On bikes and writing: Bike Writers

Posted by [email protected] | Jun 15, 2016 | Cultural Life | 0 |

Donald Hyatt inside the Rochester Subway 5/23/16

Because I had biked to the Lilac Festival to see the vendors on the way to see Geva’s “May Queen”, I met Monica Majcher who was taking a picture of her bike alongside blooming Lilacs.

Monica at the bike rack at the Lilac Festival [Photo: David Kramer]

Monica, an artist in several mediums, had just returned from a 9 month trek across the U.S. — including Burning Man — just in time for the Lilac Festival.

With Dave Dowd (right) [Photo: Monica]

Having written “Two on a Rickety Bicycle,” I went to the Liberty Pole Way along with about a dozen bike writers.

There I met Donald Hyatt. On the way to our first destination the Lower Falls Park, Don, a postal worker, writer and photographer, gave me a tour of his urban postal route.

As we biked past the last remaining Ukranian family (before white flight this was an immigrant neighborhood), Don provided commentary that was a sociological tour de force. We look forward to Don’s promised contributions to the magazine.

At the Seat of Remembrance and Forgetting, the bike writers stopped to enjoy the riverscape and journal. Don took the picture. Then, inside the subway on South Avenue (where once love and hope was found), we again stopped to journal.

Seat of Remembrance and Forgetting [Photo: Don — with his borrowed journal for the pic] 5/23/16

Come bike and write with us. Every other Monday (next on June 20th) at 6:30 starting at the Liberty Pole Way.

from Two on a Rickety Bicycle

SEE ALSO

For Golisano Children’s Hospital with love at the inaugural Gran Fondo at the Twilight Criterium

Two on a Rickety Bicycle

Love and Hope in the Rochester Subway

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.