue that's become fascinating to me, and I'm glad we have options here and that the city continues to innovate, pushed by a population for whom environmental issues are fairly high on the priority list. Still, construction projects are everywhere, the streets are full of potholes, and huge amounts of oil and gas are being consumed every day. The bridges into the city are congested with single-occupant vehicles, and I'm constantly aware of the constant movement of trains, boats, airplanes, cars and trucks in and out of this transportation hub. My little bike trip to and from work is truly a tiny gesture.

Addendum: and then there's this. about vandalism in the Paris system. Our local bike system has a low rate of vandalism and theft: high-tech improvements allow unreturned bikes to be found, and the pedals also lock after a certain period of time, rendering the bike pretty useless to thieves. Bixi officials say nearly all "lost" bikes have been recovered becasue people call up to say they've seen one that seems to be abandoned. Follow-up articles in the Montreal papers, after this NY Times piece about Paris, suggest that another reason for the low rate of Bixi vandalism here, as opposed to the French system, is that the Montreal pricing structure was set to make it possible for almost anyone to rent and ride a bike, whereas the Paris bikes are perceived as expensive and elitist, and are therefore a source of resentment rather than pride for less affluent citizens. Whatever it is, it seems to be working - and the Bixi people have announced trials of 7-speed bikes for next year.