There are lots of people who know a lot more about this then me who are involved in planning this stuff, but here are my few ideas…

First, so far i have found drivers in Tulsa to be courteous when it comes to bikes. I have had several times when drivers have let me merge in moving traffic, and I have not had any negative experiences so far. Not that i have spent much time in the streets, but so far so good. I think part of this is that i have decided to be really intentional about how i ride in traffic. I ride like a car, I obey traffic laws, and I take an entire lane when i feel like i need to in order to be safe or be seen (this web site explains what i mean by that).

The other day I saw the exact opposite of this. It was night time (as in dark) and i was driving down Yale (a busy arterial) in the left lane. Coming toward me riding in the gutter of the right lane was somebody on a bike, no light, dark clothes. I though I was going to see them get run over.

So, here are the first two things that i would like to see Tulsa do:

First, make explicit laws about how bikers are allowed to ride. Are bikes allowed to take the lane? Is there any situation where they cannot? Are the allowed on sidewalks?

Obviously some of these are already addressed in current law, but there are a lot of people who dont know the answers (like me…), so the second part is education first to bikers (like the guy riding the wrong way on Yale) and to drivers. I’m not so sure i know the best laws to make, there are plenty of people who have researched those issues, my concern is that once those laws are made they be effectively communicated to drivers and riders alike.

Secondly, bike paths, protected lanes, shared rodes, etc. There are lots of ideas and even some controversy out there about the safety and effectiveness of various kinds of bike lanes and paths. I hope that the city of Tulsa takes those differing views into account as they plan for bike infrastructure. They are issues that need to be understood. I might write some of my thoughts on this later…

I wonder what the possibilites are for an alternative grid for bikes. This grid would be made up of rodes that are designated as shared rodes (like 3rd going into downtown is now) that are not arterial. These could just be shared or could have designated lanes depending on the situation. The idea would be to find routes that allow fairly straight paths through neighborhoods (that is one of the hard things about riding through neighborhoods right now, you end up winding around a lot which is ok if your just out for a ride, not so good if your trying to get somewhere). So, there might be places where connecting two streets with some strategic short bike paths would make big improvements in the ability to bike quickly from one place to another. The truth is that a lot of this exists, its just not marked, which party just makes it hard to find. But, even more then that having an alternative grid that is marked and designated as shared roads seems to give legitimacy to the idea of biking on it, and would help drivers stay aware.

The second part of this alternative grid would be bike/walk paths that are designed to connect strategic places. These would create highways so to speak that would make getting across town quicker, much like 169 and the BA do for cars now. River Parks is a great example. The Mingo Valley Trail will be when its done. If the Mingo Valley trail was connected from 41st to 71st it would be possible to ride from where i live at 31st and yale to the 71st shopping area mostly on bike paths (where i would ride once i got there is a different matter…riding on 71st street to get to say…the movie theater…does not sound like fun at all…not that i go to 71st street much anyway). A few more corridors like that around town would be great.

One thing that would have to be paid attention to is how designated shared roads connect to the bike/walk paths. For example right now there are shared rodes on 34th street and 35th street that run into riverside. The River Park Trail is just a few hundred feet past riverside, but there is no way to get from 46th onto the trail without riding on the grass (not to mention crossing riverside in a way that is totally outside the normal flow of traffic). In this case crossing at 31st or 41st works perfectly well if you plan for it. The bigger point is that care must be given to how things connect together.

One place that needs carful consideration is highway crossings. The places where the surface grid crosses under the highways are particularly hard to figure out how to connect through them. The highways and IDL cut off a lot fo great ways to get form one place to another. From my perspective the problem is not that you have to ride a bit further to get to a place to cross, its that almost all the places to cross are crazy big intersections with lots of traffic going lots of directions. These can be navigated safely, but they are intimidating, which im sure turns a lot of people off to the idea of riding, and it does seem like they are some of the more dangerous areas. I don’t know that bikes and pedestrians need there very own ways to cross the highways, but carful attention does need to be paid to these areas.

This alternative grid for bikes seems great, but i actually have some doubts about it. Because everything in tulsa faces the arteries a grid the runs through the neighborhood does not really get you anywhere that you might actually want to go. 71st street shopping is a great example. So, in the end bikers and driver have to learn to coexist on any given road in tulsa, even the big arterial streets, or, the city has to be radically redesigned to make it so that everything, business and houses, are accessible from neighborhood behind it.

I think in the end this gets to the bigger idea of all of this. Planning for biking has to fit in with planning for growth, which has to fit in with planning for mass transite which has to fit in with planning for zoning, which has to fit in with….you get the idea. It all has to fit together. If biking is going to be a realistic form of transportation in Tulsa it has to be part of planning on every level (as does walking, and busses, and cars, whatever forms of transportation we as a city decide are important).

But, it seems that there is another set of issues, which is not so much about the mechanics and technicalities of how to build a bike lane, its more about accessibility, perception, and culture. People who drive and like cars have to not see bikes as a threat to their way of life, likewise, bikers have to not see cars as evil. The city has to legitimize biking through education, good laws and good planning, bikers have to acknowledge that bikes don’t work for everything and cars and trucks have to have their place as well. In the end this is all about developing a culture where it is possible to make a broad range of transportation choices…which seems way harder then building a bike lane.

Enjoy…

…have been enjoying my new favorite coffee mug.

…went for late-night coffee with some friends

…ate a lot of breakfast for dinner

…enjoyed an evening out on the patio with some friends

…received a surprise lemon-berry slush at work

…counted money from the coffee bar donation jar

…and have been reading through the Hunger Games trilogy.

Now, before you get into this post to far I want to clarify something: Its going to come off as very critical of Tulsa Transit, and in truth that is not my intention. From the little I know I think Tulsa Transit’s leadership wants to be good, and understands these issue. Considering the resources they have (Tulsa per capita spending on transit is very low compared to peer cities..and not so peer cities. Our spending per capita on public transportation is lower that that of Springfield, MO).

But, it seems that there is a second level of problems that have to be addressed at the same time. Problems like headway and rout coverage are sort of technical in nature, and have essentially technical solutions (with some politics mixed in). Even if these technical problems were fixed I am not sure that tons of people would start using the buses in Tulsa. There is a marketing problem as well. Consider these two pictures of bus stops near my house:

These two stops, which are typical of many around town, seem to do two thing:

• They tell the people who use the bus system that we don’t care about them…we can’t even bother to build a decent bus stop. We might not give you a place to stand that wont get muddy when it rains, much less a way to keep the rain off. Not to mention a sidewalk or a crosswalk.
• Second, it sends a message to people who don’t ride the bus which reinforces any negative perceptions they have about buses and people who ride buses.

There is a scene in the movie Urbanized  which is particularly applicable here. In the scene the mayor of a big city is riding his bike on a newly constructed bike pathway. On one side of the path is a dirt road for cars. He sort of laughs and points out that bikes are on a nice paved trail and the cars are in the mud. But then he says why. And the reason if a very human reason. He wanted the people who rode bikes to know that they are important. That the city supported them and their pursuit of transportation. His answer was not about trends in walkability, or green, or sustainability, or  bike rights or anything like that. It was about how we treat people when we make hard decisions about spending limited resources.

So, I wonder what would happen if we put people first in our transportation systems? Tulsa Transit has to fix their technical issues, but I hope they also consider how the system treats people. It seem by doing this not only will people be given worth and value, but the transit system as a whole will be more used, simply because it  will be perceived as a place that takes care of the people of this city no matter who they are, and that by using the system you are not relegated to  second class status simply because we are unwilling to provide decent bus stops.

It has been fun to have them here & be reminded of such a special place in our hearts. They are each doing some amazing work to bring communities together as they work with them to plant trees & dig water wells.

And as they are here I am reminded of a few things.

1) We are richly blessed with resources here. Things like running water, clothes dryers, electricity that doesn’t just shut off every other day, smooth roads, and a sort of ridiculous amount & variety of foods to choose from.

2) We eat a lot. And often. We are constantly laughing with these guys because we are taking them to the next meal & they say, “But we just ate a few hours ago-we are not even hungry yet!”

I am grateful that we have had this time with them & am really excited to go back to Jinja in September!

1. Farmers are growing aloe vera and exporting it.
2. The government and people of Uganda are trying to figure out how to manage oil revenues.
3. How Technolog is Helping Kony Victims in Uganda: A Mashable story about an organization that is using video to allow Ugandans to tell there story as a form of therapy.
4. Noodling Syndrom: Mystery disease devastates northern Uganda
5. A dance festival
6. This one is not in Uganda, but Kenya: Renewable Energy
7. Air traffic is stretching the capacity of the airport in Entebee
8. People are working to increase computer literacy,
9. People are working to improve women’s health
10. The national power grid will continue to be inadequate.

In each case you have to make a choice, is this something I want to commit time and resources to? There is awesome power in the connecting ability of the web, and this is one of them. You do have to fight against the feeling that all we have to do to make the world a better place is like something on Facebook. In some cases that’s great and that’s enough, but I hope we all have something that we go much deeper with, care about much more, and impact much more.

Kony 2012 is about a part of the world I care about, and its an important cause, so naturally I am attracted to it, and has caused me to post more stuff on facebook then i probably ever have before, but not really for the reasons you might expect. There has been a fair amount of controversy over the campaign for lots of reasons. Fair enough, the controversy is good. Do your research and make up your mind.

But, i am sure about one thing. There are a lot of people who have never really thought much about Uganda and Africa who are thinking about it now. This is good. We need to know what is going on in the world around us. I fear though that a lot of people are stopping at the end of the 30 minutes, and making some assumptions about the African continent and Uganda in particular that are half truths…or just plain wrong.

I saw this on facebook:

Im not sure exactly what the person who posted this was thinking in her mind when she siad it, so, I am not in any way saying she specifically is taking a narrow view. But, This gets to the heart of my concern. Suddenly there are a lot of people who have a very narrow view of Uganda. This one from an article on Huff Post Teen makes me sad:

However, the largest problem with the concept of military intervention is that it does not really solve the problem. Sure, taking down Joseph Kony would be beneficial, but it would only go so far. Within Uganda, the problem goes deeper than one man and his policy. The Kony regime is a complex organization that is integrated into the country’s politics. By removing Kony and his regime, we would leave Uganda leaderless and in chaos. Uganda’s problems extend beyond a military regime; in fact, the entire country is in disarray. Economic underdevelopment is the main blockage of progress in Uganda. Simply removing Kony from power in Uganda may have short-term implications, however, in the long run, it is a foolishly placed effort. (emphasis mine)

So, I’m going to say first off that Uganda is not in disarray. The country has its problems, but disarray is a bit strong. And it is unequivocally and absolutely false that removing Kony is going to leave Uganda leaderless. Uganda has a president: Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Think what you will about him, but he is the leader of Uganda, not Kony, who is not even in Uganda. This paragraph seems to be born out of some assumptions about Uganda which arguably the Kony 2012 video helps perpetuate, and that this article continues to perpetuate. I think it is awesome that a 16 year old is writing articles that get published and linked to on facebook. I think its awesome that he is thinking about issues of economic development and long term good, and how to best serve people. He is thinking about really important stuff, like aid vs development, the wisdom of military intervention, and the United States role in all of that. But it makes me sad that he seems to have bought into this narrative of Africa as a place defined by chaos and disarray. There is chaos in parts of Africa, and disarray, and really bad things happening, and people like Kony running around causing a lot of hurt. But that is not all there is. Uganda is not just kony, and its not just victims of kony. We sell ourselves and them (and really, God’s creative and redemptive power) short if we only focus on kony.

I am going to level one brief criticism against Invisible Children, and then ill move onto what i really want this post to be about (thats all just introduction!).  Invisible Children has said:

Our films are made for high school children. We make films that speak the language of kids. We say, “You may live thousands of miles away from these problems in Uganda, but those kids are just like you, and you can do something to help them by getting your government and your self involved.” Our films weren’t made to be scrutinized by the Guardian. They were made to get young people involved in some of the world’s worst crimes. We can’t solve every crime, and we don’t intend to. But we can help fight the worst crimes.

I think they are selling their audience a little short. We should expect and equip high school students to think critically and deeply. Chase, who wrote the article above is. I feel like IC does their target audience a disservice by not inviting them into a deeper conversation about Africa. They have a captive audience and the skills to do it. Their website and community could be an amazing place for teens and adults to have their assumptions about Africa challenged.

Now…watch this video. I have posted it before…you really should watch it. Its shorter then the Kony video, so no excuses!:

Here is my challenge: Watch Kony 2012. Let your heart be brokem, do your research and respond to it the way you feel you should. Learn about Kony and understand the issues around the LRA as best you feel you need to. International Crisis Group has a report called “The Lord’s Resistance Army: End Game?” which is an interesting read. Download it here (pdf).

But here is the bigger challenge. Don’t let Kony 2012 be the only story about Uganda. Those 30 minutes must be your starting place, not your ending place. Dig a bit deeper past the assumptions and learn about the good and the bad in Africa. Africa does not have to be your life long passion, but make sure you at least go a little past kony 2012. I would love it if every time somebody posted about kony on facebook they also posted something else they learned about Uganda, positive or negative.

Here are a few things to start with:

People in Uganda make really cool creative stuff.

There are lots of cell phones

and beautiful places

There are people working really hard to make their country better.

There is good food

and churches

and gracious hosts.

There are villages that need water

And Ugandans working to provide it.

There are giraffes.

Giraffes seems like a good one to end on.

I asked Isaac, who lives in Uganda, to tell me a few things he would want people to know that are good about his home. Here is what he said:

First of all uganda is country crossed by a coast line, uganda has so many beautiful sceneries to watch, mountains, hills, valleys, the green environment, the waters with alot of falls, the tourist attractions, the hospitality of the people, different cultures, how people dress in each and every culture, lots of different languages spoken by different, different types of food that is eaten, alot of farming is done, the source of river nile in jinja.

For the knowledge that am getting now in college in swaziland, i just look forward to uplift the people in uganda to have a spirit of togetherness, and being like minded, serving God, and also working hand in hand with kibo group just like i have been doing, so that we help other people in the villages to grow up.

Isaac’s Uganda is not defined by Kony…we should not let our understanding of Uganda be defined by him ether.

what i wrote:

There is a lot to this…its sort of hard to sort out for me. I think the first thing i have to do is to take this 30 minute video for what it is. A promotional piece that is trying to compel people to a specific action. In the end its an advertisement. Now, dont get all up in arms about that, i have made my fair share of advertisements… advertisements for things that I think are good and really important (New LIfe Ranch of course being a prime example). And so, every thing that i think is good about IC and that I worry about IC applies in very real ways to me.

So, here is where i start being uncertain. If you watch the video then at the end you could not be blamed if you thought this:

Kony did bad things and Uganda is a bad place to live. The people in Uganda seem unable to take care of themselves, but if Kony was gone everything would be ok. We can send our military to get rid of Kony and everything will be ok. Bono can do this for us.

Now, Its an advertisement remember? The job of the video is to make the complex simple and call you to action. But, in this case i wish IC would have delved into the complexities a little more (at the very least on their website and facebook). IC says they understand this complexity (see #6 in the Drew’s link above). And i trust they do. So, i wish that they had used this opportunity to introduce people to the complexity. To challenge people to think about Uganda and the rest of the African continent in new ways, so really start thinking about how to truly help and serve people. To give Ugandans a chance to speak. IC is in a unique place to do that. They are great story tellers, have huge reach, and they run real programs in uganda which (should) give them insight into the underlying problems and solution in Uganda…into the complexity.

Ok, i have personally decided to do two things in response to this. First, every now and then i watch a specific TED video to remind myself of a fundamental truth about story telling. Kony 2012 reminded me to watch it again. You should to (really, if you dont do anything else because of this tiny little facebook tread except watch and understand this video you will have learned something really important) :

Second, im going to give some time to trying to understand more about kony and the LRA. Im going to start here (pdf):

A few more links:

IC responds to some of the criticism here.

and i think this is worth reading.

In the end, i hope people think deeply about the issues in this world. In Africa or Asia or Tulsa. I hope people will acknowledge the complexity, and to find new ways to think about problems and solutions. kony clearly needs to be captured and stopped. I just hope that we (me, you, and IC) put that into context and realize that there is lots of other work to do around the world and in our own homes (and hearts), so i hope we use knoy 2012 to deepen our understanding of a few of these issues just a little bit.

also, i would like to hear Bobby Garner, Candice Bush Garner, Roy Mwesigwa, Clint Davis, and Greg R. Taylor ‘s thoughts. They are people who have thought much more about this kind of thing then i have.

8 summers * 2 shirts per summer * 2 people = 32 t-shirts.

That’s a lot of shirts, folks. And I just got tired of wearing only NLR shirts all the time. Our friend Marla gave me a great idea to cut them all up & fashion a blanket out of them. So I did!

Plus a few more other “non-summer” shirts that were acquired along the way. There was one summer when I worked at NLR, but Ben went to Pennsylvania to work at a camp. It was the summer before we got married, and I wanted to be sure he remembered me & that everyone up there knew he was taken.

So I made him this:

It was fairly simple (which is good for me). I just cut out about a 1 foot square from each shirt & sewed them together. Then I found a t-shirt sheet at Target in a dark heather grey color & sewed it as the backing. No batting in the middle, no yarn ties either. (Though I considered both). I ended up sticking with SIMPLE.

And I love the way it turned out! It’s fun using it as a blanket & seeing all the shirts at once when I use it. There are SO many good memories ingrained in the fabric of these shirts. (And a lot of hard earned sweat, I might add…)

There are lots of little interesting things to notice as you move around and look at different countries.In many countries for example there are 2 cell phones subscriptions for every one person. Im really curious to know why. Is it because you need different companies to get complete coverage across an area? Do people just really like their cell phones?

The more interesting thing to me is the ratios of land lines to cell phones. Just scrolling around I only saw one country that has more land lines then cell phones and that is, unsurprisingly I suppose, N. Korea. Scrolling around various developing nations its crazy how quickly cell phone use has risen compared to land lines. It makes sense of course, the time and money investment to run a physical wire to a house is huge, then you have to do that for every house. Its much easier to put up a single tower that serves hundreds of houses. There are still big costs and issues to figure out (like unreliable power…), but over all it is more cost effective.

Of course all of this is just technology. In the end the most important part is how this technology impacts people. There is of course debate about the roll of cell phones in the developing world, but if it is something you are interested in this article is really interesting. The basic idea though is that cell phone companies are learning what people in totally different economic, environmental, and social situations need out of a cell phone. And people are finding really creative ways to use cell phones to increase their connections to other people, and economic opportunities.