“Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba…”

― Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Motorcycles—and riding them—have been a part of most of my adult life. I say most, because I seem to have sworn them off any number of times, only to feel an ache to get back on.

Me, Pick, and a friend incognito under the helmet before a ride, circa 1981.

I bought my first when I was 19, and I don’t know how I managed that without being thrown out of the house. I was an idiot who was more lucky than good, often riding without a helmet and never with earplugs. (The latter practice, combine with too speakers in a small dorm room and too many arena concerts, have left me with an annoying case of tinnitus.)

I graduated from college, took a job in Washington, D.C., and determined that the responsible thing to do as I entered the real world was sell my bike.

In D.C., maintaining ownership of a car proved too expensive. And so, I sold the four-wheeler and … bought another motorcycle. I commuted in all kinds of weather, but when it was too bad, I relied on the kindness of my roommate, Pick, who drove to work on most days, for a ride. Pick ended up buying himself a motorcycle, and we spent many happy weekends camping along the Blue Ridge.

My companion last week, a Triumph Bonneville.

The next rite of passage was marriage, and again, for some reason I was compelled to bite the bullet and give up on the bike. This, despite Beth not really caring either way.

A lot happened, years passed, and one day a vintage BMW motorcycle whooshed by as I sat on our front porch in Urbana. A longtime friend rode one years ago, and I always had a thing for it. Uh oh.

Next thing, I was on a used BMW R80/7.

This time around, now a parent, I took things a might more seriously. I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course, bought good protective gear, and pretty much worked on my skills every time I rode. I read voraciously about technique, and even took a class at a race track.

For years that followed, motorcycling was my meditation. It might seem odd that someone like me—prone to angst and worry—would find peace in an activity that requires hypervigilance just to avoid catastrophe. But I do.

I think it’s because I’m prone to mental spinning, thinking of too many things at one time. On a bike, that stops. Maybe it’s self preservation. Or the extreme stimulation of the experience. Robert M. Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, described the experience as well as I ever could:

“In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”

For years riding was an escape—even if for only a couple hours on a weekend afternoon. I’d get on, head out to the country to a forest preserve, take a hike, and come back.

When we moved to the city,the expense of storing a motorcycle, combined with the combat attitude necessary to survive on downtown streets, led to me, once again, letting my motorcycle go.

The last few months have been especially demanding workwise, and I’ve had a harder and harder time leaving the stress behind. So I took a few days off last week and…rented a motorcycle. I had it just for a couple days and rode around well outside the Chicago city limits. Open spaces and…well…it was as good as ever.

Not sure I want to go to the trouble of buying one and finding a place to keep it and all that.

But I know this: It won’t be my last ride.

A blog post I published here earlier this month got such an intriguing comment from a blogger in Germany that I asked her to write a guest post here. She said “Ja!”

Photo Narrations — pictures for the blind and sighted

by Tina Paulick

Beth’s post was about how she asked writers in her memoir writing class to describe a photograph to someone who is blind and the amazing texts resulting from this exercise. Our blog Photo Narrations for the blind and sighted is dedicated to describing photographs taken by photographers who are visually impaired or blind. It is a great place for blind and sighted photographers and creative writers to:

• reflect on photographs
• gain a better understanding of the process of seeing and perceiving
• respect photography and photo narration as art forms

Two sighted students help a blind photographer adjust her camera to take a picture in Berlin. (Photo credit: Stephan Wilke)

If you are wondering now why blind people are interested in something so visual as photography, our blog also features interviews and guest posts by blind photographers explaining their motivations and how they work. One of our contributors writes:

People always ask, why do blind people want to take photos. I always get this question and it frustrates me, so why don’t we give them an answer. Because we want to, because we can! Why do you take photographs? The world is full of images, we are surrounded by them. Obviously they are important. But blind people cannot see them in the same way sighted people do. We see with sound, touch and our imagination. That’s why photo narration is so important to us. The photo narration helps to capture the image we ultimately see in our minds.

Our sighted describers also benefit from the experience – writing photo narrations for blind people expands one’s perception and imagined boundaries. Karsten Hein, a sighted photographer from Germany who initiated this project writes:

For me as a sighted person, interested in pictures and the perception of pictures, it is a remarkable experience to describe pictures for blind people. It’s a completely different thing, when I look at a photograph in order to describe it for someone, who cannot see it. I have to think in a completely different way than I normally would. What’s important in the photograph? What’s worth mentioning? I look closer and closer, closer than I would look at it in nearly any other context. And the more I look at it the more I have to come to understand how little I really know about the photograph.

Karsten’s idea for this project came after he did a portrait series featuring people who are blind. He talked to his models during the shootings so they’d forget the camera and feel more comfortable. The models had many questions about what impact their appearance might make on other people, and they expressed an interest in photography. Thus, Karsten developed photography workshops for visually impaired and blind photographers.

Karsten’s classes are run in cooperation with a University in Berlin. A small team of sighted students is allocated to every photographer to help him or her to find motives, adjust the camera ,select the best picture and describe the resulting photo in text. We set up our German blog Bilder für die Blinden to showcase the work.

Now we’ve started an English Photo Narrations blog, too, to spread our idea further and to encourage people all over the world to become part of our creative community. We are always looking for volunteers to write descriptions of photographs for us. As Beth pointed out in her Describing a photograph to someone who can’t see blog post, it’s a great creative writing exercise.

Additionally, we provide a platform to publish and discuss the narrations writers come up with for the photographs — our blind and visually impaired members can write comments and ask further questions.

Back to me — I may just give this a try! I don’t think I’ll take any photos, but I may send some photos people give me to the photo narrations blog to see how they describe what’s going on there. Take a look at — or a listen to — the Photo Narrations blog for further information or contact them at: picdesc@gmail.com
You can like them on Facebook or follow them on twitter at @PicDesc, too.

Remember that post I wrote about the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust offering touch tours of its historic sites this year? My friend Linda Downing Miller lives in Oak park, Ill., and last Saturday she accompanied me on a special tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio there .

Linda earned an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte — her fiction is forthcoming in Fiction International and appears in the current issue of Crab Orchard Review. She’s a fine writer, and I was delighted when she offered to write this guest post describing our tour from her point of, ahem, view.

by Linda Downing Miller

Twenty years ago, I was infatuated with the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Moving to Oak Park, Ill., can do that to you.

Beth checking out the inscription.

The village has a wealth of Wright-designed spaces, and I toured as many as I could in my first years here. My husband and I must have taken every visitor we had through Wright’s Home and Studio, restored to its appearance when he last lived there in 1909.

When Beth invited me to go with her on a Touch Tour of the Home and Studio last Saturday, I said yes mostly for the chance to spend time with her. I figured I’d already seen and heard enough about Wright’s work: his horizontal lines and ribbon windows and half-hidden entrances, reached by walking a “path of discovery” that usually includes a turn or two.

The Touch Tour took me on a new path. I was one of a handful of people accompanying friends or family members who are blind or have low vision. The Frank Lloyd Wright Trust offered the tour in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, part of ADA 25 Chicago — a larger project to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. Being Beth’s companion on the tour, alongside her Seeing Eye dog, Whitney, allowed me to “re-see” Wright’s spaces and consider the challenge of making them accessible through other senses.

Fellow writers might appreciate this observation: details, creative comparisons, and specific word choices helped to convey Wright’s work. Our tour guide, Laura Dodd, explained the position of design elements in relation to bodies (“about neck high”). She used similes (wood beams arranged “like an asterisk”). I told Beth that Wright’s intricate, wood-carved designs on the dining room and playroom ceilings were a bit like the wooden trivets she’d felt in the gift shop. A tour volunteer described the vaulted ceiling in the children’s playroom “like a whiskey barrel.”

After thinking about Laura’s description of the way the Wrights’ piano sat in that room with only the keyboard showing, the back half hidden behind the wall, one of the visitors who couldn’t see articulated it more clearly for all of us: “You mean, it’s embedded in the wall.” Yes.

Enthusiasm, curiosity, puzzlement and understanding moved across people’s faces as they listened and asked questions, and as they touched things: fireplace tiles, wall coverings, sculptures, spindles, glass windows and Wright’s famously uncomfortable straight-backed dining chairs. Some people lingered over each touch opportunity. Others eagerly applied their fingers and moved on. (Guess which style was Beth’s?)

She and I talked afterward about the different frames of reference people might have brought to the experience. Beth knew something about architecture before she lost her sight. Other visitors may have been born blind. Laura is the Director of Operations and Guest Experience for the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, and she asked us for feedback during and after the tour. (The Trust plans additional Touch Tours, and American Sign Language Tours, at its historic sites.)

Our group’s consensus was that she’d done a wonderful job. I thought the three guide dogs in the group also handled themselves well in close proximity.

Frank Lloyd Wright played here. And now, so has Beth.

One of the highlights for me and Beth was when Laura invited her to sit at the piano in the children’s playroom. After instructing everyone else not to pay attention, Beth put her fingers on the keys and ran through a short, jazzy tune. When she’d finished, she and I exclaimed over the fact that Frank himself no doubt played those keys. I felt the ghost of my old infatuation. On our way downstairs, Beth reached up to touch the back end of the piano, suspended over our heads, and continued on her path of discovery.

Photos courtesy of Christena Gunther, Founder & Co-Chair of the Chicago Cultural Accessibility Consortium.

Here’s an idea: how about we use instant replay in the presidential debates?

After the last presidential debate, I did look at various fact-checking services—and it’s incredible how many outright lies and unforgivable exagerrations the candidates put forth. More incredible is that the so-called journalists don’t have the backbone to call them on the spot. But they don’t. At least not during the debate, when it would matter the most. You have to go to alternative sites for that, later.

A confession: I haven’t watched Donald and Company mix it up on stage at the debates. I haven’t wanted to and I haven’t had to. Because it’s reality TV, packaged to benefit everybody but the voters, and you hear snippets accordingly from mass media. All because it’s an inexpensive way to get ratings and attention. So I hear about it whether I want to or not.

Major sports have adopted instant replay challenges in various forms. The idea is to get the call right. It doesn’t always work, but it does move toward greater accuracy.

So why not something similar in debates? The candidates have been coached not to answer questions, and to ignore the question and go off on their own talking points. When they do answer, they often spout lies or exaggerations. And sometimes they strike a chord with a segment of the audience, and it looks like a win.

But what if, in real time, they were checked. And they got called on their BS. In real time. On TV. In front of real people when it would make the greatest impact. That would be what we call a teaching moment.

Not sure how it would work, but I’m certain it could be made to work. I wouldn’t leave it to the other candidates to call for a challenge, because, well, that’s the problem: I don’t trust them. And none of them wants to be challenged back, so there’d be a reluctance.

It could be a bipartisan panel consisting of reps from conservative and liberal groups (for primaries, too, yes, because BS is BS). They’d have a limited number of challenges each. They’d throw it to factcheck.org or politifact or some agreed upon combination of organizations. Or an agreed upon panel of reps from research institutes and news organizations, fully wired and equipped in a war room. There’d be a pause, yes, but it’d be worth it.

If there’s a challenge, and the candidate is vindicated, fine. But if it’s BS, as with the vaccination thing that got circulated in the last debate, the challenger in the panel gets up to three minutes to grill that lying candidate about why (s)he lied.

It’s not perfect. But since these debates have devolved into bad reality TV, it’d be nice to inject some real-time accountability into it.

And then it’d really be reality TV.