Repost – passing on the word from one of my personal favorite organizations from back up in Davis, the Bike Church. If you’re in town, come on out and support ecological sustainability, community building, and good times! The Bike Church is a group of volunteers who help people fix their bikes, or teach them how to fix bicycles if they are interested…and Davis, California is known for protecting our environment by having a culture which encourages people to ride bicycles for short trips around town rather than driving cars (it’s difficult to park many places there, so bikes are practical.)

Subject: Please Help Us Move Downtown THIS SUNDAY AFTERNOON!!!!!!!!

The Bike Church is making its next big leap, to a new location, new nonprofit status, and a new name, and we need your help!!! 

Come celebrate our NEW SHOP at 4TH and L STREET!

* help us move this sunday from 12-4pm,
* visit our new location in the coming weeks,
* make a donation to help us pay rent for our first year,
* volunteer with us and learning how to teach bicycle repair,
* tell your friends to come by!

If you’re able, come help us the day after picnic day from 12-4pm to move our tools from the Sustainable Research Area to 4TH and L.

Our new shop is now called Bike Forth!, and we are now known as The Davis Bike Collective, and you are now IN THE KNOW…

Bless up, Get Down, and Bike Around,
Congle-Roshi

P.S.  Our grand reopening will be NEXT SATURDAY, the 25th of April

First of all, I attended one of the local Earth Day work-party events, the marsh grass watering and weeding in Union City/Hayward, CA at Eden Landing – today, April 18th from nine to noon. Found out our area is home to the endangered clapper rail/tiny salt marsh mouse and all about how the wetlands have shrunk over time and how they filter pollution and heavy metal residue out of the environment. Encourage as many of the Synchronized Chaos family as possible to Google/GoodSearch Earth Day events in your local community.

Also – shout-out to Oakland’s Montclair Neighborhood’s El Agavero – wonderful place that is about to host a Cinco de Mayo event Tuesday, May 5th with local mariachi bands. Beautiful restaurant, not too expensive, with authentic Frida Kahlo tequila produced in honor of the binational artist who ‘painted her own reality.’ The Lincart Gallery on Market Street (near Civic Center Bart) in San Francisco is also featuring photography of places/people related to Frida Kahlo and the enigmatic artist Man Ray.

Another announcement – passing on a letter from Fran Varian, social justice-oriented performance artist suffering from late-stage Lyme disease and part of the Synchronized Chaos family (if you have recurring flu-like symptoms, please ask for a Lyme test as this condition can be cheaply, quickly treated if found right away but can be deadly and unaffordable to treat if found late, as happened for Fran.) The letter concerns how to help her and others, and encourages people to make the most of whatever life is left to them:

Editor’s note, for those able and interested in helping Fran out, or reposting this message (and the letter is worth reading as the girl can write, even if you can’t spare cash at the moment!)

*She can receive donations online at: www.helphealfran.org

Or:

Fran Varian
503 Carlton Ave.
Durham, NC 27701

My Very Dear (and Hella Pretty) Lyme Fighting Army:

Unbelievably, this thank you letter is close to five months in the making. I’d like to say that time moves quickly when you have Lyme Disease, but it doesn‘t. Time rolls together when you are chronically ill, long stretches of it with little to delineate a day in January from a day in late March, except for a bit more sun.

I had set out all of those months ago to thank you. I thank you multiple times each day but I wanted to offer a thank you that you could see, a proper thank you that you could hold onto and come back to; even point the misanthropes in your life toward as evidence that there is good in the world, and that it originates in you.

Recently a 27 year-old man in Maryville, Illinois walked into a Baptist Church and shot its Pastor to death. The man, Terry J. Sedlacek, has a very severe case of late stage, neurological, Lyme Disease. He did not start out a shoot ‘em up kind of guy, but once those bacteria screw themselves into your brain and get the opportunity to hang out for a while everything about you changes.

It is well documented that he did not receive the care he needed. Very few of us are actually receiving all of the care we need. But in the absence of an adequate or sympathetic health care system the support and belief of one’s community makes an entire world of difference.

I wish you could see yourselves from here. You are many beautiful colors, all sizes, most socio-economic groups, many different genders, and many different sexualities. You run the gamut from the healthiest to the strongest crips and survivors I’ll ever lay my grateful eyes upon. You live all over the country, and in Canada and in Europe. You have various, and sometimes opposing beliefs. Some of you are religious personnel and some of you are not so holy. I’ve known you for most of my life and there are those among you I’ve never met – and still you are my family. You are smart and funny and kind and compassionate and you hold me up – you have held me up for over a year now. On my very worst days when I am certain I absolutely can not endure another minute of this I imagine your faces, and I hold on.
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