Today, the boys headed out in the rain. When I say rain, I am talking about rains so heavy they can knock the plums right out of the trees. Yes, the plum rains (like the trains in Tokyo) have arrived like they always do-- right on schedule! (See this post from last year)
They looked really cute out there. Adonis was in his dinosaur galoshes and bright yellow raincoat; stepping close to the glass, I saw he had a huge smile on his face. He was, in fact, delighted.
We live in a town with an almost perfect adult-to-car ratio. The car population may be a bit higher in the Western part of Adonis' empire (Los Angeles), but still here in his Eastern realm, there are as many cars as people. Most of my friends find if interesting and perhaps even praise-worthy that we don't have a car. The evil Atusko, as is typical, is annoyed by it and asks me every few years, "When are you going to buy a car?"
I always tell her, "When I feel like I need or want one."
This usually does the trick.
I could tell her that, "it's a small thing I do for the planet and a big thing I do for my waistline"... or that, I honestly just dislike cars. It is a preference; that walking, I meet people and notice things-- the ducks in the river, the flowers in bloom; that walking (and biking to a much lesser extent) are mediative and give me a breath of air (as I am usually near to suffocating)....
We live one block up from a busy road and the cars whizz by all day and night. I hate the sound, I hate the smell and I hate imagining accidents-- for the wild drivers on that road would give competition to those in Athens. When I want to annoy Atsuko I will gripe that when I put my puppet (he knows who he is) in power as mayor that at last I will evoke my no-car city center-- like some hilltown in Italy, cars will be kept out of the central part of town and colorful electric buses will toot around the streets.
"They'll never do it," she says...
"We'll see about that," I say in my most ominous voice, "because it wouldn't be that hard..."
I repeat: It wouldn't be that hard.
Looking at Adonis standing out there in the pouring rain with that big smile on his face, I thought how lucky he is-- and how much I still don't want a car. Or in other words-- which are the words of an anonymous 無名 Central Valley Samizdat: There's nothing that makes a peach taste better than waiting all year for it to come in season again (The Ethics of Eating, listen here)
If you want to think more about the car-peach connection, I highly recommend starting with this interesting radio interview with another Berkeley great: here. Also, I love to mention UC Davis as that is the home of my favorite Qing dynasty historian, so here is this.
Interestingly, Japan is not going down this Soviet-style central food production road, and in fact is moving very much in the direction of local agriculture. All food, including fresh vegetables, has the production site listed with bar-codes that you can use to trace the production-distribution route. This is part of the e-Japan legislation translation that I was involved with several years ago. The translation was almost the death of me. And, yet, I like that they actually kept their promise.
Other things:
1) Regarding the Elgin Marbles, that I wrote about here, Mary Beard had some pictures on her site of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, which looks absolutely beautiful and the comments on the marbles were interesting. Recommended: here.
2) Regarding my post on Al-Andalus and the Tang dynasty period Islamic Revolution, Melvyn Bragg put together another great show on the 7th century Arab conquest here.
3) Regarding my posts here and here on Stardivarius (Love is a Rebellious Bird), there is this new article that claims to have solved the riddle. Hmmm.
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