Year of the Goldfinch

Theory that every year has an animal...like the chinese zodiac, except it changes always, not a set cycle.  (I don't really want to think of this like a keanu reeves character in Thumbsucker.)  Sometimes you have to be in the middle of a year, or look back to know what year it is--like Year of the Wolf if you're a loner and vicious or Year of the Turtle if you get stable and by a house.  

I think this is was my year of the Goldfinch.  Everyone likes them, they look shiny and special, but they're not really good for much except being seen from far away or flying through a field of vision quickly.  

Here's a picture of a dead goldfinch I took a few weeks ago.  I think it was hit by a car, there was another goldfinch near this dead one.  The live one couldn't move well, it was caught in busy Milwaukee and Chicago Avenue intersection.   I was late for work because I stopped and picked the bird up with a plastic bag and laid it down in a near by parking lot (the most peaceful place I could find in the area).  The bird in my hand felt lighter than an insect.  I'm pretty sure it was on it's way to dying.  

I hope this next year is something more useful like a badger or trout.

Pictures from Work

west town's weekly work

see a video about West Town Bikes.

It kind of explains all the work I've been doing.  I'll probably be shot in other towns for all the smack I talk about neighboring bike projects.  Adrian looks good.

Rand

Yet as we stand at night in the great hall, removing our garments for sleep, we look upon our brothers and we wonder.  The heads of our brothers are bowed.  The eyes of our brothers are dull, and never do they look one another in the eyes.  The shoulders of our brothers are hunched, and their muscles are drawn, as if their bodies were shrinking and wished to shrink out of sight.  And a word steals into our mind, as we look upon our brothers, and the word is [Logan Square Yuppies...I mean...as Ayn Rand would say..] fear.

(...)

Our body is betraying us, for the Council of the Home looks with suspicion upon us.  It is not good to feel so much joy nor to be glad that our body lives.  For we matter not and it must not matter to us whether we live or dies, which is to be as our brothers will it.  But we, Equality 7-2521, are glad to be living.  If this is a vice, then we wish no virtue.  

Anthem.  Ayn Rand.  published 1937.  (page 46-47)