welcome to thumblepie

Welcome to Thumblepie, a blog that elevates humility, thumbs and pastry to their proper artistic and spiritual level.

Some of my obsessions: the politics of public transportation, the moral virtue of engaging in debate, the pleasure of discovering how other people see the world.

To kick off with the first of these: public transportation could save our lives if we would allow it to. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but think of everything that would change if US cities had the level of public transportation seen in European cities (or even in Canada). Of course, what everyone thinks of first is the environment and, yes, more public transportation could make a huge difference in our uphill battle against global warming. On an individual level, there's also the obvious benefit of getting more exercise, since using public transportation usually involves at least a little bit of walking. But it would also mean more efficient and more pleasant use of land -- instead of swathes of land given over to housing sprawl and asphalt and strip malls, we would have more compact development which mixed residential and commercial uses (because if you're going to commute to work on public transportation, you're not going to live 40 miles away from your job). And this kind of compact development would have further good effects: more sense of community, less alienation, safer streets (more people on the street walking or waiting for buses at all times). It may sound crazy to claim that public transportation can reverse the decline of communities, but I think that when you ride the bus it is hard to imagine that you are alone in your neighborhood, that your self-interest stops at your front door and that your decisions (about consumption and everything else) don't affect other people.