Don't Move These Bikes!

Although it's only 80 kilometers from London, the land on which the town of Milton Keynes stands was mostly farms and woodland until the town designation order was made in 1967.  Though equidistant from London, Cambridge, Oxford, Birmingham and Leicester, MK, as it's known in Britain, was never meant to be a suburb of any of those cities.  Instead, it was planned as a hub, albeit a smaller one, in its own right.  Since then, it's become one of the UK's technological incubators--which is somehow appropriate, given that some of the oldest Bronze Age tools were found when it was excavated.

Some people deride or even loathe it for its modern architecture and art. (The "concrete cows" are the butt of many jokes.)  Other people love, or at least appreciate it, for the very same reasons.  One thing that can't be denied is that some of it, especially the public art, won't be found anywhere else.

An example is this mural:

John Watson created it in 1978 and, with the help of students from the nearby Stantonbury School (now known as the Stantonbury International School), installed it on the side of a building in the Stantonbury retail centre.

Well, a retailer wants to destroy the retail centre.  Aldi, based in Germany, has supermarkets all over Europe and in the eastern US.  They want to demolish the building the tile mural adorns.  The supermarket chain says, in its plans, that the mural could be "reprovided somewhere (nearby)".  However, Ian Mitchie, chairman of Public Arts Trust Milton Keynes, is applying to Historic England to have the artwork listed.  Moving it, he said, is almost certain to destroy it, as ceramic tiles don't take well to relocation.

Pumping His Pedals Into Plowshares

Do you love to ride your bike but hate to shovel snow?

If you answered "yes", meet Rob Wotzak of Milford, Connecticut.  He shares your passions and came up with a way to indulge one while making the other less onerous.




Although his pedaled tractor plow is new, the idea had been simmering in his mind for years.  "I had a rusty old tractor plow sitting behind my barn," he said.  Finally, two years ago, he "grabbed the plow and a pile of bike parts" and "started cutting and welding" his first prototype. 

As the saying goes, the third time is the charm:  The model he's using came after that first attempt and another.  One of his motivations to create such a machine, he said, is that "legs are stronger than arms" but that using it is still a "workout."

Still, it looks like a good example of Yankee ingenuity to me!

When We Have A Female President....

Three years ago, I wrote about how, late in the 19th Century, Presidents' Day was bicycle day.

Back then, it wasn't called Presidents' Day:  On 22 February, George Washington's birthday was commemorated.  (Abraham Lincoln's birthday was remembered on the 12th; in some states, such as New York, it's still a holiday.)  In the early 1970s, the US government decided to move certain holidays to Mondays.  Thus was Presidents' Day, observed on the third Monday of February, created. 

Today's the day.  A few shops and online retailers are running sales, as they do on other holidays.  But in the Bike Boom of the 1890s, new models were unveiled and bike shows, along with sales, were held on that day.

On this blog, I've also mentioned that during that first Bike Boom, Susan B. Anthony said that the bicycle has done more than anything to liberate women.  

We haven't had a female President yet in the US. However, in Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt was the Prime Minister from 2011 to 2015.  Here she is, doing what many of her countrywomen do every day: