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Search rbgilbert.com

This is my blogchalk:
United States, Massachusetts, Boston, Brighton, English, Ron, Male, Photography, Nudity.

February 10, 2002 - February 28, 2002

Yellow Daffodil from The Great American Flower Collection TM ©1999 Jan Polk, Painter of The Great American Flower Collection TM www.Great-American-Flower-Collection.com "I respect you. I respect myself. We can work together nonviolently. United we stand. In God we trust. It takes all of us working together."

Subject: Re: Yes, I'm a liberal
From: frankmi@i-2000.com (Frank Raymond Michaels)
Newsgroups: misc.writing

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001 20:16:24 GMT, cfred@nospam.texas.net (Greybeard) wrote:

>Are you telling me that things have flip-flopped? My liberal beliefs
>are now politically "conservative" and what I thought was conservative
>is now a political "liberal"? Talk about double-speak!

Well, maybe you should take this quiz:

Which statement best describes your political beliefs?

[A] - The government can and should provide care for its citizens, and actively engineer and influence its society, funded by tax dollars.

[B] - Each person is responsible for his/her own self and his/her dependents, and should live their lives free of undue taxation and government interference.

[C] - I have no social nor moral constraints whatsoever.

[D] - The government and its responsibilities can be found either in the Reference Section or in Section 300 of the Dewey Decimal System.

[E] - I was born between September 23rd and October 23rd.

[F] - I play piano whilst wearing a sequined tuxedo, a full-length fur coat, and a bouffant hairdo.

How did you score?

If you answered [A] - you are a Liberal
If you answered [B] - you are a Libertarian
If you answered [C] - you are a Libertine
If you answered [D] - you are a Librarian
If you answered [E] - you are a Libra
and If you answered [F] - you are Liberace

Thursday, February 21, 2002 I promised myself I wasn't going to talk about the visit of a certain lying, half-wit sack of dung to Korea recently, as my temper might get the best of me, and I might accidentally let slip pejoratives like 'lying' and 'half-wit' and 'sack of dung'.

This and more Japingrish discoveries here to be found!

This is not a Bike Friday, but it's close!

PA Unloads Abandoned Highway

8.5 Miles, Four Lanes, Two Tunnels - for $1

By Jose Martinez

Not so long ago, Murray Schrotenboer stood before a sealed off tunnel through a mountain along a stretch of abandoned highway deep in the Pennsylvania woods. He had stumbled across the roadway poring over an old map, saw reference to tunnels and knew he had to ride it.

What he found was 11 miles of superhighway surrounded by Buchanan State Forest and little else. "You would only expect to have something like this in a post-apocalyptic movie. You expect to see Mad Max come down the highway," Schrotenboer said.

Schrotenboer also found a small door - a service entrance - to a sealed tunnel. He opened the door and saw only darkness. He had no lights and no idea how long the tunnel was but decided to walk his mountain bike through anyway. Two-thirds of a mile later, he emerged on the other side, grinning.

"It took quite a bit of courage or stupidity, depending on how you want to look at it. It was absolutely the most bizarre thing I had ever done," Schrotenboer said.

Fast forward four years to Nov. 15. Through the efforts of Bicycle PA'S Bill Metzger, a collection of local riders, government agencies and non-profits, an 8.5-mile section of the old Pennsylvania Turnpike was sold to the Southern Alleghenies Conservancy for development into a recreational trail for bikers, hikers and other non-motorized uses. The asking price? A buck.

The four-lane highway cuts through two mountains on its way through Fulton and Bedford counties, about midway between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. The tunnels through Ray's Hill and Sideling Hill are unlit and only two-lanes wide - bottlenecks that caused little fuss when the road opened in 1940 but eventually forced the Turnpike to abandon it in favor of a different route in 1968. Since then, the dormant superhighway built over a route originally meant for a railroad has been used occasionally for crash tests, the development of roadside rumble strips and at least one TV commercial.

But the tunnels are now open at both ends and, unofficially at least, rideable. Ray's Hill Tunnel stretches 3,300 feet and the Sideling Hill Tunnel is 1.2-miles long with a slight rise that makes one end impossible to see from the other.

"In a word, it's dark. They are in remarkably good shape. They are dry, but you need lights," said Metzger.

Metzger came up with the idea of converting the old highway during discussions of how to eliminate some of the mountains along the southern bike route through Pennsylvania, which is part of a series of on- and off-road trails leading from New jersey to West Virginia. "One thing led to another and the Turnpike said they would be willing to part with it. We just hit them at the right time," Metzger said.

The recreational trail has a long way to go before it is ready to open officially, according to Len Lichvar, executive director of the Southern Alleghenies Conservancy. The organization is working with other groups to pull together proposals for managing the 205-acre tract, which is not yet officially opened. A feasibility study should be completed by the end of 2002.

"A great deal of work needs to be done before we can open it up to be a viable recreational resource," Lichvar said. "Everyone is excited and wants to see it done, but a lot of work remains to be done. It won't happen over night."

The state of Pennsylvania also is pitching in, with the Turnpike already clearing away scrap metal and other obstructions inside the tunnels and donating jersey barriers to keep out cars. The state game commission has helped get the word out that ATVs are unwelcome. Questions of parking, lighting for the tunnels and more have yet to be worked out.

Schrotenboer, who runs mountain bike getaways through his Grouseland Tours in Clearville, already has submitted a business plan for the new trail. He hopes the highway is open for use in some form by the end of summer.

"It's like nothing else," Schrotenboer said. "Absolutely like nothing else."

Time magazine may give the credit to Jeff Bezos, but it's the cadre of people behind the man who have helped turn Amazon into a juggernaut -- people such as senior v-p and general manager David Risher, who, like the site itself, adroitly juggle marketing and substance to great strategic and sales effect.

Largely unknown in book publishing circles, Risher could quit his job now and still make a powerful case that he's changed the book business as profoundly as anyone in the '90s. You name the innovation, Risher was behind it: Amazon Advantage, the Amazon Bestseller list, customer-comment sections. And he has no intention of stopping any time soon.

Congratulations!

Seen on Brainerd Road.

Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 23:59:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Frank <alf@matchups.com>
Subject: Fall 3-day fundraiser

Seven years ago, at a Valentine's Day Flirtations concert, I first heard about the Boston to New York AIDS Ride. I signed up, raised $3,000, and had a great time on a fall weekend as part of a huge peloton exploring the hills of Connecticut and the welcoming spirit of many towns along the route.

Subsequently, I signed up again, and again, and eventually was one of about 20 riders who took part in every Boston to New York ride. I had planned to ride again last year, but logistical changes meant that I would have had to be away from my family for 4 1/2 days, which I felt was too much. (I also wasn't keen on doing 300 miles in 90 degree July weather.) Instead, some friends and I started planning a fall three-day loop, to raise money for the Boston Living Center, a nonprofit providing a wide range of services to the HIV+ community in the greater Boston area.

Unfortunately, the amount of organization required ended up more than the volunteer effort available. And so, I've decided to take a slightly different approach: I am committed to doing a ride this fall--Arlington to Brattleboro to Manchester to Arlington, 260 miles on September 20-22--and asking my friends to support the BLC in recognition of this ride. Of course, it would be more fun, not to mention more profitable, if other bikers joined me.

What I can promise:
* A great route, with maps and cue sheets
* Comfortable places to stay overnight, including dinner and breakfast
* Transportation for your gear
* A worthy cause to support

What you won't see:
* Pit stops every fifteen miles
* A full-time staff and full-page ads promoting the ride
* Mayor Menino saying goodbye as we leave (nor a twenty-mile-long traffic jam)
* Professional nightly entertainment

In terms of other support, I'm not sure. I'm hoping to get a few other cyclists to commit to ride, then maybe we can work together on the things that we think are important. If you're interested, let me know as soon as possible. And please forward this to your cycling friends.

--Alan Frank

A photo of Tom (a different Tom than you may think) from long ago, on an early spring ride in Vermont.

Click for full size

Homosexuality, pedophilia and priests
By Jeff Epperly

In large part it's only been hinted at by indignant columnists and angry parishioners who, whether they're being kind or just careful, do not often seem to be able to mouth directly the obvious truth: the Catholic priesthood, with its ridiculous stances on celibacy, marriage and homosexuality, managed over all these years of telling gays they are "intrinsically disordered" to build the world's largest, safest and most well-known haven for intrinsically disordered pedophiles.

And in no archdiocese has that painful reality crystallized more than in Boston's, home as it is to one of the most dogmatically conservative and reflexively anti-gay prelates in the nation. Cardinal Bernard Law's well-documented devotion to tradition and Rome stands now in stark contrast to the monumental failings of a church that could not bring itself to cast dogma aside in favor of the most vulnerable in its flock.

Yet I think those Catholics who are piling onto the cardinal are doing their church few favors by seeking his resignation alone as some indication that the church he was supposed to lead has atoned for its sins. How many willing accomplices must there have been over the years to essentially enable Law in his quest to prevaricate and dissemble?

How many of his subordinates and equals, both here and across the country, must have known that Law was breaking more than one commandment when he penned those editorials in the official archdiocese newspaper assuring everyone that all that could be done to protect their kids was being done?

And it's not only church officials who are guilty in the state's worst cases of serial child abuse. We now know that judges and other law enforcement officials looked the other way as charges were dropped, records were sealed and hush money was paid to families of the abused -- or families who were just seeking to cash in.

To those of you who are parents out there, I ask: Would you allow any other child predator not wearing a white collar to walk away free in exchange for a bribe to keep quiet?

And still they comfort themselves by saying that we are amoral.

The only bright spot in this ongoing horror show is the fact that, once again, the faithful appear to be smarter and more compassionate as a group than their leaders. Recent polls suggest that the laity has had enough of enforced celibacy, forbidden birth control and religious misogyny.

Aside from elderly Catholics -- and even many of them aren't as conservative as their clerics on sexual matters -- those folks out in the pews understand that many of the rules have been handed down not by grace, but by mere mortals following the whims and "science" of a mindset best left in earlier times. It's been gratifying to learn that the Catholic rank-and-file do not appear to be blaming gays en masse. They seem to understand that these priestly transgressions aren't really about homosexuals, per se -- so a majority still disagrees with official views on gay issues. I'd bet they even understand that deep down the church's convoluted views and policies on homosexuality are partially to blame for this mess.

Blind obedience has always been a mystery to me. I cannot imagine worshipping a god who gave humanity that wondrous, organic computer called a brain, and then asks it to switch off his most sublime creation in order to be near to him. Or asks a mother to feign ignorance as homophobic, self-hating old men in white collars go on a decades-long child-abuse spree around the country.

Of course, I'll hear from those of you who become squeamish when homosexuality and pedophilia are mentioned in the same breath. "Homosexuality is not intrinsically linked with pedophilia," you'll remind me.

In most situations, that appears to be true.

But there does seem to be a closer-than-normal correlation in organizations that recruit young men for a lifetime of service, exclude women, forbid sexual expression of any kind, and then send many of those young men off to careers they spend condemning in others the very same things they imagine themselves doing when they are dreaming while they are asleep, daydreaming while they are awake, or eventually, tragically, musing about as they watch another mother's little boy as he enters their starving, wounded field of vision.

Man Shoots Woman Over 'New Jersey'
By Associated Press
February 14, 2002, 9:44 AM EST
HOUSTON --

A Texas man is facing up to 20 years in prison for shooting his girlfriend because he thought she was about to say "New Jersey."

A jury took less than two hours Wednesday to convict Thomas Ray Mitchell, 54, of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for shooting Barbara Jenkins outside his apartment in March 1999.

Although he did not claim insanity as a defense, relatives testified Wednesday that Mitchell gets angry, curses and bangs on walls when he hears certain words or phrases, including "New Jersey," "Snickers," "Mars" and "Wisconsin."

They said Mitchell had been committed numerous times to mental facilities for periods of three weeks to three months since 1985 but he had never harmed anyone.

On Tuesday, the first day of his trial, Mitchell did not react when the phrase "New Jersey" was uttered twice within his earshot. On Wednesday, he appeared to be holding his ears closed with his fingers when relatives testified about his problems.

Defense attorney Maria Luisa Mercado argued that Mitchell did not understand what he was doing when he was arrested and was asked by police to make a statement about the shooting. Investigators said he told them he shot Jenkins because he thought she was about to say "New Jersey."

Prosecutor Mo Ibrahim said Jenkins died recently. Details were not available, but Ibrahim said her death was not related to the shooting.

Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

Panorama of a residential street in Allston (475 Kb).

• Richard Bolt, acoustics expert who was part of the team that examined Nixon's "18 minute gap."
• Robert West, who survived 30 hours in the sunken USS Oklahoma in Pearl Harbor.
• George Nader, hunky movie star and beneficiary of Rock Hudson's estate.
• Sheldon Allman, who wrote the theme song for George Of The Jungle and was Mr. Ed's singing voice.

Click for full size