Holy Mountain: A Blog about Our Common Life: Post No. 500: Transition

Monday, May 29, 2023

Post No. 500: Transition

"500 Miles" record jacket featuring Peter, Paul and Mary

Getting to the 500th post on this 10+ year old blog caught me by surprise. The school year at Coe College just ended a couple weeks ago, and congratulations to the class of '23 as well as long-time colleagues who are retiring. I then spent a week or so immersed in thinking about bicycle commuting--luxuriating in that much time focusing on a single subject! This week I'm off to Charlotte for my first-ever in-person Congress for the New Urbanism. Somewhere in all this my birthday happened. But despite all this whirl, I am not one to let a milestone pass uncommemorated.

When times are mysterious, serious numbers will always be heard--PAUL SIMON

When I started writing this in 2013, I was needing a place to park and reflect on the information I was amassing for a first-year seminar course on place I was teaching at Coe. That course soon begat another, Politics of the City, for the Department of Political Science. Presently I was connected, to my delight, with communities of fellow urbanists outside the college, both locally (Corridor Urbanism started meeting in January 2015) and worldwide (through Strong Towns and eventually CNU). My blog thus became a means of participating in broader conversation about our city and cities in general, on top of being a resource for teaching and occasional public speaking engagements. All that in turn kept me writing.

This is my town

My year-old reflections from number 450 stand pretty much unchanged. Yet from my vantage point atop this pile of now 500 posts, I am aware that the context for writing is changing. In a year or three I will be retiring from my faculty position at Coe, so I'll no longer have a professional rationale, nor the salary to fund urbanist initiatives (trips, books, memberships). At the same time my urbanist communities are going through changes, and so those connections doubtless will be altered as well. Who will I be, when I'm no longer a college teacher who co-runs a civic group on the side? Who will be my tribe, and where will be my place(s)? What will be my relationship to my neighborhood, and my city? My path is murkier than it's been for a long time, when I was a lot younger. Reply hazy--try again.

Role model: Everywhere she lived, Jane Jacobs
contributed both theory and activism to her community

I'm thinking I might could take a crack at local activism. I came out of Bike to Work Week feeling that I have some things to say that nobody else was saying, and that I could become an advocate for commuter cycling and other active modes of getting places in town. Until now I've never been comfortable as an advocate: teaching as I practice it is analytical not argumentative, and so frankly is my brain. But spending a week thinking only about bicycling enabled me to focus and gave me confidence I knew of what I spoke and had (have?) something to contribute to the community.

After 2013 I narrowed the focus of Holy Mountain from the broad topic of "place" to the ingredients of human community ("our common life," in a felicitous phrase I snatched from a correspondent a few years ago). I focus on what I feel I can contribute to the dialogue, and don't feel at all compelled to track current headlines. I'd probably need to narrow my scope even further to have enough knowledge to be an effective advocate, maybe to three core issues like active commuting, affordable housing, and local business development.

Local businesses are essential to successful communities,
just as coffee is essential to successful blogging

A narrower scope would retreating from other important aspects of our common life (the environment, equity, parks, transit, &c.), though there could be opportunity to incorporate those as well. For example, one reason bicycle commuting is crucial, and not just valiant, is the increasing stress cars put on our environment.

bent and broken sign indicating a crosswalk

Crosswalk sign took one for the team
(Czech Village, 2023)

One thing that gives me pause in all this is awareness that I am easily frustrated and discouraged. Zach Mannheimer, who gave the keynote address at the Iowa Ideas in-depth series on creative placemaking this month, told the audience that every initiative he's ever undertaken has required four years to overcome resistance. If I'm going to make it through four years, I'm going to need a team of friends/colleagues/partners, a veritable quantity of quality people.

I also don't want to become a crank. I've known quite a few people, typically retired people, who get one or more ideas that they can't stop talking about. They are not, to say the least, effective promoters of those ideas, but they don't know enough to improve or quit. I really don't want to become them.

Then just when I needed an infusion of courage, Addison Del Maestro reflected on his time at his blog, The Deleted Scenes:

Newslettering is like telling a long story in many pieces. Each article stands alone but isn’t necessarily meant to stand alone. The really fun thing about a newsletter is getting to write almost the same piece over and over—not beating the dead horse and filling column inches, but slowly sharpening an idea until it’s just right.

Del Maestro used examples from three of his posts on small towns, concluding on his most recent If I hadn't written several previous iterations of this, I would not have been able to put it just right here.

Reflects on writing:
Blogger Addison Del Maestro (from substack.com)

I realized instantly that he was right, that through my own blogging exercise I too was refining my thoughts about the various subjects as I engaged with others, responded to new information, and reflected on my own expression. That's true, for instance, of all three subjects I dealt with this month: the Iowa state legislative session, bicycle commuting, and housing.

I wonder what this blog will become once it's abstracted, as it inevitably will be and probably soon, from the context in which I have been writing. Maybe Del Maestro provides a clue to the answer with the title to his May 22 newsletter: "Just Write." If writing is what I do, then by gum I will "just write," and purpose(s) will appear. And if I become a crank, it's easier for everyone if I'm doing it online instead of across from your face.