Real London, fries, rats, missiology, Wendell Berry, trash

A word of praise for London, ON.

There’s this YouTuber from London, Ontario with a channel called Not Just Bikes and he’s always talking shit about London, calling it “fake London” and posting pictures of its ugly stroads. 

He moved to the Netherlands. He says North America is doomed and the solution is to be rich like him so you can live somewhere less car-centric. He’s right that cars ruin great cities including London, Ontario. He’s wrong to think his smug fatalism is wisdom. 

The real London is Not Just Cars. 

My in-laws live within wort-sniffing distance of the Labatt Brewery in London. Every summer we try to go up there for a week, sometimes taking half the time in Toronto. I dislike few cities. Dallas sucks. Houston is hell. But I’m sure if I had cause to be there for a week annually I’d find something to love. Any place you pay attention to and live in you can learn to love or at least feel comfortable in.

My father-in-law has compared London, Ontario to Omaha, Nebraska. It’s fields of monocrops in all directions. Soy, canola, corn, and a city. Not Amsterdam. That being said, I have friends there who ride bikes there and I never vacation without a bicycle if I can help it, so I’ve probably done a lot more bicycling in London than the sanctimonious NotJustBikes guy. 

There’s a mixed-use path along the Thames River (Yes, it’s called that. Fake Thames. Whatever.) that I love riding on just for fun but also it’s a not-impractical way to get lots of places in the city. London has been upping their bike lane infrastructure. I’m going to show you lots of pictures of one street now.

This is Dundas. One bit is something like a Dutch-style woonerf.

Then it opens up and it’s got bike lanes that switch from concrete-protected to up-on-the-sidewalk to parking-protected.

Good road.

It’s a nice city. It’s grown on me. 

Here are some stickers on an espresso machine at a donut shop. Donuts. I love a good donut.

Afterword to a word of praise for London, ON-- A word of appreciation for Greg Curnoe:

I’d been admiring a print of a painting in my friend’s basement in London and next thing you know I was reading the entire Wikipedia page of the artist. Here’s the painting:

He was an artist who rejected the notion you have to go somewhere significant to make significant art. What is a significant place? What is significant art? Unanswered questions notwithstanding, I agree. London is a fine place to be and to make art.

Greg Curnoe liked making art and riding his bicycles which he considered to be works of art. He was killed by a distracted driver while riding one of these bikes that brought him so much joy. 

Here’s a cycle-path tunnel I stumbled upon named after him. 

He had a funny noise band in the sixties called the Nihilist Spasm Band. The first track, “Destroy the Nations” from the album No Record really cracks Francis up. I’m going to listen to it today. 

In death as in life he’s making the place he loved a better place. May we all do so much.

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Best three french fry toppings/dips/condiments, ranked:

Cheese curds and gravy. Why has poutine not caught on in the US? It’s bad for you. Americans love things that are bad for them. 
Mayonnaise. Mayo is the condiment of the gods. Mayo-haters can’t be trusted.
Malt vinegar. Classic for a reason. 

It goes without saying you salt your fries. Salt is good. Sodium is a natural and necessary mineral and it’s normal and healthy to want lots of it. Unsalted fries are dog food. Salt them as soon as they come out of the fryer basket. 

French fry toppings and/or dips that are unworthy of being ranked:
Ketchup. Sweet but not interesting. Would sooner dip fries in mustard. Overrated condiment. 
Chili cheese fries
“Pizza fries” is for possums and raccoons. Gloop. 

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A word of praise for Bulk Barn

Why is pasta in a package? It should be scooped with a scoop into my own container and sold by weight. So also should bacon bits, sour skittles, powdered poutine gravy mix, all manner of nuts, chocolate chips, MSG, soy protein, etc. Bulk barn has all that. It’s just stuff sold loose by the gram. 

I shudder to think of the pest-management solutions necessary. Whatever. Can’t be that bad. Bulk Barns are all over Canada. Somehow not in the US. Americans love bulk. I guess we love single-use plastic containers even more. 

•••

RRRrrrats. I want them dead. Here’s an article from Hell Gate NYC about New Zealand’s ambitious and apparently effective efforts to eradicate rats. 

Philadelphia is comically bad at a lot of things and inexplicably refuses to containerize their trash. We just leave piles and bags of trash out on the street for sanitation workers to grab and throw in the trash trucks. It’s disgusting. I have lived in the slums of Kolkata. I have killed a rat in my own bedroom by bludgeoning it with a brick. I am not squeamish or easily grossed out. I just don’t get why both Philadelphians and New Yorkers seem to think they’ll ever be taken seriously as civilized cities if their garbage-management solution involves just leaving piles of bagged garbage out on the sidewalk for rats to tear open. 

I do love this article, mostly because they are succeeding at something that sounds impossible. We should try to do things that are good for the creatures and community we share space with whether it sounds achievable or not. You can look at humanity’s track record of horrors and forget we can pull off some incredible laudable stunts too. We can fix a whole lot of our messes if we try. 

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I have a Gilles Berthoud saddle that I paid a lot of money for at 50% of its retail price. I treat my bum kindly. Here’s a soothing and fascinating video of Berthoud saddles being manufactured. 

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Fan Mail!

Drew wrote many kind words to me about my art. He also expressed agreement about pigeons being glorious creatures. Here are three pictures of Icarus AKA Icky who Drew referred to as a “chonky loaf man.” Magnificent bird. 

Thank you for getting in touch. Sorry that Ben Wildflower Art LLC lacks an executive assistant much less the executive function to clean my inbox.

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My inbox is full. I have dozens of unread texts I would have to scroll way down to find. I have unread instagram messages, unread discord messages. There’s an app for the daycare. There’s an app for the kindergarten. There’s a different app for the kindergarten aftercare. There is too much communication going on. And very little of it is about pigeons unfortunately. Feel free to contact me. Please don’t feel bad when I simply don’t respond. It is possibly because I have laid down in the tall grass and let my body melt into the earth.

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More fan mail!

Josh the theology student also wrote some kind words. Thank you Josh. Then he asked, “I was wondering what your thoughts on religious pluralism are? Like, do you take a more post modern approach or maybe like a process approach? both? Neither? Should this even be a question or is it focusing on the wrong things? But something in me is compelled to affirm my peers of other faiths as valid and beautiful expressions toward the divine, but I’m wrestling with thinking about the early church martyrs who died for their supposed right beliefs?”

Being a person of many opinions on topics I have no real credentials in, I’ll give this a go in the form of Bible Story Time With Ben. In the seventeenth chapter of the book of Acts— the trippy and action-packed sequel to the Gospel of Luke— Paul, formerly Saul, gets up to give a speech at a place called the Areopagus (rhymes with esophagus). He’d been hopping from town to town visiting synagogues and trying to pitch that Jesus was 1.) not dead and 2.) God, which is a hard sell and he kept pissing people off and they’d try to beat him up or kill him or get him arrested. So he’s in Athens by now and he’s run out of synagogues so he’s perusing the religious buildings of the weird pagans he’s never thought to say anything good about before. He says, “I see you’re already super religious. I went for a walk today and saw you have an altar you worship and the plaque says ‘TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.’”

Pause here. Consider the awe, reverence, and humility of the worshipers who made this altar, who offered sacrifices here. They knew they hadn’t found what they were looking for. 

Now also consider Paul’s awe and humility. Paul mostly comes off as an arrogant man in his own writings and in the narrative of Acts and hey, he probably was. Pobody’s nerfect. But here he was trying to understand people and their beliefs. He’d had this mystical experience where, while trying to suppress a growing sect/cult worshiping a dead guy named Jesus he encounters this selfsame Jesus in some kind of tear in the fabric between the divine and profane. The light blinds him. The voice of the entirely-not-dead GodJesus thunders, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He rethinks and reorganizes his entire life in light of this mystical encounter. At this point he still thinks of himself ethnically and religiously as a Jew.

Back to the Air Ee Oppaguss. Some people heard about the not-dead Jesus who had been publicly tortured to death in front of tons of people and allegedly came back to life in front of only a few people and said, Yeah, this sounds like a crock of shit. Others said tell us more. A couple people went all in. One guy named Dionysius, named after a pagan god, and some lady named Damaris.

This is a story of Paul’s faith being converted to something more pagan. When you sincerely and humbly try to share spiritual insights/conjectures/beliefs/propositions that you believe are true and liberatory you also end up with an open heart and open mind. I think these stories in Paul’s travels are important stuff. There’s this ongoing very practical through-line in Acts about what they actually do about all this. Do they form communes? Abolish private property? Do they have to practice circumcision if they’re non-Jewish converts? Is this a religion? An ethnicity? Is the end of the world immanent? Nobody knows what’s going on. 

I take comfort in it. We don’t have to really know what’s going on. When Paul says he sees through a glass darkly take him at his word. When the church is clueless or wrong, that’s normal. 

The point of the so-called great commission (Before the resurrected Jesus launched off this mortal plane like a rocket ship he said something like, “I’m leaving you a helper but an invisible one and it’s also God just like me but it’s not me and it’s called the Holy Spirit so now go absolutely everywhere and tell everyone about this. Adios” The Bible is weird.) is not make people see the world more like “Christians” see it. The point is to find Christ revealed to you in every corner of the globe. How can your Christianity benefit from other faiths? What does it look like to be a Christian repenting of Christianity? How can you convert your own faith to something more honest by listening with an open heart to the world as seen by those you used to think just needed to think more like you?

That’s what I’ve got. I have faith in you, Josh. Keep on seeking truth and I’m sure you’ll learn from others and they’ll learn from you and at the end we still won’t know quite what’s going on. 

•••

Send fan mail to sales@uglyhorses.com

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If you use the popular meal kit service LunchGPT, make sure you turn off the new toggle switch they just added that allows them to sell naked holograms of your likeness. Now the hardware store has AI. If you let someone with the pervert glasses talk to you then you owe them one million dollars. Reading this sentence is a binding contract. Download CoinMoneyApp today to bet on how many kids will die of measles this winter. We have to give all the fresh fruits and vegetables to the data centers. That's the law now. 

•••

Wendell Berry has died. 

He has meant a lot to me over the years. I read nearly every essay he’d written when I was in college, a couple of his novels, all of his poems I think.

Moral clarity and intellectual humility-- I think if I had to say what he taught me to aspire to it’s that. A religious nonconformist but unabashedly steeped in tradition. In some way he empowered me to engage in a certain mode of seeking truth. It's a sort of conservative-coded insurrectionist disposition he had. He cared about neighborliness. He could describe a harmonious relationship with the earth in a not woo-woo way. 

I’m not devastated by his death. He was 92. We are all mortal. I hope it was as good a death as a death can be. What I am is grateful. 

He got that the world is run by wicked people and that greed and recklessness can truly destroy the creatures, communities, and places we are meant to care for. He didn’t roll over and say that’s why we shouldn’t care for the creatures, place, and community we love. We love the real world because it's what we've got.

"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy." That's a line from one of his essays that's been kicking around in my head for a couple decades. Not nothing. 

His friendship with Vandana Shiva in hindsight was also significant for me. I don’t have more to say about it, just that two agrarian authors whose works have meant a lot to me cared for and respected each other despite the world of difference between them. It gives me some hope, and I run on hope.

We never listen to the prophets.

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Why do the wicked prosper? Do you ever envy the arrogant when you see the prosperity of the wicked? I do sometimes. 

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Today’s recommended reading: Psalm 73. Some excerpts:

I envied the arrogant

   when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They have no struggles;

   their bodies are healthy and strong.

They are free from common human burdens;

   they are not plagued by human ills.

Therefore pride is their necklace;

   they clothe themselves with violence.

From their callous hearts comes iniquity;

   their evil imaginations have no limits.

They scoff, and speak with malice;

   with arrogance they threaten oppression.

Their mouths lay claim to heaven,

   and their tongues take possession of the earth.
This is what the wicked are like—
    always free of care, they go on amassing wealth.

Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure
    and have washed my hands in innocence.
All day long I have been afflicted,
    and every morning brings new punishments.

They are like a dream when one awakes;
    when you arise, Lord,
    you will despise them as fantasies.

I despair a lot and often forget the Psalms are largely rage-fueled manic-depressive emo fever dreams. Some poet named Asaph who’s been resting with the dead for millenia now sang these words that still make me feel the rage he felt. This is what the wicked are like: fuckin’ carefree assholes, getting rich. It sucks ass and I’m sad and I really hope this silent God will rise and wash away the memory of their names. Amen.

These prayers too are sacred.

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There’s a cute little rear dynamo light made by Busch & Muller called the mu that may be impractically small but it’s also cute. I snagged this one for pretty cheap from a member of a forum I’m on who was liquidating a bunch of his bike stuff for cheap. I like cute tiny things. Analog Cycles, a bike shop in Vermont with a large internet presence, popularized mounting these with the little P-clamps that come with Nitto rack hardware. I’d been wanting a rear light for my Bridgestone RB-T, which may be my second-favorite bicycle and is undoubtedly my classiest-looking bicycle. The p-clamp solution didn’t work well with any clamps I had so I did a bit of attempting to fabricate a mount for the light that was lightweight, minimalist, not plastic, and clean.

My eventual solution was to use the face plate from the quick link connector thing from a single speed chain. It’s just a little piece of metal with two pin two holes. The one hole is big enough for the teeny tiny bolt that comes stock with the light. The other had to be drilled out to fit an M5 bolt then I bolted that onto the rack mount boss on the chain stay with a brass bolt. I’m happy with this solution. I still need to run the cable from front to rear. 

My body is a machine that turns potato chips into kinetic energy that rotates pedals attached by chain to gears that rotate a wheel which rotates the other wheel which spins on a hub wrapped in magnets and copper wire in such a way as to produce electric current which runs through a wire into a headlamp. I turn potato chips into light. 

I’m also planning to put the Nitto/Rivendell albatross bars on there soon. The drop bars looked great and this is a vain bike build and I admit looks matter but I keep getting neck and shoulder stress on rides under 30 miles. I don’t have time for that. If you have a pair of Albatross handlebars you could give or sell them to me. I’m in my shamelessly-seeking-comfort era. As an experiment I’m now running only slightly swept-back flat bars. It’s fun. I thought it needed drop bars because it’s my go-to long-road-ride bike. But on a long road ride you know what I do? I stop and watch vultures eat roadkill or marvel at the clouds or wonder what kind of tree is that or sit bolt upright and ride no-hands or stop to see turtles sunning themselves.

People who say “no pain no gain” or “I’ve gotta burn off those calories” or “gotta stay above 15mph average” or shit like that could never comprehend that the point of a bike ride is sometimes to see a Blue Heron eat a toad. Swoopy bars give you better views of the birds. On the way to daycare this morning Mary pointed out Starlings and mourning doves. Yesterday the three of us stopped to watch pigeons eating an overturned styrofoam container of arroz y habichuelas.

The skies and the dirt are full of the glory of the Lord. 

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Don’t forget to look around. 

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Last weekend Francis insisted on taking the family to Shofuso Japanese Garden because his preschool had gone on a field trip there. It turns out it rules. We looked at a cool Japanese house. We fed koi fish. 10/10 A+ highly recommend. Never a bad day to bike in Fairmount Park. 

We stopped for sushi on the way home. He's a picky eater but I think because he'd picked the Japanese theme he was a little bit open-minded.

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There was recently a memorial ride and ghost bike dedication for a guy who got killed by a motorist a few blocks from my home. I have trouble with mourning rituals. They make me feel frustrated and I don't know why. I felt like I should go. I bailed to go ride bikes for fun with friends instead. I go biking to feel alive and joyful and I didn't have the capacity to be led through the emotional ordeal of somber yet outraged. It was Mary's second birthday. I had a great evening out riding with friends. On my way home I passed it anyway and the Happy Birthday banner hit me like a brick. Took a minute and tried to pray. Biked the last couple minutes home. That's a prayer too I suppose. 

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I'm doing my best to enjoy being alive.

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Here are some pictures.

Nativity scene by Kent Monkman, Cree artist with gender-bending alter ego named Chief Eagle Testickle. I love nativitiy scenes. They can be vapid fluff or they can say, This is how incongruous yet right it would look if God was born among us. A good nativity scene inspires both unease and awe. This was at the free Museum London. I biked there. Duh.

Also at Museum London. They brew Labatt beer in London. 

Naomi and Mary on the Thames River Trail

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I pick stuff up off the ground. That's a thing about me. Trash is full of treasures. I saw this on the ground the other day and I picked it up and I'm glad I did. 

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I also pick things up off the metaphorical floor of cyberspace. That's a cool thing about the web-- it's full of files you can just pick up and put in your pocket. Here's some garbage in the form of recently saved photos. Garbage is good here remember. 

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I often say "The world is still a beautiful place." I got that from Wendell Berry.