Inspire Bohemia Goes Carbon Neutral!

I am very proud to announce that Inspire Bohemia will soon be Carbon neutral!!

I came across a website by the "Make it Green" program started in Germany that has begun an initiative called "My blog is carbon neutral." The goal of this initiative is to neutralize the carbon dioxide emissions produced by a blog by planting a tree for each participant. Wait, wait... blogs produce carbon dioxide!? At first you may be like ehhh? but if you really think about what goes into powering Bloggers' network of blogs, not to mention the entire internet(!) it then becomes clear.... However, if you need it put into greater perspective just read this quote from the website and check out the diagram below:

"According to a study by Alexander Wissner-Gross, PhD, physicist at Harvard University and environmental activist, an average website causes about 0.02g (0,0008oz.) of carbon dioxide for each visit. Assuming an average blog gets 15,000 visits a month, it has yearly carbon dioxide emissions of 3,6kg (8lb.). This can mainly be tracked back to the immense energy usage from (mainframe) computers, servers, and their cooling systems."

For each blog that joins the "My blog is carbon neutral" initiative, "Make it Green" and their U.S. partner Arbor Day Foundation will plant a tree in the Plumas National Forest of Northern California that will neutralize the carbon dioxide emissions of that blog for the next 50 years! Arbor Day Foundation is a non-profit conservation and education organization that has made it their goal to reforest 5,500 acres of Plumas National Forest with 792,000 trees after terrible fires destroyed over 88,000 of its forested acres back in 2007.

Together, "Make it Green" and Arbor Day Foundation are not only helping reforest the Plumas National Forest, but they're simultaneously enabling ordinary citizens of the world to contribute to the sustenance of our planet's health by neutralizing and thus reducing carbon dioxide emissions. What a wonderful initiative!

According to the "Make it Green" website there are currently 893 blogs participating... Well, I plan on being the 894th!

This is the least I can do to blog responsibly, and I encourage all of you with blogs out there to do the same. If interested, all you need to do is write a blog post on the initiative and post the 'Carbon Neutral' graphic button of your choice on your blog! For detailed instructions on how to participate and make your blog Carbon neutral please visit this link, or any of the following:

How can I participate?

1 Blog, 1 Tree - How it works!

News and Participants

Arbor Day Foundation

It's Friday, wheeeeee!!!!

via We Heart It

Hello all! I hope you are all having a wonderful Friday so far, enjoy my new post on Dutch Artist Mariska Meijers!

Also, I think these images from We Heart It are sooo cute!

I'll be back later on with some more posts!

via We Heart It

Dutch Artist and Designer Mariska Meijers

Chrisanthemum and Pink Ikat, oil on canvas 40x40cm

I'm excited to share with you a very brave and talented Dutch artist and designer named Mariska Meijers. I call her brave because up until a few years ago Mariska was a corporate attorney! That's right, with no formal training, education or experiences in art or design she took the leap of faith to fulfill her passions, something that should serve as inspiration to all of us.

I am convinced that if one does not do what they love in life, they can never be truly happy or fulfilled! I believe you reach your greatest potential by being true to yourself and your passions. For this reason I admire and respect Mariska, her achievements show that it is never too late to change your mind about how to live your life and it's certainly not impossible to do a squealing u-turn and go in another direction. As long as it is for something that moves you, inspires you, makes you happy and brings out the best of who you are and what you are capable of - go for it!

Moving on.... Artist and Designer Mariska Meijers creates vibrant colorful paintings, depictions of interior spaces including re-imaginings of her very own interior decor. I can relate to this as I often have drawn out rooms in my apartment in other ways I would design them! Her paintings range from watercolor on paper to oil on canvas and her subject matter is predominately eclectic still life interiors. I love her bold use of color, her way of shading with water color paint and most of all, her various patterns and designs of the Ikat nature!

In addition to selling her artwork, Mariska Meijers launched her own stationary line in 2008 and has converted many of her paintings into designer pillows, the first of which launched in May of 2009. For more information about Dutch Artist and Designer Mariska Meijers, and to purchase her artwork and products visit the following sites:

MariskaMeijers.com
I Used To Be Snow White But I Drifted (her blog)

Mariska Meijers Web Store

Mariska Meijers is a beautiful and inspirational artist and I am looking forward to meeting her tomorrow, yes tomorrow Saturday July 31, 2010! Mariska Meijers will be having an exhibition for her artwork at the Design Within Reach studio in Coral Gables, Miami, Florida on Miracle Mile. After working in the design industry for a couple years now I have been to the DWR showroom a few times and so I will definitely be there! Did I mention this was Mariska's first U.S. exhibition!? It is! Exciting! Anyway, if you live in or around Miami and would like to attend the art show and reception please R.S.V.P. by visiting the Design Within Reach event website here:

Mariska Meijers at DWR South Florida Studios
Art show and reception: July 31, 2010, 5-8 pm
Art exhibition: July 11 to August 9, 2010

or

View the Facebook event page here!

"I don't believe in minimalism. There are no rules when it comes to mixing styles and colours. A house should give you a happy and warm feeling. With this in mind I create my art and my products."

- Mariska Meijers

Interior with Union Jack, watercolor and ink, 20x20cm

Flamingo Flowers and Pink Ikat, oil on canvas, 40x50cm

Desk, watercolor and ink on paper, 20x20cm

(Images courtesy of Mariska Meijers and should not be used without her permission)

Best Bands In the BOTG Mailbox

To wrap up the very popular BOTG Mailbox series (/sarcasm), I'm going to highlight four bands whose submissions impressed beyond the usual, the kind of submissions that will have me actually following these folks to see if they can manage to get somewhere bigger and better. This isn't necessarily the same as me saying I love the bands. Rather, they just seem somehow more accessible, or maybe they've kicked it up a notch, musically, or maybe they just hit a different groove, enough to raise a curious eyebrow.

So, without further adieu, here's your four Best Bands in the BOTG Mailbox.

1. School of Seven Bells 

Windstorm (mp3)
I L U (mp3)

Three days after I took advantage of this band's kind offer to test drive their album, I saw promos for it plastered all over eMusic, and I thought, Damn, I'm gonna be late to the promotion party. Trust me, if you like the songs above, you'll love their album. A mix of electronica and inspired by a variety of '80s and early '90s sounds -- My Bloody Valentine comes immediately to mind -- this band will find plenty of sullen teens and misty adults eager to embrace them. Their leadoff song, "Windstorm," is just damn good by any standard.

2. The Belles

Time Flies When You're Losing Your Mind (mp3)
The Burning Questions (mp3)

"Lo-fi." For such a simple concept, I can't ever quite seem to get it. Regardless, if The Belles are "Lo-Fi," then they're damn good at being "Lo-Fi." They're a little bit mopey, a little bit shoe-gazey. They play a simple and tight set, know how to craft a decent earworm, and wear their hearts on their sleeves. That guitar riff that carries through in "The Burning Questions" is the kind of thing that makes for great John Hughes movie moments.

Bands like this one don't do it to play in arenas, but rather because there's this poison in their souls that has to bleed onto a page. All the great artists have it -- even if not all of them make it -- and I'd love to see these cats play a live set, because I bet it would be intense and splendid.

Their second album, released in June, is titled Time Flies When You're Losing Your Mind. Consider losing your mind with them and buy a few of their songs. Their older stuff is available on eMusic, but the new album is on Amazon.com.

3. Detox Retox

Caroline (mp3)

This band comes across as a little bit Weezer, a little bit Phoenix. Poppy jangly guitar music with just enough of a nerdy alternative edge to keep things interesting. While "Caroline" is my favorite from the EP they sent, their other songs are certainly worth a spin if this one catches your ear.

Their album is entitled Movement and is available now at eMusic and other online retailers.

4. Neil Nathan

Disappear (mp3)
Do Ya (mp3)

Rosario Dawson. Electric Light Orchestra. Matthew Sweet. If you can get the first into your video, and you have the audacity to craft a stripped-down acoustic version of the second, and if your sound is guaranteed to earn comparisons to the third, then you're guaranteed to get my attention and interests.

Neil Nathan isn't Matthew Sweet, but that's hardly a crime. Nathan has a little more old-time Lenny Kravitz in him as well. Some of his songs are a little out of my interest range, but there's no questioning his talents and production qualities.

His album is The Distance Calls and is available now at eMusic and other online retailers.

Christmas in July

Down here in sunny and hot Florida, my daughter and I went shopping yesterday and came home with an unusual haul: retro 60's dress $4.00, 2 retro scarves $3.98, a Bobbie Ann Mason memoir $1.00, 12 champagne flutes $7.00, a multi-colored top $3.00, a jar (for preserving lemons) $2.00. Oh, the most expensive item--a Hawaiian shirt for me to wear to her 21st birthday party $4.99.

Her being a hip, stylish woman in her 20's and me being an obliging, semi-curious father, we cruised the thrift stores and consignment shops up and down U.S. 41. For the unitiated, like me, a thrift store is more likely to be something of a junk store, possibily run by a church or an organization like Goodwill Industries or the Salvation Army, while a consignment shop tries to offer higher ticket items, especially in the area of women's clothing.

At a consignment store, you can get a designer dress; at a thrift store, you will find clothing, perhaps some nice, but you are more likely to find a left-handed golf club, a box of 8-track tapes, or a copy of The Corrections.

Some of the thrift stores look like the "utility room" in my basement; some of the consignment stores look like, well, like their stuff has not actually been worn. The consignment store will have been arranged by a designer, with antique accent pieces, classical or New Age music and women with British accents. Their policies are very clear and do not involve haggling. If the piece hasn't sold in x months, they drop the price continually until it does. That's how you get a bargain: wait until July for something you liked in April and get it for a steal--if it's still there.

The thrift stores, on the other hand, have their own run-down, idiosyncratic charm. Sometimes. One place we went into, had, inexplicably, several shelves of Pepperidge Farm products. Not used. At another, the two proprietors, who must have been in their late '80s could not wait to get us out the door at 2 PM so that they could leave. They were church volunteers. Another had used, or at least resold, personal products for sale--mouthwashes, razors, etc.

Yes, there is something of the Auschwitz to these places. That may be unfair, certainly overstated, but if you have seen film or photograph of the piles, indeed warehouses, of personal belongings at the camps, you can't help but be a little creeped out by the buckets of mismatched knives, stacks of china, and racks of shoes still in good shape that line the shelves of a thrift store. Not to mention, of course, the clothes.

Florida, though, has two things working in its favor. One is that, if you can get yourself into the mindset to search these stores, Florida is, for obvious reasons, a better source of merchandise than most states. And, as my daughter said, "Somehow, these places aren't as sad when they're not located where you actually live." Because you are, indeed, sifting through people's lives at these stores, lives that have been discarded, mixed together, stacked, discounted.

But does an object in any way carry the memory of the person who owned it if you didn't know that person? Probably not. It becomes, once again, just an object that either has use or it doesn't. In a world that is running out of resources, reusing something that might otherwise have ended up at the dump is probably a good thing, even if you only reuse it for a themed college dance or a birthday party.

In the random, mysterious world of the thrift and consignment stores, there is an improbable, unstatistical chance that a dormant coffee mug or hat can regain its value, or some new value, when a traveller, who stopped by chance into a non-descript store, spied it.

Weekend Road Trip!

I know, I know... I didn't do the Amsterdam Flower Market Part II post on the succulents and cacti last week as promised. I'm sorry! Do I have an excuse? More than one! My weekend was just as hectic as expected, but my boyfriend and I had a great time visiting his friends in Palm Beach Shores and then on our mini road trip adventure to Tampa to pick up and transport his grandma-ma back to Miami with us. Driving through an extremely long state like Florida can be overwhelming! We thought that since we were already up north in West Palm Beach that things would be a bit easier, but no no.... We failed to realize how being on the east coast somewhat canceled out any type of trip progress, in fact it kind of made things worse, since we had to cut across the middle of Florida around Lake Okeechobee where the state is wider than down south and the roads are lonely and seem to go on forever. I'll tell you, it has been a few years since I drove through small town Florida, much less small town anywhere, and it is a sad sight to behold. Evidence of our weak economy is rampant and obvious, we saw entire towns where every business is closed except a gas station and small market... I could go into more detail about our observations, but it's probably best I save those issues for the political blog which my boyfriend and I plan to start soon.

Enjoy the pictures!

I was so upset that I couldn't get my phone out in time for when we were passing by Lake Placid and the surrounding lakes, it was an amazing picture with a rainbow in the sky and everything.... this is the picture I took after we had already passed, if you look carefully behind the electrical pole you can see the rainbow....

A hill-y moment in Florida... whoa!...

The sky is beautiful...

An oops picture, but you can see part of my ikat patterned dress.... and my boyfriend's phone on my lap because I was taking pictures with mine and navigating the road trip with his, hehe....

This is when the rain was headed towards us (rather, when we were headed straight for the rain!).... that one shower in the distance looked so cool....

Such a rich vibrant blue....

Dairy farms as far as the eye can see....

Nearing Tampa we spotted DINOSAUR WORLD!!! LOL....

T-Rex was prowling nearby under a billboard.... :)

It started raining, but it was okay because we witnessed an INCREDIBLE sunset that made everything glow pink.... the dash board, the road, the trees, it was awesome!

On our way back home, approaching the bridge crossing Tampa Bay, it looked like we were driving into the sky!...


Green lights highlighting the architectural detail of the bridge crossing Tampa Bay.....

We got home really late but it was fun, and since we wanted a peaceful relaxing Sunday to ourselves, totally worth cramming it into a one day adventure!

BOTG Mailbox Music Week!

Once or twice a year, I've tried compiling some of the best of the hundreds of music submissions Bottom Of The Glass receives every few months. Every time, it seems, one of the songs gets busted by lawyers who apparently don't agree with the promoters who told me I could promote the songs in the first place.

But dammit, these bands need us. They need attention. So, for them, I'll risk it.

Besides, I'm on vacation at the beach this week anyway, so the feds'll never find me! Mwahaha!

Today, I present to you the BOTG Free Music Mailbox Mix, Summer 2010 version. On Thursday I'll highlight my favorite bands that offered EPs or entire albums. The best of the lot, if you will.

To get to the entire collection, click this link. Here's the playlist... in the order Box.net seems to just want it...

1. Bomb Shelter - Nakatomi Plaza
   decent proto-punk. great name.
2. Big Top - Proper Villains
   wicked good electro-dance-trip stuff. not my thing, usually, but this is fun.
3. This Motion - Roman Numerals
   i get a little psychedelic fursy, bauhausy vibe. it makes me want to wear black eyeliner. but, like, in a good way, sorta.
4. Hooked - Maylee Todd & Circle Research
   also not my standard fare, but this song's catchy and classic.
5. Close My Eyes - Rudely Interrupted
   if you can hear this and not drift back into the '80s, you're either too young or there's too much pain involved.
6. Let's Kiss - Living Days
   why leave the '80s? these dudes couldn't have stolen more directly from The Cure if they chopped off Robert Smith's head. but if you're gonna totally riff someone, riff the right bands!
7. The Stalker - Hunter Valentine
   one hell of a catchy guitar riff. great first four measures. catchy femme voice with 'tude. definitely one of the best mailbox gifts of the season.
8. Never Been Worse - Gasoline Heart
   a little j.mascis and a little drive-by truckers goes a long way.
9. Darling Dear - Little Fish
   strong and fun build-up on this one. gets more fun the longer you hang with it.
10. We'll Have a Real Good Time - Lights On
    this band almost made it to Thursday. decent album. decent nose for a hooky guitar lick.
11. Make Out - The Gypsy Nomads
    ok this is just fun. this is one of those where the forest is much more beautiful than the individual trees.
12. Dear Friend - Emmanuel and The Fear
    another of my faves from the summer freebies. got a little ben folds, but plenty of other fun influences in there.
13. 7 of Spades - The Coppertone
    somewhere, soundgarden should be proud that their crunch lives on in songs like these.
14. Go On - Basia Bulat
    um... i like it? is that enough?
15. Lovesick Teenagers - Bear in Heaven
    i kinda cheated on this one. this is from the Pitchfork Music Sampler that's free for eMusic members. this is my favorite song in the bunch.

Anyone who downloads this, I'd love to know what the favorite songs were. It's always nicer to compliment the starving artists than to knock 'em down. Kicking a starving artist is just mean.*

* -- To the artists who sent us music but who are not starving, I apologize for lumping you all in together. I hope it's OK if I don't really condone people kicking artists no matter how well-fed they may be.

Wonders of Nature

Internet too spotty to load songs. Sorry.

Florida needs no zoo. Not when a simple morning walk yields the following: a baby armadillo scouting its breakfast by the edge of the sidewalk, two sandhill cranes standing at the cart path, watching the golfers drive by. Even the leaf you are about to kick off the concrete turns out to be an insect momentarily away from its context.

The screech from the dark swamp, the rustle in the brush, the memory from a decade ago of a small herd of something racing across the road, a something I’ve never solved. The slender head that emerges from the pond then slides back in. Sometimes, nothing but a pair of ominous nostrils.

The squirrel looks out of place. You worry for the dog that gets off its leash.

The fronds that fall from palm trees curl like the carcasses of dead animals; every twig in your path gets a second look to make sure it isn’t a snake. Instead of trash, you see along the raised roadways, white egrets with their long, slender necks wading in the water that collects after every rain.

And the lizards. Are everywhere. Tan and brown and green and large and small and daring and tentative and shy and confrontational, the last holding their ground before you with puffed up chins.

At sunset, drive to the jetty to watch the dolphins surface and dive, to see the seabirds fish, to laugh at the inelegant pelican whom evolution has not taught how to land on water with grace.

At night, you return to your third floor, and there at the top of the stairs awaits a translucent toad, whose inexplicable climb has brought him as far away from nature as he can get.

Which isn’t far. Each morning, like the swarms of gardeners covering Gatsby’s property to repair the damages of another party, the workers spread out on their machines to trim, cut, edge, water, mow, and restore order.

But everything knows. We all know.

This manicure of the earth is the most temporary of all efforts down here. Let man shape and plant the earth, give it paths and orderly trees and made pools of water, and still the gators will settle in, the birds will build their homes among the line of palms, the lizards will find their way through window cracks and brief door openings, and all the vegetation that waits on the sidelines will creep forward like a tropical glacier.

Unless certainty somehow trumps mystery. Unless design matters more than spontaneity. Unless patient eyes find no reward of beauty. Florida needs no zoo.



FISHING FOR RESIDENTS ONLY. NO SWIMMING. ALLIGATORS.

The Old Spice Man

Man / Bag of Sand - Frightened Rabbit (mp3)
My Old Man - Stephen Kellogg (mp3)

I love the Old Spice Man.

No. Seriously. I love him love him love him.

This goes way beyond what is culturally acceptable, or what we deem as “OK.” This goes beyond my appreciation for good marketing and advertising. It is a statement of my admiration of what might well be considered the most amazing ad campaign of at least the last several years and quite possibly since the Pleistocene Era.

If you’ve seen the ads, then yes, you have the genesis of what I believe to be awesomeness.

If you’ve seen the ads Pre-OldSpiceMan, then you clearly appreciate that this mentality was already maturing and growing before OldSpiceMan was born, and awesomeness existed before he set foot on the pseudo-Earth that is AdvertisingLand.

OK, stop. Seriously, you need to go check out these ads, because if you haven’t, you’ve somehow missed out on one of the greatest cultural powers of the decade. If you haven’t, you’ve chosen to be that person who doesn’t know who Clara Peller is. You’ve chosen to lack knowledge about the MicroMachines guy, or the Taco Bell dog, or the Time to Make the Donuts Guy, or the Fruit of the Loom gang.

But then the good folks at Wieden & Kennedy (the ad agency behind Old Spice Man) one-upped themselves by making their Facebook page more fun than a day at DisneyWorld (well, at least it’s more fun in a dollar for dollar kind of way).

The allowed all fans of their Old Spice Facebook page to ask Old Spice Man questions, and then Old Spice Man would answer them in a brief video response. What the notion lacked in genuine originality, it more than made up for it in simple hilarity. It even bled into Twitter and responding to celebrities from Ashton Kutcher to Ellen DeGeneres.

And then there’s the four-in-a-row exchange he has with Alyssa Milano. By the third one, not only has coffee gone up Alyssa’s nose, but his work with a feather sent water up my own. Even after days and months of worshipping these ads, I find myself still able to laugh hard enough to end up wheezing.

I’m all about being media-conscientious. All of us, as consumers and citizens, should be guarded and cynical about the power of propaganda. In some sense, I’m in the very profession due to my great respect and fear of that power. But this campaign transcends traditional levels of genius and manipulation and goes into an altogether different viral stratosphere.

I don’t know how long Isaiah Mustafa’s joy ride will last, but I rarely hop on a great roller coaster wondering when it will end. I wait until it’s over and feel that slight twinge of sadness and only hope I can get back on another roller coaster as soon as possible. Rarely can 30 million-plus people hop onto a single roller coaster and have this much fun together.

Dare to enter the rabbit hole of pointless distraction that is the Old Spice YouTube channel, where his myriad of standing-still-in-the-bathroom responses have entertained millions. Or just go enjoy the old reliable standards of his more traditional commercials.

I only ask that you look upon Mustafa’s works, ye mighty, and despair.

Hello! Hola! Bonjour!

Hi there! So far this week I have been dealing with finishing all of the projects I started over the weekend, including: cleaning out and organizing the hall closet, laundry room/closet and whipping some orderliness into my apartment. It feels like I'm always saying that, ha! I guess that's because recently I have really started to realize that I have too much stuff and it's starting to clog up my life. For months now I have been setting aside things that I no longer like/want/need, the same goes for my wardrobe... I cannot wait until I load it all up in my SUV and haul it away to the garage sale my mom and I are planning (which keeps getting postponed to accommodate our lagging preparations, hehe). Once I do that I will have purged a lot of things from my abode and it will feel much more open and less jam-packed-to-the-max! Slowly but surely!

On Sunday I was up at 8am cleaning the kitchen and laundry room and implementing all of the storage solutions I sourced out at Ikea this past Saturday! Let me tell you, for around $75 I got two steel shelving units, a gray metal shelving unit and faux chocolate wood shelving unit! That's $14.99, $14.99, $14.99 and $25 respectively! WHOA! I never really buy much from Ikea other than candles, household kitchen/bath and decorative accessories, curtains and lighting... oh and I can't forget that classic dark chocolate leaning wood floor mirror! As for their furniture, first it isn't really my style, second it isn't long-lasting and timeless, and for the most part it's overpriced particle board. No thanks, I much rather spend my money on antiques and vintage pieces that have been alive and kickin' for decades and will continue to do so for decades to come. BUT, I just could not spend any more time looking for affordable and good looking storage pieces on Craigslist and elsewhere, or else I'll be living amongst boxes until the day I decide to move again! LOL ! So yes, I made good decisions and I ambitiously built all the shelving units as soon as we got home..... and they are all filled up already.... *smiles and shrugs*

Anyway, that's what last weekend was like for me. We didn't end up going to West Palm Beach to visit our friends, they ended up driving down to us (yay)! But not so fast, tomorrow night we are going up there to stay with them and then Saturday we need to dash to Tampa to pick up my boyfriend's grandmother and bring her to Miami. Another hectic weekend for me! I'm already getting excited thinking about all the thrift or antique stores I can make my boyfriend hit up along the way! Woot!

So, I feel a little guilty about being missing in action this week, but I'll make up for it with the Amsterdam Flower Market Part II later today! Believe me, you'll definitely want to check it out since it will feature all of the incredible cacti and succulents they had for sale over there. It was one of my greatest joys on the trip, and yet my greatest torture at the same time. No souvenirs from nature allowed! :( Check out Part I of my coverage on the Amsterdam Flower Market here.

Stay tuned, and in the meantime enjoy these pictures of an absolutely stunning outdoor patio/courtyard with a stairway railing FULL of hanging succulents, particularly the Purple Aeonium and the Burro's Tail, which I also feature in this post.

Wouldn't you love to have this outdoor space!? *swoon* :)

(Photos by Andrea Gomez via Sunset)

This is Only a Test...

Please stay tuned. We will have an actual post about The Old Spice Man, as well as a song or two, posted before noon today.

And if we don't, you can have your money back.

Walking

Sorry, Internet is spotty here, and I can't upload a song.

I've written about walking before. Back in the fall when I had the pedometer. It broke. And I lost focus. Until now. Briefly?

I don't know why I don't walk in Chattanooga. Even in the summers, when it's hard to keep busy at work, I can barely drag myself down to the bookstore to check the mail, even though I intentionally don't have my mail delivered to my office so that I will walk down there and check it. I've got to force myself to drag my dog around the block. If he gets it all done within two houses, we turn around and head home. I know I should tour the neighborhood on foot in the evening, when it's cooler, but I don't do that either.

But get me down here in Florida, and I become a walking machine. Get me in New Orleans or Rome or Paris or Gatlinburg and I'll walk all day. Put me anywhere--Key West, Charleston, Chicago-- and I've got one, primary mode of transportation. Just not in Chattanooga. I can't figure it out.

Maybe it's because in Chattanooga, to get to a place to walk, you've got to drive.

Those of you who know me would be amazed to see me down here in Venice, Florida, out on a Tuesday morning at 7:15AM with my running shoes (irony intentional) on, headphones in my ears, striding at a pretty aggressive clip down Rockley Boulevard, past three-story condos, townhomes, Mexican landscapers, Sandhill Cranes, golf holes, tennis courts, and dark, wooded swamp areas, beautifully-sculpted and held back from the road, that still likely contain all of the wild creatures that Florida has to offer. Especially if you knew that I had already been out at the same time on Sunday and Monday. That's what time I get up in Chattanooga.

When you get down here to Florida, there is an extra incentive to walk. You know what I mean, don't you? It's all of the machines. You see them just about everywhere, those motorized rides for the elderly and the disabled--in grocery stores, driving down the road, heck, even out walking! That's right. While the wife is walking, the husband is cruising along right beside her. While the owner is walking, the aged pet rides in front of her in a child's stroller.

In Florida, you can't help but ponder getting older, and the realization hits you (however obvious it may seem from a far, abstract distance) that if you can't get around when you are older under your own power, if you give up your mobility too early, your options in those later years will be severely limited. You stare that reality in the face. Believe me, that puts a little extra speed in your step.

Especially when you're out there at 7:15AM and you see the other walkers out there and they're all older than you are and you wonder why they're walking so fast and where they're in such a hurry to get to.

Yeah, it's another obvious revelation. Sorry about that. They are trying to walk themselves toward the ever-receding destinations--health, independence. Who isn't or shouldn't be?

It can't be overstated. Walking is life. And this is in no way intended to offend those who can't walk because of some lifelong condition. But for the rest of us, we have no business walking up to our cars at the end of a work day, feeling that heavy, unused quality in our legs that tells us we've been sitting too long.

Because what follows from there? A night of sitting while you eat, sitting while you watch TV, lying down while you sleep?

It's nothing but the earth pulling you home. Will you let it?