The Neighborhood

I'm excited to be participating in the 21st Annual Bikes Not Bombs (BNB) Bike-A-Thon on June 8th, riding 62 miles to raise money for this fine organization that promotes biking for transportation and community development.

ABOUT BIKES NOT BOMBS
BNB is doing many things right: recycling donated bikes, training city kids to repair bikes, sending bikes to developing countries and fighting to make the city more bike-friendly. What's more, BNB has become the local bike shop that go to when I need repairs.

Biking may not be the answer to all the worlds problems, but it is an increasingly important lifestyle choice that allows many of us to get where we need to go and to contribute to the health of our communities and the environment.

HOW YOU CAN HELP
I'm looking for people to contributing to BNB's work by supporting my ride. If you're able to contribute something, I would really appreciate it.

You can donate securely online at: http://www.firstgiving.com/tim-lindgren

Or, if you are local and want to drop it off at my house, or don't mind mailing it, your gift will go farther as a check or cash (BNB pays a 7.35% processing fee for each online donation). Please make the check out to "Bikes Not Bombs", put "Tim Lindgren BAT08" in the memo line, and mail it to me at the address below (or put in my mailbox). Please send me an email to let me know if you are making a donation this way so I can record it properly.

Please make your donations before June 1st.

If you are interested in joining me on the ride (the more the merrier!), there are several distances to choose from: 15, 25, and 62 miles. You can also come by and enjoy the Green Roots Festival! See the Bikes Not Bombs website for more info about the organization and the events on June 8th:

http://www.bikesnotbombs.org

Please forward this email to others whom you think would be interested in supporting Bikes Not Bombs.

Thanks for your support!

Tim

The life of a squirrel can be a precarious one, as I witnessed earlier this evening when I walked out of my office and was met by a red-tailed hawk standing on the sidewalk, talons firmly around a squirrel it had just killed. After a few moments, it flew away, leaving a small pool of blood on the concrete where it has been standing.

I didn't realize until reading Kevin's blog this week that bikes can also present a fatal hazard to squirrels, as this photo demonstrates:

These incidents reminded me of the rather conflicted relationship I've had with squirrels over the years. I got to know them quite intimately when I llved in Allston, or more precisely, when we lived together in Allson, since they occupied the walls and attic space around my room most of the time I was there. It wasn't an amicable relationship, I'm afraid; they kept me up at night, gnawned on wires, and chewed through my belongings stored in the attic, so finally I had to begin trapping them so that pest control could pick them up. Ultimately, it was the landlord's fault since he wouldn't fix all the holes in the house, and I resented being forced into this antagonistic relationship with animals that under normal circumstances I'm confident I could get along with quite well.

But these are the lessons we learn, living together in the city, and I hope to have more pleasant encounters with my neighbor squirrels in the future.

Yesterday I attend a JP community summit at English High (the oldest public high school in the US) sponsored by the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood development corporation, an event which helped give me a better sense of what's going in the larger JP community. I've been getting to know my immediate Stonybrook neighborhood during the last year by attending neighborhood association meetings and getting to know my next-door neighbors. But I was amazed to learn of the opportunities to get involved in JP at almost any scale, from street to neighborhood to city and beyond.

There is a long history of grass-roots activism here that has helped revitalize the JP into a healthy urban neighborhood, but this success has also brought some of the problems typical of gentrification--many of the people who worked hard to improve JP now can't afford to live here and the diversity that many people value is changing as new people move in. This summit was meant to help community members share ideas about how to make JP an equitable place even as it continues to develop and change.

As one of these newcomers, it's easy for me to feel like I'm part of the problem--just another bearded white guy buying a condo in a newly converted building--but the summit helped me see that I can also be part of the solution if I'm willing to understand how JP got to be the way it is and then get involved to do my part in keeping it healthy. I still have a lot to learn, but I feel lucky to be in a place that seems to be a good teacher.

At the Stoneybrook Neighborhood Association meeting in December, I met someone who used to live in the building next door to me and through our conversation discovered a bit more about the history of both buildings. Fifteen years ago when he bought the place, it had reputation as a drug house and had been condemned by the city. Just as Frank began to rehab it, a local film-maker asked if he could use it to shoot a scene film he was making. Frank had already begin cleaning up the place when they asked if they could add some the graffiti to portray the blight of the main character’s neighborhood of Dorchester.

In 1997, the file Squeeze came out and in one of the first scenes, the three friends walk past my place and onto the porch of the building next door, where they stand talking with my porch in the background. The porch was remodeled recently, so looks a bit different, but the tan shingles are very recognizable.

For a low-budget film, it’s quite well done, though difficult to watch with it’s gritty portrayal of gang violence and urban social decay. Finding out how my place became the backdrop to the film also helps me appreciate how much work my neighbors put into the street before I arrived.

Yesterday I was rode to my regular dissertation coffee shop, Sweet Finnish, on Centre St., only to see that it wasn't opened yet. In the interest of time, I decided to continue down to JP Licks, my other writing spot. Just I was leaving, one of the Sweet Finnish regulars came in and informed me that it had suddenly gone out of business.

It's always sad to see a good coffee shop go down, especially when it had become part of my writing routine. I liked the quiet, Scandinavian feel to it, with the smells of the bakery in background. JP LIcks is a great place as well, but I'll miss having the chance to enjoy both.

Sunday evening was the annual Lantern Parade at Jamaica Pond, a community event which involves walking around the pond with lanterns lit. Kids come in their costumes, music is playing, a cider press provide fresh apple cider--it's a great scene.

Tonight as I was riding home from work I passed more tricker-treaters in Brookline and JP than I have for as long as I can remember, and I realized that it's been quite some time since I lived in a residental neighborhood with enough families and kids to support conventional Halloween festivities. I didn't think to buy any candy because I just assumed that no-one would be out--this is how warped my perspect got after living in Allston for so long.

In the space of two hours on Friday afternoon, I closed on a condo in Jamaica Plain and picked up a fixed gear bike at Ace Wheelworks in Somerville. Sorry to drop this news on you without any run-up, but that's just the way it has to be. I can't really explain why I haven't written about any of this all summer, but it was apparently too much to both blog about major life decisions and make them at the same time.

Buying this condo happened rather quickly--I got my real estate agent on June 21 and I closed on August 24th--so I haven't had time for much else besides work, dissertation, and a bit of summer fun here and there. I realized during this process that I've been unconciously cultivating an image of myself as a rootless nomad, about to pick up and move at any moment, when in fact there's little evidence for this--after all, I lived in my place in Allston for 7 years. But it was a frame of mind that I think grew from the kind of transient neighborhood Allston was and from my ongoing ambivalence about being in Boston.

But now I'm settling in, at least for the time being, and it feels good. I'm excited about my little corner of JP with it's Minton Stables community garden and Franklin Franklin just a short walk in either direction. I'm excited about the chance to learn from being in a vibrant urban neighborhood, and trying a new relationship to place.

I closed on Friday and moved in on Saturday, which happened to be the hottest day of summer. In a true test of friendship, Cathy, Nirmal, Cheryl, Andy, Alan all showed up to give me a hand, and we managed to sweat our way through the move in an efficient three and half hours. Thanks everyone--it was a great way to start things off.

I'm also beginning a new relationship with my bike--a fixed gear Redline 9-2-5 --which has been a joy to ride so far. I'm still getting used to the new connection we have, in particular the obligation to keep peddling--all the time--but it's clearly the best way to commute every day in all weather without the hassles of unnecessary maintenance.

I'm finding that a bit of fixity can be a good thing, whether it be in mortgages or gears, and I'm glad to have the chance to experience both.