According to Boston Works, flip-flops are not only bad for your feet, they’re career-suicide!

Our resident wastrel has been back on his park bench since the rain’s let up. As I’ve said before–and I do mean it–I’ve got nothing against lovable vagrants and the like, but a park bench is not a housing solution. Bums are a sort of social barometer. Neglected parks and neglected people tend to go together.

Technically, our Meaney Man is not doing anything wrong. Parks are for loitering, after all. So long as he’s not exposing himself to children, stabbing other bums, or drinking publicly or doing or selling drugs, he’s free to set up shop. So says a local cop of my acquaintance who’s probably related to him, anyway.

Not that I would have him forcibly ejected or anything. What good would that do? There is an old saying: a park gets the squirrels it deserves. One bum moves on, another takes his place. The bums aren’t really so much the problem as the culture of neglect.

In fact, I think his presence there is important at this point. He’s a constant reminder (except when it rains) of the state of our neighborhood. He’s not actively bothering anyone, but his passive presence there is bothering, because he personifies the poverty, neglect, and despair endemic to Dorchester at this point in time.

There are lots worse scenarios for parks than drunks sleeping on park benches. I know that. And I’m not saying, simply, “gawd, I wish that old drunk would disappear.” But I think we can do better on both of these separate but related fronts–making our parks nicer, safer places for everyone in our neighborhoods, and providing better care for our poor and high-risk populations.

Doing nothing on either front and pretending like that’s good enough doesn’t cut it.

Margie Lynch from the DCR wants to set up a meeting for mid-July with anyone from the neighborhood who wants to pitch in. A rep from the DCR will be there, along with the landscaping contractor. An exact date has not been set. I’ll keep you posted.

I’m turning into one of those snooty cyclists. It doesn’t take long. The thing about cycling is it gives you a sort of bird’s-eye view. I might even call it “the cosmic view.” Your field of vision is longer, I guess you’d say, because you’re traveling faster than if you were walking. the pedestrian’s field of vision is reduced to next to nothing–they’re mostly shuffling along, oblivious, looking at their feet. Drivers have the opposite problem–they’re looking so far ahead that they don’t see their immediate surroundings, either.

If you cycle in the city day after day, you notice some things–I mean, you see them time and again. The first thing that blows me away on a daily basis–about motorist and pedestrians (and cyclists, too, I’m sure, although I don’t encounter as many of them)–is that they either don’t look at all when crossing the street, or they first look the wrong way, and then, once they are out in the middle of the street they glance, sort of casual-like, over their shoulder in the direction of traffic. And the fact that jaywalking is endemic to Boston doesn’t help matters.

I’m not sure what, if anything, you can learn about a region, or a city, or neighborhood, from the way people cross the street. In Italian cities, where sidewalks are narrow, but woman are not, there is no question who makes way for whom. When I lived in Budapest I noticed that folks would seek out eye contact when crossing from opposite sides of the street (always using the crosswalks, mind you, and usually waiting for the light). If you made eye contact with them they would come directly at you, in a game of crosswalk chicken. It took me probably two years to learn to cross the street without incident in Budapest. The secret was to NOT make eye contact–even passively–but to barrel across the street head-first in a bee line without regard to any obstacles that might be in your way. And you would not encounter any.

It’s a little different in Boston. People aren’t really spoiling for a fight, like in Budapest. But there’s definitely a “make way for ducklings” mentality here. But it’s motivated by what seems to be an earnest belief held by all in their own unique and special superiority over everyone else. It’s no secret the entitlement thing is off the hook in our beloved city. And it has the effect of always forcing others to accommodate you. Everybody does it to everybody else, so it would seem to cancel out–I mean, every unique and special person is equally inconvenienced by every other unique and special person, so this “make way for me!” mentality doesn’t seem to make a real difference, except in accumulated frustrations. And Bostonians are legendary for their tantrums, too. But then that’s part and parcel of acting like four year olds, I guess.

And I must say I’m really always impressed by the blind faith pedestrians have that motorists will actually see them before they see the motorists. It doesn’t seem like jaywalking in this town is a calculated risk–it really does seem like a pure act of faith.

Of course, cyclists get no respect whatsoever from either side, which is why they so often turn into monsters–and badly-dressed monsters to boot. I’m not gonna get into the whole bike messenger meme–there’s some kind of goth connection, with the dyed hair and piercings, that I don’t understand, and don’t know if I care to. There was a piece about bike messengers in the Glob a couple of weeks ago–there always is in the Spring. It’s an old stand-by. Like there will be a feature about homeless people in the dead of winter. Local color.

I think pedestrians see a cyclist and think, “well, if he hits me it’ll be at least as bad for him as it is for me.” So they give you this kind of ho-hum look, when they do look, like, “yeah? And?”

Motorists in this town are among the worst in the nation, as for both skill and temperament. Driving is such a passive activity–it really is two steps back, evolutionarily speaking–that you find basically the same behavior amongst certain drivers that you’ll find in your typical armchair quarterback. They howl and scream and grumble just like when they’re watching a game on TV. And just like when they’re watching a game on TV they always know better than everyone else–they could always have done better than anyone else. This is the kind of personality the overwhelming passivity of modern life has produced. People who essentially do nothing all day and feel they are absolutely omnipotent. But whatever.

This is another reason cyclists get this sort of holier-than-thou martyr complex thing going. Because they are actually actively doing something–sounds totally anachronistic, doesn’t it? So they’re actually doing something, and yet they’re totally at the mercy of the vehicular zombies they’re forced to share the road with, who hardly have to move a muscle in order to mow them down. Just doesn’t seem right. Doesn’t seem fair.

Or maybe I’m being too harsh on motorists. They’re actually pretty skilled at multitasking. People who are so relentlessly passive get bored easily. So when they’re watching the boob tube or driving around in their big-ass SUVs they’re also stuffing their faces nonstop full of crap or yakking mindlessly into their cell phones. People who do nothing but eat, drive around, and watch TV all day keeping their loved ones abreast of the very latest eating-, driving-around-, and TV-watching-action via satellite.

So cyclists think to themselves, “here I am, actually doing something, and burning calories, not petrol, and I get no respect!” Understandably they start acting out, swerving artfully through traffic, running lights, scaring pedestrians. But they’ll never be a match for a soccer mom in a monster Escalade.

Sad.

Speaking of sad. I rode my awful little loaner bike to the South Bay Shopping Center yesterday morning. There’s a sort of back entrance to the shopping center, and as I rounded the bend, I saw that this huge party had a permanent encampment in these big bushes there. One was standing out in the middle of the street with a railroad tie he’d managed to rustle up. They were building some sort of shanty in the bushes. Later, on my way back, I saw smoke issuing from the interior.

There is such a huge disconnect between what we see in the media, and reality. The news is a highly stylized exercise, an utterly idealized daily recitation of an increasingly narrow set of norms that increasingly have no relation to actual norms, nor does the news report actual happenings so much as expectations. Look at these freaks on TV who read the news. Look at these pod people who appear on their shows. Is this who we are, or what we want to be?

They’re talking about “Nature Deficit Disorder” on The Today Show right now. Something people just used to do–catching fire-flies in a jar–you need a life coach to instruct you in now. That’s one side of the coin. The other is a dozen grown men, immigrants from God knows where, living in the bushes down the street. I mean, talk about disconnect. We’ve got Reality Deficit Disorder.

This just in from Lee Matsueda over at T Riders Union (TRU) HQ:

“Join TRU at our next FARE INCREASE meeting Thursday, June 29th @ 5:30 pm @ ACE’s office, 2181 Washington Street, 3rd Floor (elevator accessible), here at our air-conditioned office in Dudley Square, Roxbury.”

Lee and the gang will be planning the next step in TRU’s NO FARE INCREASE campaign that will include service improvement demands.

He requests that you please RSVP via phone (617) 442-3343, ext. 229, or email lee@ace-ej.org if you plan on coming.

And remember, all public comments on the fare increase are due to the MBTA by June 30th. That’s next Friday to you and me. You can send them to fareproposal@mbta.com.

An interesting piece in the New York Times [$] this morning about being groped on the subway.

Here’s what I liked: women in New York have helped police catch flashers by snapping pictures of them with their cell phones. Ha HA! So, you wanna be an exhibitionist, eh?

Yes, when we say “no touching,” that means not only others, but yourselves, too, lads! At least in public. It’s hard, I know, because there seems to be something in man’s very nature that compels him to stick his hands down his pants. Mark Twain once remarked: “To a man all things are possible but one—he cannot have a hole in his breeches and keep his fingers out of it. A man does seem to feel more distress and more persistent and distracting solicitude about such a thing than he could about a sick child that was threatening to grow worse every time he took his attention away from it.”

Of course, mankind has a long history of touching himself, and modern technology, far from otherwise occupying idle hands has only provided myriad new and improved opportunities for bigger and better feats of onanism. The internet is a storehouse of phalluses in action. Is there any teenage boy alive today who has not waved his for the webcam? Craig’s List alone boasts a daily collection to rival Darwin’s barnacles. If there was any question that many more men than ever suspected were merely waiting for a chance to show their stuff in public without adverse personal consequences, the internet has answered it resoundingly.

It’s too easy, is the thing. Diogenes, the one who thought of himself as “a crazy Socrates,” would masturbate in public, saying, “I wish I could satisfy my hunger as easily.”

While Diogenes was making a philosophical point with his, Leonardo da Vinci liked the look of it, pure and simple. Leonardo was fascinated by the membrum-virile cupidum, even more so than the ordinary man is, as evidenced in his obsessive sketches of it. He wrote (as quoted by art scholar Kenneth Keele): “A man who is ashamed to show or name the penis is wrong. [Instead] of being anxious to hide it, man ought to display it with honor.”

Showing it off has taken various forms down through time. I’ve mentioned the phallocarp, favored by warriors in Papua, New Guinea, before. In the 15th and 16th centuries, as François Rabelais delighted in pointing out, the codpiece, molded in the shape of a permanent erection, was all the rage. Some have speculated that the power tie is the modern man’s phallocarp.

Of course, a phallus is not a penis, and the advantage of phallocarps, codpieces, and fat ties, is precisely that the thing itself remains mercifully hidden from sight. This is usually advantageous to all parties, by the way (though not always—I imagine that Mapplethorpe’s Man in a Polyester Suit would garner appreciative oohs and ahs, and even an approving head-nod or two were he to board a train as pictured in the famous photograph, so long as he minded his own business). Point is: most of us are perfectly satisfied in all but a very few cases, to speculate rather than be provided, at least proactively, with proof. In fact, in nine out of ten cases, as most adults these days know, actually seeing the thing in all its usually underwhelming glory may satisfy a native curiosity, but little else.

Some believe they can tell what it’s like without actually seeing it, thereby negating the need for proof—there’s the old fallacy that large noses are accurate predictors of a member’s mass. Not so! And I’m not just saying that as someone with a mid-size schnoz, either. “In dissecting cadavers,” one venerated anatomist once famously noted, “anatomists frequently observe the opposite.” Still, small noses on grown men are repugnant in their own right (Michael Jackson, anyone?), without any reference to this other body part.

But I digress. The pertinent question here is, are we seeing a resurgence of a primitive compulsion, obviously felt as an obligation by some males, to display their goods, variously, to the females of the species?

Meredith Small, in her fascinating study Female choices: Sexual behavior of female primates, provides what may be a clue to uncouth male behavior on the T: “Male chimps use their penis for display toward estrous females. Because a longer penis would give a female pleasure (note that the human male has the longest and thickest penis of any primate), female choice might have been a factor driving penis length to extremes among primates.”

Furthermore, as Helen Fisher reports in Anatomy of Love: The Mysteries of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray, while “[w]e do not know why men have conspicuous genitals,… a male chimp solicits a female by opening his legs, displaying an erect penis and flicking his phallus with a finger as he gazes at a potential partner. A prominant, distinctive penis helps broadcast one’s individuality and sexual vigor, which may lure female friends. In many species of insects and primates, males have exceptionally elaborate penises, and scientists think these evolved specifically because females chose those males with elaborate, sexally stimulating genitals. So perhaps as Lucy’s ancestors became bipedal some four million years ago, males began to parade their genitals in order to make special friends with favored females–selecting for those with large organs.”

Lucy’s ancestors are beyond bipedal. Today they take the T. But they are obviously still very keen to make special friends with favored females. Some of them, misled by ads on Craig’s List and the ubiquity of internet porn, perhaps, seem not to know that we have evolved a bit since the days when displaying an erect penis and flicking it with a finger are criteria for friendship–even special friendship.

Do men deserve pity or scorn? As David Friedman says in A Mind of It’s Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, “a man’s relationship with his penis…is the most enduring mystery in every man’s life.” Sad, but true.

The Times article concludes:

Many women said they were not so much frightened by the subway encounters as they were appalled that men would do something so pathetic.

Like Ms. Fairley, the actress. “All of a sudden,” she said, “this man moved into my frame of reference, and I was staring at a penis. I couldn’t believe it.”

Ms. Fairley said she was embarrassed, but felt even worse, in a way, for the man. “They need help, bless their hearts,” she said.

All I can say in the end is: ladies, I salute you (and not with my erect penis, either). What you have to put up with on a daily basis boggles the mind.

The screamers are out tonight.

There are two little girls next door–probably around five or six, maybe seven years old–and they are just total screechers–they scream bloody murder for everything. When they’re happy, sad, angry, bored, it’s a no brainer: scream. Of course. It has an elegant logic to it.

Now, I don’t want to sound like the Grinch of Upham’s Corner, or whatever, but they’ve got this little kiddie pool out there, like, right under my window. And it’s too hot and muggy to shut my window, and I don’t have AC, and don’t want it, but it would certainly drown out the blood-curdling screams. I don’t mind quiet children, or even children who laugh occasionally, although I think in most cases a simple smile would suffice. But what is with the screaming?

And whatever happened to the days when kids were marched off to bed at nine o’clock? These kids were out screaming bloody murder until nearly eleven last night.

You know, all it would take to start an all-out war is for me to set my boombox in the window right now and start blasting, I dunno, GWAR, or something, at top volume. Of course then I would have to leave the house, come back in a couple hours. See how they like hearing somebody else scream for a while.

Today in the Globe.

And what do you think of Porter Square’s new Shapiro Family Plaza?

It’s a scorcher out there.

I got out to the garden early today, before the temperature began to climb, to water a newly seeded section of what will become a little lawn in a couple weeks’ time. Very excited about that lawn–it must be what’s left of the squishy suburbanite in me. Is this a chink in the urban warrior’s armor? I have instructed my neighbors in the Fens to clip me if I start to go all-out suburban on ‘em, and they have promised me they will.

But, honestly, once you become what you despise (and we all do to some degree or another), you often despise what you were before you did. It is the logic of metamorphosis that once we have transformed we no longer understand or sympathize with what we once were. We may, in fact, look on our former selves as our own worst enemies. Do you think the butterfly looks back wistfully on her caterpillar days?

If my lawn-pride warps me sufficiently, I may metamorphose into something I don’t yet understand. Like my new neighbor across the path, who is methodically removing all traces of the previous tenant, an old woman who had the plot for several years and was fond of roses, and replacing her sweetly and long-nurtured beds with…lawn. Her garden was idiosyncratic, with small paths only she walked on. Now it’s full of cement bricks and dyed nuclear-red mulch. It appears hideous to me now, but there is a kernel of fear in me that someday I may understand it all too well.

I have just a little lawn, a spot of grass among the flower beds, and I am proud of it, and it’s enough for me. For now.

So I’m riding home, and the left pedal on my loaner bike flies off. How do you like that? I’ll have to stop into the bikesmith’s tomorrow and have it mended.

I got home in time to nap. This is true siesta weather. And I do love my siesta. I love my twilight, too. Last night was cool and overcast, and there was a breeze blowing. And I lay down and listened to the sounds of the neighborhood, the gunshots in the distance, the little girl screaming bloody murder (we have a couple of little screamers in the ‘hood), laughter and tears, revving motors and screeching tires. And all the while the light fading, fading, quietly but insistently. That lovely subtle, inexorable movement from daylight to darkness. That extraordinary twilight time.

You know I used to live about a block away from where Hoagie Carmichael, who wrote “Stardust”–an American creation at least as great as the martini–is buried. He’s in Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana, where I went to school. I used to walk through that graveyard on my way home every night, that perfect, mysterious song in my head…

Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely nights
Dreaming of a song
That melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you
When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration
Ah, but that was long ago
Now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song…

After my nap, I switched on the TV. There was something called “White Shark Red Triangle” on GBH. I caught the end of it. It was about various disagreeable sea creatures feeding on one another. You expect bad behavior from killer whales. And sharks are naughty by nature. But even the cute ones, like seals, behave atrociously. You know that when seals are done birthing, after a brief period of nursing, the adults just up and abandon the young. How’s that for family values? The young are about fifty percent blubber, so they can survive for a few weeks while they learn (or not) how to fend for themselves. In fact, only about fifty percent make it to a year old. It’s no wonder adult seals are so cranky up close and personal.

They aren’t as bad as octopuses, though. I think octopuses are possibly the most unsympathetic creatures in the whole ocean. A while back I watched a documentary on octopuses, called, aptly enough, I guess “The Octopus’s Garden”.

What odious creatures.

Maybe I was a cod in my past life, because I could find nothing particularly redeeming in the octopus. When a shark came along and the octopus was lying very still to avoid being detected, I was rooting for the shark 100%. Same for when, after the starring octopus had hatched her millions of little eggs and was crawling out from under her rock in search of food, on her last leg, so to speak, and a couple of belligerent codfish came up to her and started nibbling on her (actually they grabbed hold of a leg, and did a sort of speedy corkscrew move, since their teeth are only good for grasping but not for pulling)—yes, I was rooting for the codfish, even though, technically speaking, the octopus was the underdog.

I found the starring octopus utterly unsympathetic, and I felt nothing when I saw her corpse wash up on a beach in the end, or even when the seagulls were pecking at her flabby carcass. They kept calling it a she. Are there males and females?

At one point in some underwater garden she’s seized by a bigger, uglier octopus. He grabs her up in his arms—meanwhile she has gone stark white with fear—and spirits her away into his lair. A moment later she is released, rather pink than white now, and torpedoes off into the sea as far from her assailant as she can get, no doubt. Talk about wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Where’s the romance? This is the Stanley Kowalski school of breeding.

That’s probably why the octopus is so unsympathetic. Not just two arms with which to hold a lover tight, but eight! Not one, not two, but three hearts (!) with which to love, and yet it has never occurred to the octopus to love. They’re too busy sneaking up on crabs, and gorging themselves on unsuspecting lobsters, and even eating their own kind! They retain a mind-boggling eighty percent of the weight they consume, growing bigger with each and every meal! I mean, enough!

The filmmakers tried to drum up a little sympathy for our heroine in the end by saying, well, look at what an inglorious end she came to after three billion glorious years of evolution. But tell me, what has she got to show for those three billion years? An insatiable hunger for shellfish!

Never once did she stop and think of using all her faculties—and she is so extremely well-endowed—for loving. And don’t tell me she can love her young. There are about two-hundred million of them, and they all fly the coop before they measure two centimeters in length. Most of them to get snapped up by the marauding cod.

And thank sweet Neptune for that!

But enough frivolous, idle chatter! Back to the pressing issue at hand!

I have been corresponding lately with a gentleman by the name of John who has some interesting ideas about the fare hikes that I would like to put out there, for your consideration, too. One caveat on this. While I think this sort of deep thinking is valuable, it may be a flawed assumption that there has been any real momentum on the fare issue among riders and their various self-styled representatives. I love the suggestions, particularly in the penultimate (love that word) paragraph, but I am not a nonprofit organization, or any kind of organization, actually, and these suggestions would require investment, staff, and organization. That’s the biggest problem right there.

Here’s what John has to say:

I know this is a frustrating issue, I am sensitive to it because I recently moved from Texas–yes the Traffic State–and am enamored of the concept of public transportation.

I did sign the petition, and have some positive thoughts. I think the rate hike may be a useful thing, hear me out:

- Public transportation is about to show its worth with rising gas prices. Cheap oil has made the economy-factor of the subways less important in recent decades, and subway systems have languished because of this. But Peak Oil is coming and the T may well become a real jewel for Massachusetts.

- A price increase will make the T create more revenue, which will increase its value to the city and state. So though this may be a cynical move to further burden a public asset, the ultimate result is that they are giving it even greater value. Unintended consequences, you know.

- Riders will become more motivated to pay attention as the T takes more of a bite out of their budgets. And also, more upset with delays and more receptive to calls for transparent governance. A group representing T riders will be set to gain from this increasing concern, since by raising prices the T is actually motivating people to pay attention. (Thank you MBTA!)

SO my optimistic conclusion is that now would be the time to kick into gear and prepare for the future. I would say let the rate hike take effect (it will do a lot for your organizing efforts) and turn attention toward solidifying the organization, with the expectation that events are converging to make the T more valuable to lawmakers, and make riders more apt to support a public advocacy organization.

As far as suggestions, I would like to help work to raise the profile of T-Justice in various non-threatening, non-confrontational, creative ways. Possibly one would be a “Subway Survey” of riders to ask what their concerns truly are, along with a petition. Sign/fill out and get a T-Justice button. A T-Shirt fundraiser (”T” Shirt!). More stuff on the website (I can help there) including a blog or chat for discussion/complaints (I can help there too). Setting up “T-Justice” recycle bins, for high visibility while doing a public service. Posters. Ongoing communication with the public, maybe even in the form of direct flyers handed to patrons, that shows T-travelers that there is a group honestly representing the public ridership.

Like everyone I don’t have a lot of time, but I am looking for a Cause or two, (Southerner’s love our Causes, especially if they are more or less lost) and this interests me a great deal.

I’ll say. So, any thoughts on this from the rest of you?

So I have had a few emails here and there, and a couple of phone calls from people asking what’s next in the fight for fair fares. The petition’s still up and running, so if you know anyone (and I know you do) who hasn’t signed it yet, tell them you are going to kick their lily asses if they don’t.

It’s at a pathetic three hundred signatures so far (not that the signatures themselves, or the signatories are pathetic–on the contrary!–only their number). I don’t feel all that bad about it, if you want to know the truth, since MassPIRG, with its 50,000 members could only rustle up 1,500 signatures for theirs.

But I think presenting the petition (and I will only do so if we meet a minimum goal of a thousand signatures–I still have some pride left) would be a nice coda to all this hooha and stuff and nonsense over the fares in the first place.

This week saw the last of the MBTA-sponsored meetings on the topic, and the official comment period will end June 30th. If you have not written an email about the fare restructuring proposal to the T, you can do so up to the 30th (send it to fareproposal@mbta.com).

Write your representatives, too, while you’re at it, if you haven’t already. You can find them HERE.

And, as always, encourage your family, friends, and colleagues to take a minute or two out of their day (really–that’s about all all of this nonsense takes) to do it, too.

That’s all I’ve got up my sleeve. But always willing to learn new tricks, if anybody’s got any in their bag.

Brian McGrory reports on Mass. Secretary of Transportation Commissioner John Cogliano’s T charm offensive HERE.