What We Need Is Here

Kickstand

There seems to be nothing bad that can be said about biking. At every level, no matter what facet you consider, biking seems to be an extraordinarily good thing: it’s a good form of exercise, there’s no gas involved and no pollution created, it’s a fairly inexpensive form of transportation, and it’s fun. What’s the drawback?

For myself, coming from a middle-class background, biking is a choice I make in terms of simple living, health and having a low impact on the environment. But for many of the folks with whom we work closely with at the Catholic Worker, having a bike is less about any of these things and more about opportunities for work, access to healthcare and social services, and finding a secluded and therefore safer place to live.

In Gainesville, we’re fortunate to have “The Kickstand,” a community bicycle project that provides free or inexpensive bicycle-related services to all persons without discrimination. The Kickstand’s mission statement reads:

“Since we believe that the bicycle represents the most affordable, healthy, and environmentally sound form of transportation and recreation, we seek to encourage people to learn to maintain a bicycle themselves and to use it in a responsible manner. We will provide assistance in acquiring a reliable bicycle and scheduled access to knowledgeable volunteers and quality tools. It is our belief that by providing these services we can help build neighborhood involvement and create greater paths for communication and cooperation.”

We’ve had occasion to refer some of our guests who don’t have the means to pay for repairs to their bikes to the Kickstand over the past year. This past weekend, a group of students, recent grads and others who have volunteered at the Catholic Worker over the past few years, arranged with the Kickstand to host a project aimed at refurbishing several dozen bicycles which they had obtained and wanted to make road-worthy for people who could really use a bike. For several hours, the skilled and the unskilled worked together with help from the Kickstand’s regular staff and volunteers to fix up the bikes. Six bikes were completed and more on the way. When Nam and Jacqueline brought the first group of bikes to the GCW, we already had two new owners waiting—one person who especially needed a bike to get to doctor’s appointments and another whose last bike had been stolen several weeks ago.

Sharon Astyk, the author of Depletion and Abundance, makes a strong case that the best thing everyone could do to make the world a better place is to plant and tend a garden. For good health—individually, communally and globally—I’m guessing that biking has to be up there at the top of the list as well. If you can, scope out an area within which any trip you make will be via bike. It doesn’t have to be big. My area is just about 10-12 blocks in any direction from my house. It’s good for me (health- and money-wise) and it’s good for us (environment-wise).

And if you have a bike you’re not using, whether it is in working condition or not, consider giving it to the good folks over at The Kickstand. They’ll find someone who needs a bike to work with them in fixing it up or using the parts to get another bike working. And someone who needs it will have a little more freedom and a little more opportunity.

- John

We used to fly

Another quick trip over the weekend to check in on these good folks in Colorado - their post-retirement adopted home.

 

I may have read too much apocalyptic literature and watched too many end-of-the-world tv shows and movies, but I couldn't help but look at folks at the airport - coming from all over, heading out to who knows where, many reading magazines and newspapers with cover stories about the financial crash - and hear the voice over: "We used to fly." 

I may also have been influenced by the book I brought along for the trip - Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front OR One Woman's Solutions to Finding Abundance for Your Family while Coming to Terms with Peak Oil, Climate Change and Hard Times, by Sharon Astyk.  I removed my moratorium on book-buying for this book, and I am so glad I did. Having followed Sharon's blog over the last year or so, I knew it would probably be smart, informative, and practical. I would not have guessed, though, how thoroughly engaging it is. I underlined sentences, then paragraphs, then pages to read to John while we drove. I don't think I've been as excited about a book since first reading Wendell Berry. And I do NOT say that lightly.

The book is about the "coming crisis" and Sharon has proven herself way ahead of the game in predicting a number of things that have already happened, including the spike in world hunger we experienced earlier in the spring, the rise in gas prices, the mortgage crisis, and the stock market crash. She roots out the core causes and enumerates practical things to do to protect ourselves and our families as the crises begin to hit closer and closer to home. This kind of thinking could lean toward the "survivalist" mentality of stocking your bunker and battening the hatches, but Sharon has a deeply moral and ethical point of view rooted in community and relationship - and hope.

Here's an excerpt:

My friend, Pat Meadows, a very smart woman, has a woonderful idea she calls "The Theory of Anyway." She argues that 95 percent of what is needed to resolve the coming crisis is what we should do anyway, and when in doubt about how to change, we should change our lives to reflect what we should be doing "anyway." Living more simply, more frugally, leaving reserves for others, reconnecting with our food and our community - these are things we should be doing because they are the right thing to do on many levels. That they also have the potential to save our lives is merely a side effect ( a big one though).

That is, I think, a deeply powerful way of thinking because it is a deeply moral way of thinking. We like to think of ourselves as moral people, but we tend to think of moral questions as the obvious ones: Should I steal or pay? Should I fight or talk? But the most essential moral questions are the ones we rarely ask of the things we do every day: Should I eat this? Where should I live? What should I wear? How should I keep warm/cool? We think of these questions as foregone conclusions - I should keep warm a particular way because that's the kind of furnace I have, or I should eat this because that's what's in the grocery store. Pat's Theroy of Anyway turns this around and points out that the way we live must pass ethical muster first. We must always ask the question, Is this choice contibuting to the repair of the world or its destruction?

This is one quote out a slew of highlighted, underlined, asterisked, and dog-eared pages of this book so far. I hope you'll read it yourself. And while you do, you could check out Crunchy Chicken's book group for other's thoughts on the book and its ideas. And if you're local, leave a comment here. I'd love to hear your thoughts - especially on how to adapt Sharon's ideas to our particular location.