“It would be wonderful if I could see the end of civilization during my lifetime.”
—Hayao Miyazaki, Japanese director, born January 5, 1941
If you don’t have children you may not be familiar with Miyazaki’s work. He has now retired from active film production but leaves a long list of masterpieces, including My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and my favorite, Porco Rosso. Do yourself a favor and watch them in Japanese with subtitles. Avoid the dubbed versions with the egregious Fanning sisters. I think Disney employs them to train adults to loathe the sound of small children’s voices.
When I was a boy, my bicycle was magic to me because it extended my range of exploration by an order of magnitude. I never knew that that my trusty Schwinn shouldn’t actually be able to, y’know, stay upright.
Today and Tomorrow in #westernma
| MONDAY | JANUARY | 6 |
| 8:00–9:00AM | Westfield | Westfield Chamber Mayor’s Coffee Hour |
| TUESDAY | JANUARY | 7 |
| 8:00AM | Agawam | MarketRight |
| 9:00-10:00AM | Easthampton | G.R.I.S.T. – Get Real Individual Support Today |
| 6:00PM | Northampton | Webdive |
| 6:30PM | Indian Orchard | The Geek Group of Western Mass |
| 8:00PM | Amherst | UMass Amherst Entrepreneurship Initiative Social |
Reading
“…turns out that taking into account the angles of the headset and the forks, the distribution of weight and the handlebar turn, the gyroscopic effects are not enough to keep a bike upright after all. What does? We simply don’t know. Forget mysterious dark matter and the inexplicable accelerating expansion of the universe; the bicycle represents a far more embarrassing hole in the accomplishments of physics.”
We still don’t really know how bicycles work
The Last Word
“I’d rather rot on my own floor than be found by a bunch of bingo players in a nursing home.”
—Florence King, American writer, born January 5, 1936