A Woman's Place is in the Resistance

[ny biker]

Got an email at work yesterday -- due to "tax reform" all employees will receive a small bonus. After taxes are taken out it won't be much. I have decided to donate it to World Central Kitchen (who are still feeding people in Puerto Rico), a local nonprofit that helps victims of domestic violence and the ACLU.


http://www.worldcentralkitchen.org

[Crankin]

NY, I just noticed your new tag line. If it's not new, then I am unobservant.
"Thickly settled" was one of the list of expressions that I had to make a list of and have explained to me by my cousin, when I moved back to MA. They all were things you had to know to pass the written dirver's test here. While thickly settled was one I kind of got, things like frost heave and reverse curve vexed me. I was just thinking about this yesterday, so when I saw your post, I laughed.

[ny biker]

I added that after my first visit to the Cape - I had never seen a sign like that before (or since). I thought it was funny. I think I understood its meaning but felt like it could have other interpretations too.

The other thing that was different about driving there were the huge rotaries. I've seen roundabouts and traffic circles before but haven't driven around anything that large anywhere else. I actually had to count the exits out loud to keep from getting confused and just going around and around the circle.

I have never heard of a frost heave or a reverse curve. What are they?

[Crankin]

OK, I will try to translate. Thickly settled means a high density population, usually in a smaller town or village. A frost heave is when a road buckles up and makes a bump, usually causing a crack in the pavement, too. This comes from the frost/freeze cycle here, where it is not consistently cold all winter. Reverse curve means an "s" curve. There were a few others, too, that are not much in usage in speech, but they have never updated the language in the road signs.
So yeah, rotaries. The first week I lived here, I went around the Chelmsford rotary a few times, to go to the grocery store! My kids thought I was nuts. It was a "minor" exit, i.e. a regular road, not a state highway. Of course, now, that rotary is all well signed and much easier to navigate. If they have 2 clear lanes, they are OK, but the problem here, is people enter and exit without yielding and don't follow the established rules about which lane, inside or out, to be in if you are going more than halfway around. I live within 2 miles of one of the most notorious rotaries in the state. It's a rite of passage when kids in this area get their license! They have redone a major part of the highway, but the plan to elevate the highway, get rid of the rotary, and put the 2 town roads that are exits below it is still a couple of years off. This highway cuts my town in half and when they fix this, it will make a huge difference for the residents. They are starting to put more directions/instructions in rotaries and are calling them round-a-bouts, too. I have seen some in Europe with 10 exits! The difference is, that everyone follows the rules. We had to ride our bikes on one of those huge ones, coming into Santiago de Compostela, last summer, and I was scared as hell, but the leader prepped us and it was fine.

[ny biker]

We have similar problems here with people not yielding or being in the correct lane in some of the more complex traffic circles in DC. When I first moved here and got a car, I asked a friend to give me directions from my home to I-95 that avoided all circles. They are adding new ones in the suburbs and most of them seem okay, but the ones in DC are crazier.

There is one circle in the neighborhood where I live now that is a problem. It's at a 3-way intersection but the roads are not at right angles, so it doesn't really look like a circle when you approach from some directions. Everyone ignores the signs to yield. It's bad enough in a car but is even more dangerous when you're on a bike.

[Trek420]

I don't know much about this candidate but this is one of the best ads I've seen. Any of you runners or triathletes may like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YaaatXeij8

[ny biker]

That was a good ad, Trek. Thanks for sharing it.

I went to the March for Our Lives in DC yesterday. It was great. The speakers were all young -- teenagers, young adults, some as young as 11. They told moving stories of losing loved ones to gun violence. It was inspiring, and gave me hope for the future for the first time in a while.

There were some big musical performers there, too, but none of them took attention away from the message of the day. In fact there was no one introducing any of the speakers or performers, so I didn't know who most of them were until they started to speak and tell their stories. I have to say that I was very impressed by the overall organization of the event.

A big part of their message was to register and vote! A few days ago I saw a request for volunteers to register voters outside of a couple of Metro (subway) stations in my area, so I signed up for a two-hour shift before heading to the march. Most people who passed us were already registered, and we only registered one person, but she was a middle-aged woman who was registering to vote for the first time, which was great. (I think she may have been an immigrant.) As I exited the Metro station on my way home I saw other volunteers and asked how things were going, and they said they'd registered 4-5 people. With the close elections we've seen recently, every vote counts.