Your web page raises the fundamental conundrum of modern civilization: the lack of photos of celebrities, famous politicians, famous humanitarians, etc leading a lifestyle that is eco-friendly. Maybe it's because they're so busy being friendly to people, that they forget to be friendly to the earth. Or they're always in a hurry to meet someone who lives too far away from where they are for them to bike hike there, and they have to go in a car or limo or taxi.

That's what I think. Not that my thoughts matter a lot, anyway, but I just want to set it right for the record, since what I think means something to me. Maybe not you, but I thought I'd write it down anyway, just in case the title caught your eye, even offguard, which is usually how things memorable or educational happen anyway. We remember things that jar us, take us for a loop, but not an arc-en-ciel, because that means rainbow, and that's a new symbol for South Africa. Well, actually, something that takes you for a loop the loop would be OK, kind of like a rollercoaster ride. I remember I almost lost my glasses on one of those rides in Daegu at WooBangLand amusement park in Korea. I was not bemused. Methinks I was not befittingly flung. There was no advance warning about being careful about my spectacles, wearing a spectacle strap, or about putting them into my backpack for safe keeping. None, whatsoever. During the ride, I oft had to grit my teeth and hold on to the safety rail tenaciously and resolutely, and my glasses simultaneously. I could have very easily lost my balance while upside down and fallen fatally to the ground below in a sudden, unplanned, and unexpected impact. My camera didn't shutter at the memory of it, but my mind still shudders at the memory of it. I pale and my blood pressure weakens and my speech falters at the recollection of that event in 1998. Every breath I expire now makes me remember that I could have expired then and run out of breath forever, but luckily didn't.

But I apologize for this divergent distraction, this rambling off the topic, this straying off the street, this skipping like a stone across the waters of the pooled topics of discussion. Good discussion should always stay focused, like a zoom lens. If you lose sight of the goal, the rock will roll, and gather no moss. Even in a chat room, it's best to stick around and to the topic. Stay on board, and don't let every wind fill your sail. Somebody maybe will disagree about that; others may concur. It's kind of like a roadmap where you can see where you're going, instead of just plunging into the unknown without regard for street signs, speed traps, speed signs, traffic lights, air turbulence, air to ground speed ratio, expected time of arrival, or Eisenstein's Relativity Principal.

That was the physics teacher who taught him and also was the principal of the school where he went (when he was a student). That guy (or gal) is really famous these days - everybody talks about Eisenstein's Relativity Principal. Maybe he or she had a family name that was difficult to pronounce. Or maybe the person wanted to remain incognito, and didn't want their family name to be connected with something that was challenging current thinking in a disproportionate and overwhelming way. I think this principal, however, had secret proof that all humans are relatives, especially since we're travelling in a vacuum through the fifth dimension at 86,000 or so miles per hour or second (please correct me if I'm wrong). It's a phenomenal speed, and I really wonder why the atmosphere and clouds are all blown away because of the speed. My hat would surely be whisked or whirled off my head if I rode something or drove a convertible through space at that rate. It's called the Relative or Orbital Velocity. It doesn't mean the speed with which we destroy our distant relatives in sudden attacks or tribal skirmishes. It's the speed with which the earth is cruising through space. Only physic cysts and astronomical figures understand the mechanization and spinning of the celestial spheres. Even though Eisenstein didn't study to be one of those, he taught himself and scribbled lots of ideas on scraps of papers. He used his brain as a hand organizer or palm-top, and he made a formula about energy, light, and mass. It means that everything that has mass (can there be something without a mass?) is made of light particles. We're not even plugged in to anything, yet because of Eisenstein's Principal, the photons are taking over the electrons, and change our concept on how everything is made. It doesn't mean that we're lighter than before, and everything - including us - doesn't glow in the dark yet. That could happen one day, but perhaps as we evolve over the length and crusty breadth of time, it may gradually become an in-born property of a few earthians at first, and then all of us later, after we decide that it will help us save on our electricity bills, and we won't have to wear those reflective vests when we ride our bikes or go jogging at night. We have to be careful, though, because even these days we know that there are good kinds of light and bad kinds of light. Some people don't like the light from computer monitors, so they buy a shield to protect their own light particles from interacting with the bad kind. That's really the nature of the universe: good light and light that you need to wear a shield or sunglasses to look at first.

Eisenstein knew a lot about how the Earth travels into space (but around the sun, first), and beyond space. He really meant that the Relative Velocity is the speed at which the myth or rumor or factoid that humans are really relatives can sweep the earth. Not sweep up the earth, but sweep around or encompass it totally, like a security blanket. So far, the progress is slow. Some people are still arguing about whether we all came from Africa or different places, even though those places didn't have any names like Africa, Siberia, and so on, when we lived there before, and it was all one big continental shelf a long time ago, near when the dinosaurs roamed freely like in a democracy anywhere they wanted. The dinosaurs were whipped out by the scourge of the impact of an oncoming asteroid, which was released from its belt in a casanova expulsion, and was programmed by stealthily hardly-ever-seen evil extra-terrestrials, who are bent, and determined to undermine and overkill all humans just as we use bug spray and poison to kill vermin. But after that, and the clouds cleared, the land must have been one big really placid and picturesque place to live, where they didn't have countries or border checks or passports or different currency, and you could live and travel anywhere at free will and at ease.

I am told that his watch could even run backwards, stop randomly or at preset daily or weekly times for preset intervals or durations, tell the time for any point on earth no matter what the longitude, latitude, alitutude, or attitude. It could send email to the friendly extra-terrestrials, measure the amount of sunlight impinging on it, detect intensity of personal auras, and it worked using a battery system that you recharged by putting the watch in front of a magnet every night before you go to bed ot sleep on the floor. It also gave Muslim prayer time reminders, had all the holidays earmarked, chimed and chirped on the historical anniversaries of great scientific discoveries. It was waterproof, and if a shark ate it, the enzymes of the shark would trigger an air flotation device that was not digestible and would cause the watch to eventually float to the surface. Patent-pending research would make it do the same for whales. It had a countdown feature, count-up features, told you your pulse, your walking pace and how far you walked (maybe Mother Theresa should have been part of the pilot study for this feature). I don't think it had any geopositioning feature, but it was also a geiger counter, a metal detector, and had solar photovoltaic cells in it (as backup to the magnet charging in case the magnets wore out and in case there was lots of ambient and incidental light). You could also print out or fax cell phone messages, calculate pollution levels in air or water, and it could psychoanalyze your iris, and scientifically predict your enneagram, your station in life, and the hidden purpose of the universe.

Eisenstein never really told people that time was like a delta river that sometimes flowed out to the ocean, and other times flowed back up the river - rather like salmon leaping into the B.C. air in the spring as they swim upstream to spawn or pollinate or whatever they do, or like the Essequibo or Pomeroon Rivers in Guyana. It seems that they like to resort to resort areas on the river as their last resort up it. If the whole world knew that time wasn't linear, but that it could conform to whatever pattern or design or tessellations that mathematicians or physicists perceive or dream up, then the psychological impact of people learning that they live no longer in a Newtonian static world of predictability, but instead in an ever-changing world that includes flux, solder, soldiers, change (symbolized by the Greek letter delta Δ), pocket money, and myriads of other important max factors would really stir people's imagination, unleash their creative potency, or improve the tone of their skin but not their voice - or, perhaps, all three. It would wreak havoc where angels fear to tread, where writers fain would falter, where fillies frolic and barnacles barn, and farmer till 'til the dusky dusk descends. It would wreck pre-conceived notions, pre-fabricated nations, and ill-defined objectives, for which nobody had any advance warning system about. It could alter the substratum, and never allow geophysical faults to be corrected. Our tremors would be richtified. It is subliminal, subcutanaceous, and subterranean all at the same time. Most common people just want to take a break from the humdrum of the rat race. In one way or another, we are all pining for pines, especially whispering pines, and we pin our hopes on just that. Just like the sock-eyed salmon.

It's something we slowly have to wake up to. And then walk and climb up the Jacob's ladder of reality, the staff of life, and the criterion on which all life is based: the DNA helix, which as vibrant, life-giving, and steadily energizing mortal coils we should not try to sluff off or shuffle off our feet. You have to wait until you die to do that - get rid of all your coils of DNA once and for all - in the permanent waste dump of the soil and earth, where you get recycled as plant food.

Shakespeare knew that this process would have its fair and equitable share of run-ins, hold-ups, cast-offs, no-shows, has-beens, burn-outs, shoe-ins, and wannabees, who by dint and dent of misfortune don't fit into the crowd, the pidgeon-hole, or the urban influx migrating from the outlying arrears and underlying themes. Shakespeare was only too aware that this profound existential experience - the feeling of Angst, ennui and déjà vu (the combination of which is the nearly fatal triple entendre, which all people, especially femmes fatales, should cautiously and adroitly avoid at any or all staggering costs) - that can make people in industrialized nations (especially young people who are at the mercy of a stagnant economy that is just spinning its wheels and going nowhere fast) feel discouraged, unwanted, or want to sing the blues or join the greens or the reds. Shakespeare was only too well aware that this kind of malaise would happen in industrial states and other altered states of consciousness where machines and humans compete to get jobs, gripping and pre-occupying the minds of the young and the vernal-minded. He used the word coils, which are part of magnetos, car engines, and form in a hand over fist way part and parcel of the other pre-industrial machinery that are foreshadowed in his plays. This is more than an inkling or an off-the-cuff remark. I think maybe he had private correspondence with Nostradamus, and they were thinking of a merger, but I read somewhere that the tea leaves - specially imported from China - said otherwise, and they foreclosed on the idea. They both vetoed the idea, since nobody voted for it. Venetian merchants were also against the gathering of clandestine business clans into a gridlock empires, since it would rob the gondola drivers of their freedom to ply the waters of Venice and create their own economy aboard a boat. Even geography wasn't ready for it then, since only daVinci had thought about helicopters, and no one except Shakespeare had envisioned the train.

Yes, Shakespeare does hint at trains, however, first in King Lear, when he says: Saddle my horses; call my train together.

This reference to transportation by means of horses (the established means of transportation at that time, and even for a long time before and after that) coupled with the hint of phoning (an eerie futuristic reference, as in phone call, which is what people used to have to do in order to make a train reservation, maybe about twenty or thirty years or so ago - in Canada, anyway, but I'm not certain if you can or can't still do that in other countries that sport trains as part of their tourist packages) indicates the astute perspicacity and clairvoyance of Shakespeare, and it indicates a deliberate longing on the part of King Lear for a faster means of conveyance. The only other kind of train that Shakespeare writes about, is the The very train of her worst wearing gown / Was better worth than all my father's lands (King Henry VI), and A royal train, believe me. These I know.. (King Henry VIII) which talks about when train meant a royal procession, not a steam locomotive, although the image of an aristocratic lady wearing a gown, looking out a train window at the vast landscape is unmistakably clear. It is not an oxymoron, or a moronic doublet. In linguistics, a doublet means that skirt and shirt can be traced back to the same root, but by different routes. Regal and royal are farther exemplification and amplification of this unique phenomenon. A moronic doublet could be thought of as a fool's vest, but in its linguistic context, it refers to an oxymoron doublet - two strange words put together, but right now we don't see the link. In the future, someone will find the link, and reason and sanity will prevail, unabatedly and nonchalantly. There is a website dedicated to this research, http://www.interconnected.org/. Leave the ox out to pasture, and we are left with the term moron doublet, which becomes less socially threatening and sounds better as moronic doublet.

Since a doublet is a kind of jacket worn by men during Shakespeare's time, this term is suitable - since it reminds the writer or critic about Shakespeare, who really knew about the power of the spoken and written word.

They are the opposite of anachronisms, which is what happens when your watch doesn't work, or when you talk about watches before they're invented. Anarchy (related in origin) is what happens when French farmers dump their tomatoes in front of MacDonald's arches to protest globalization of the hamburger. Some people think that the flatulence and omnipresence of beef cattle methane constitutes an occupational or existential hazard for each and every human, since it means that combustible and highly-flammable methane could burst into flames any time, anywhere, any place, and without adequate precautionary measures and fire hazard or other WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous Material Information System) or fire-fighting equipment. This potential catastrophe constitutes a formidable future danger for earthians, even those who have no life insurance, formal burial ritual protocol, last will or testament, or even a proper roof over their heads during this lifetime.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier not so long ago (the backwards opposite of soon) (I could have said "just mentioned"), but it was earlier than that since it was a few paragraphs ago (actually on page 1). I was talking about topical unity in one's writing, keeping an even keel, reeling with the eel, and feeling the nuance and nudge of every word, syllable, collocation cluster or beatpack. The beatpack - far different from the popular six-pack that you see cloistered not in cloisters, but in bars, late night TV ads, suburban homes if they're having a party, discos, night clubs, and other pertinent party precincts where pert paraphenalia is paraded - refers to groups of words that have a beat to them. This hidden uncanny cadence of words - both spoken or read aloud or silently unsustainably - is in the words themselves. You just say something, and it has a kind of up- or down-tempo beat, depending on the mood or time at which you or another person said , sang, or wrote it. No electronic device has as yet or thus far to date ever before even until now yet been invented that will keep track of or measure the rhythm of beatpack word clusters. I venture to predict (from my lowly citadel of an unheated computer workstation that overlooks a library and background red,-brown,-yellow-dappled hill with an eight-sided Buddhist-style all-wooden but clay-roofing-tiled gazebo at its summit) that one day, a computer program will be written to read prose and poetry with full and proper and adequate enunciation, diction, and tone. It will know automatically how to anticipate and how to maximally vocalize these important groups of words, and how to get all the syntax right, and know exactly what the writer meant. Some people will say "Ludicrous! Impossible! You are an imposter, and you violate the traditions of this land, and pieces of land everywhere! Get out of here! You're nothing but an inviolable piece of derelict spook, and a lack-luster daydreamer trying to conjure up a dehumanized future and an impalpable implacable phantom robotic spectre for our beloved children!", but I fain would retort in a kind and gentle way that: what is science fiction today (which is not really my writing genre) becomes tomorrow's fact. It's happening beneath our feet and as we speak. It's in the winds of change that are blustering through the corridors and canyons of our high-rise office and apartment towers, and by the subway vents that people at ground level hardly ever walk over. It's an unavoidable turn of events. It's an unmistakable trend, even though somebody made a lot of mistakes when he or she was doing the computer programming to make it work. Expert systems theory predicts that base grammars will be encoded into all hardware, software, peripherals, residuals, appetizers, and residents of RAM who have volatile memory, and semi-conductor circuitry - to such an extent that we will take them all for granted, and not bat any eyes or false eye-lashes at them, and we will just get on with our business of day-in-and-day-out living as peacefully as possible. It and we will be subsumed into the reality of the new world order. Maybe alarm clocks connected to the internet will serenade us before we go to sleep, drill us on our vocabulary in any language or dialect, and wake us up with a variety of national anthems and the Mandarin version of "Breathe Again", originally by Toni Braxton,or Sugar Jones singing an accapella"A Little Bit of Heaven". That's the tough nature of reality, the grit, and the nuts and the bolts and flanges and socket wrenches of it. It's part of our automatic weaponry for survival, that we make tools to help us do things and to save us time so that we can think about what time and life really means. Cogito, ergo sum. The converse is truer: if we don't think, then we aren't. We need a renaissance of philosophy and metaphysics to the highest order. Everyone's true vocation in life is to recognize that our words should be used for extolling each other's virtues, not for lambasting one another in petty putdowns, vehement outburts, or torrential and terrible tirades. It saps us of all of life's qi, which together with the yin and yang form the triadic cornerstones of all Chinese architectural artifacts and figures and philosophical incentives.

Even though I strove for inter-sentence coherence for the last ten paragraphs or so, it kind of fell through the floor boards and the floor tiles, in terms of paragraph topic unity. But at least I put an interesting topic at the first part of the essay/letter/speech, as something to get your interest, and that's a good thing. There were also some twists of fate, flicks of the wrist, winks of the eye, nods of the head, and flourishes of the broad bush in vibrant colors upon the canvas of the new broadband access, which leads me back to the main theme of this response. Remember the part about bicycles, Mother Theresa, and the rollercoaster experience in Korea?

Well, back to the issue of the dearth (not death) of celebrities seen on two wheels. Why didn't Mother Theresa ever ride a bike? Or did she a long time ago when she was young, growing up in Albania? Did you check her biography or autobiography, if she wrote one? Have you ever seen a nun riding a bike anywhere? There was once a movie called The Flying Nun about a nun who flew an airplane to visit people. Would that kind of image do just as well for you? Didn't Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music wear a nun's habit and ride a bike? Did Mother Theresa ever see that musical? What was her opinion of it? Has that been documented, and put into the public domain and range? Was The Flying Nun a true story, or make-believe? What about in Sister Act I, II, or III? How did nuns get around in those movies?

Did she ever get around in a pedicab, or pedi-rickshaw? What about motor rickshaw? Is there a photo of either of those situations? That would have shown her support for local venture capital projects, her support for the local business community at large but still present - long-established business men and women who have years of service at their job and strive for a high level of achievement in getting people to their destination quickly, despite the congested and coagulated streets of Calcutta, its bad air, and thinking about the kids back home who maybe are with a relative or grandparent, or not in school at all because of the financial burden of exorbitant tuition and admission fees, or maybe both.

That leads into another factor: just how busy are the streets of Calcutta? Is single person 2-wheeled transport viable? Do local entrepreneurs back such an idea? Perhaps only bikepooling is encouraged there. One person on a bike shows a lack of respect for energy efficiency. There must always be somebody who you could give a ride to who works near the same place as you, and lives not too far from you. In the west, such ideas as bike pooling have not caught on, even with celebrities or politicians. That's why bikepooling is more often seen in India than in other parts of the world.

Was Mother Theresa willing and able to do her share of bikepooling? What about rumors? The gossip tabloids would most certainly have picked up on rumor-mongering about the people she would have given rides to. Was she fit to do such a task? What exactly were her limits of endurance? Was it important for her to know those limits? Or, contrarily and on the other hand or bracelet or bangle, did she strive in her utmost upper brain to break through new limits on the spiritual horizon, break through to a new level of compassion, shattering the speed limit and the sound barrier and the speed of light all at the same time, as she walked amid the poor and dirty and forlorn on those decrepit streets of Calcutta? Did she have Nike Air soles in her sandals, or did she strive for another kind of floating or gracefulness? Perhaps we will never know.

Or did she not ride a bike because she thought it would look too affluent? Do street people in Calcutta have bicycles? I can't remember in City of Joy if I saw them or not. Would she have cut off help to them, the the poor, if they did get a bicycle? One has to consider the repercussions of even the smallest of acts. What would happen if a Calcutta street dweller rented a bike for a day? Rental is not the same as purchase, acquisition, ownership, materialism. Would it mean a loss of divinity, or affinity for the Divinity? It would mean social mobility, taking the elevator up the vertical mosaic, as well as across the energy grid of the city proper, improper, itself. Those who recommend off-grid living and homesteading- which is what the poor people in Calcutta are doing - might applaud the acquisition of a bicycle, but might fail to remember that off-grid survival - something like off-shore drilling - requires the utmost in survival skills without dependence on modern technology, food distribution systems, coolers and refrigeration cars, chemical shelf-life preservatives. It calls for a radically new departure from the established trend of tire treads, re-treading, the unlawful burning of tires as a form of social protest, and monolithic parking lots, of which there are lots, and, which, together with road space, account for a large percentage of urban land space, as much as 70%. You can probably park at least ten bikes within the space of a car. Plus, bikes are lightweight, and can also be put on a second level of racks above the first level. So, if cars were eliminated, there would be lots of room in carparks to for millions of people to park their bikes in the new bikeparks.

But the transition to that cycled utopia will be slow. Firstly, we have to use up all the oil reserve in the earth, both on land and under water. Secondly, we have to educate people that human life span is a very short one and that you can't just live for your own generation. You have to extrapolate into the future in untold ways. You just can't let things happen happenstance and willy-nilly or pellmell. People will be caught unawares. We must become more circumscribed in our inspection of these matters, and our proboscis of the future and our diagnosis of the present and patient.

Maybe she wanted to be a saint, and the image of a saint on a bicycle would have been too much for some people to handle, cope with, or come to grips with, especially for those who don't live in confined settings like crowded third world country cities, or those who know nothing about handlebar grips, hand brakes, and gear shifts. Traditionally, saints didn't ride bicycles. They weren't invented yet when most saints lived. Even though some of Mother Theresa's counterpart Indian gurus ride or rode in Mercedes Benz cars because of their popularity, their highly-controlled financial mega-empires, and popularity status in the west, they don't see any problem or conflict of interest. It could be a difference in the expectations of sainthood within the Catholic domain and the Hindu domain. In India, I don't think they have formal prerequisites for sainthood. It seems as if the older tradition (Hindu) is much looser in its approach to this topic, yet - surprisingly enough - in India it's its saints and gurus who are more popular than the politicians. They don't even preface someone's name with the word Saint. This could be a linguistic difference between Albanian (Mother Theresa's mother tongue) and Sanskrit, the language of ancient India, and the hometown and motherland of "OM". She, however, probably thought cycling would be iconoclastic, and would thus shatter the eye-glasses of anyone who saw her riding it. It would be akin to a Muslim woman removing her veil. In terms of women's liberation, it would have been turf-breaking. In terms of females or anyone who may be aspiring for saintly status, it would also have been extraordinary, innovative, and reactionary.

Imagine the day when Muslim women, not Muslim nuns (I don't know if they have any, do you? do they?), can be allowed to ride bikes, and shed the burqa and veil. I mean - really dress properly for the occasion. We are talking feminine fashion consciousness here. It doesn't mean you have to be glamorous. Beauty is only skin deep, but then wrinkles set in. It happens to all of us. So why not think of them as beautiful. Besides, even if you didn't have any wrinkles when you died, would that help you on the other side? They should also be allowed to look in the mirror at themselves to see how beautiful they are. They should be allowed to look in the rear view mirror on a bicycle. They should be allowed to wear pedal pushers (calf-length pants for women or girls, used originally for bicycle riding). As for footwear, sandals made from recycled tires would be environmentally fitting. If the shoe fits, wear it (proverb from Transylvania). The implications in terms of the NASDAQ and the impact on oil prices, the stranglehold that males seem to hold on religious and political positions of power and prestige, would also have to be considered and thought about, deeply. If she popularized a method of transport that did not depend on petroleum or its derivatives, and did not contribute to global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer, she may well have been considered heretical and been excommunicated. It is tantamount to a revolution, for which the unit rpm does not count or is not pertinent in this tool case, but the wheels are still turning, both physically and phyto-genetically.

She obviously meant business, but didn't or couldn't engage in it. She did not seek rising profits, quantum-leaping stock share values, or debentures, or dentures. She stuck to her guns, which weren't any, and never lost sight of the goal, or forgot the true purpose of her mission. She just let destiny unfold itself in front of her.

There is also the question of community. If she rode a bike, she would probably have had to stop and say "Hello" or "Namaskarji" to lots of people on her way. Since she had previously on many occasions walked around the neighborhood a lot, she probably knew lots of people. It really would have been a go-n-stop routine, I am sure, had she had a bike. Walking breeds untold familiarity with one's community. It breaks down barriers, wears down heels, and can lead entire societies to the brink of friendship and new alliances. It forges new allies, no matter what alley your in or bowling on; it overlooks differences, since everybody should think about walking a mile or more in someone else's shoes.

Roads connect longitudinally, but they bifurcate laterally. What once had only footpaths and carriage tracks becomes divided and partitioned, green fuel and green fodder for the real estate tycoon marketeer who tries to put a price on every square millimeter of land everywhere - in the city and outside of it. If those real estate tycoons ever get into power, they would equate everything to dollars and cents, and they would miss the scent of the pines and the common sense of thinking that, really and truthfully, the land is just a spec of dust where we end up getting buried in, after the big finality of ultimate death. The rising cost of housing compounds the compounds where refugees lodge in temporary tents. How can anybody in their sane mind extol the virtues of real estate markets, land values, depreciation, mortgage transfers, cost-of-living index, and education per capita land based tax systems? It loses its meaning in a world full of turmoil, crime, greed, hate, and bias.

It just goes to show that long-term measures are rarely implemented in renewable urban planning. It is all short-range, just like missiles and weapons of war. Everything is for immediate use, and sometimes even it's disposable. We live in a throw-away society that has forgotten about true workmanship or workwomanship in modern parlance, especially if the women can't work. An uncaring attitude, devoid of any thought for several generations down the road around the corner straight ahead in the offing, seems to prevail amongst today's politicians and ruling parties, filling our minds, polluting our waters of placid thought and weekend refuge, sanctuary, and curtailing our freedom of expression. In this infernal-combustion engine obsessed culture, there is no wanderlust anymore. No wonderlust. No sense of neighborhood or community. Everything is virtual, and happens in front of a screen. Event the TV sometimes is a mindblot.

It is obvious that she was a rebel, shown off by her not espousing modern conveniences (or inconveniences, since there is an environmental degradation factor built in to every modern convenience). Maybe toasters are an exception. Frigs emit freon, don't they, somewhere in their life cycle? All these things usually end up in ugly junk heaps, only to be replaced by higher tech toasters and more expensive cars in the electronic stores and car sales display showrooms. If we continue using refrigerators instead of cold cellars or kimchi jars, we may well witness the melting of Greenland, and the subsequent unleashing of mammoth-sized icebergs that will block sea traffic, change whale migration patterns, and prevent swimming and vacationing along the sandy coasts of many sea-side nations, such as Mexico. Sea pirates will try to high-jack them, and melt them using solar mirrors and funnelling the melted water into containers for selling at kiosks at the nearest port. The weather patterns will become worse, and weather reporters will not be able to get a job, since it will be chaotic and unpredictable.

So maybe she advocates a life of simplicity. No gain, no pain. No spokes, no pokes. No fenders, no benders. No keys, what ease! Look on the positive side of her independence and refusal to embrace modern technology, even in its simplest and most appropriate forms. Maybe she was a tyrant for simplicity. She was a battle-axe who embraced the simplified scenario of life that seems to be eluding all of us, except in maybe a few minor caseloads, or impressario scenarios, in Ontario.

Maybe she disliked factories. Bicycles are made in factories. I've never seen a bamboo bike made by a local craftsman, or one carved out of solid wood or rock. Maybe she would have embraced the use of local materials and local human power in the production of such items. Maybe she is a person who only wears or uses hand-made things. In a free market economy, anything made by anybody is a commodity on the stockwatch tower exchange. All goods are there, even if some of them are bad.

Maybe the act of having to lock the bike when she parked it would have destroyed her sense of trust in people. She would have developed a sense of ownership, have-ness, property, and - of course -added responsibility. It would have added another ponderous responsibility onto her frail shoulders. Should she take out theft insurance on the bike? Is that possible in India? Being a non-national could have complicated the issue. Maybe there are not many telephone poles or places where you could lock your bike to in Calcutta. If she painted her name, or the name of her convent, on the bike, would that be considered too entrepreneurial for a religious devotee? Does the Roman Catholic Church allow private advertising on bikes? I am not familiar with Catholic canon or law, so I can't comment further on that. Maybe, some things are just not done by saints-in-waiting.

As you (the website article writer) mentioned, it could be a problem with the sandals. Errant buckle straps could easily be caught in the moving chain and sprocket. If she wore the Roman style sandal, with the lace-up straps that you wrap around your ankles, that could easily spell disaster if the laces became undone and entangled in the chain mechanism. As you said, too, the pedals are often replete with sharp points (made to improve grip) that could spell chaos should her foot slip off and her shin scrape against the pedal.

But why do you want a photo of her and Desmond Tutu both trying to shoot some rapids or falls? That is quite a dangerous stunt. Evil Knievel would go for it. Many people have tried to go over the Niagara Falls; some survived, and some didn't. You are suggesting that they become involved in extreme sports. Had they embarked (?!) on such a risqué project, would their ratings in the polls might have plummeted as fast as they would have down the falls? Would the log help them survive the impact? What if they forgot the landing impact maneuver and failed to land properly at the base of the falls? The log could easily become a weapon, and land on top of them, and I doubt if either could have survived that. You are treading pretty far out into the realm of possibility and fantasy. I suggest that you put the reigns on your imagination, and try to focus on the here and now.

Canadian lumberjacks used to do log-rolling. That might be a more realistic challenge for both of them. It's a balancing game for two people to stand on a floating log, spin it with their feet, and try to make the other person fall in.

Of course, if they had done the waterfall tumble thing successfully, it would have really added to their popularity. It would have probably meant that they would have to give up their daily jobs, and go on speaking tours, promoting the release of the video of the event, and talking about the value of risk-taking in everyday life. Whether it's something you do or you say, a lot of times it's worth the risk. Such a radical change to their routines, their financial situations, would have drawn them further into the world of fame and fortune, and it would have endangered their vows of celibacy, delicacy, and renunciatory (renunciable?) lifestyles. Where would be the prow of their vow, the substance of their sustenance, the manna of their original mania to serve, to live a devote life and not to become too entrapped or enmeshed in the material world? Could they be proud of their vows? It would be akin to abdicating the throne. Every saint occupies an invisible throne. Only a few people see it. To some people it may look defunct or second-hand. Royalty is dependent only on the mind's eye, not in the other eyes of the beholder. This dovetails well with the other famous expression, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Beauty is really looking into the eyes of someone who thinks that even run-down makeshift tin or cardboard street shelters used by the poor and homeless are really mini-temples of unity and social cohesion among the lower classes.

No, I am sure they would have turned down your invitation to organize and train them in the art of waterfall log flotation. Tandem paragliding may well have been the suitable middle path for them. But, alas, we will never know for sure. Unless there was email or written correspondence between the two of them, we will never know if they ever thought of each other. But they say love is blind. And so it is, that the saints of the world seldom see each other. To some extent, they shun the limelight. A bit of publicity is OK. They are noteworthy examples of humility, civility, nobility.

Do they both know how to swim? Did they take swimming lessons in their childhood? Could their parents afford it? Are archbishops and convent leaders allowed to go swimming - whether it be in fast-flowing rivers, or in public swimming pools, or even perhaps in the privacy of their own pools adjoining their places of worship? Swimming raises major moral issues in some areas of Islamic and Christian jurisprudence. What suits would be suitable?

But, really, haven't they both shown that they know how to live life close to the edge? What you suggest is that they become involved in extreme sports. Rollerblading maybe, but shooting rapids using a dugout canoe (maybe I'm extrapole-ating on your waterfall concept) is venturing far into the jungle of the unknown, the realm of the unseen and unthought-of. Mother Theresa helped the street people of Calcutta. That kind of has an excitement and unexpectancy to it. Where will the food come from? Where will the clothes come from? What to do if you're sick and have no money for medicine? That is living life close to the edge. I don't know too much about Desmond Tutu and his proximity to the edge.

Ponder. A photo of them on a tandem bicycle would have had a powerful effect around the world. It maybe would have rippled around the world, like gunshot, or a lightning flash, or like wildfire: two peacemakers advocating non-military, appropriate technology solutions to the IMF crisis and the rising gap between the rich and the poor. Such an image would have been historical, landmark. In terms of the monastic tradition, it probably would have raised a few if not many eyebrows; some may have shrugged their shoulders. If the bike had a visible trademark, sales may well would have skyrocketed for that bike company. Yes, it would have been a keepsake, an image that would open up a new era in communication. How did they communicate and plan such an event? Who financed the bike purchase? Did they go Dutch on it? How did they decide on the location of the photo shoot? Who decided on their garments for the photo shoot? Did they have a say in the editing or selection of the photo?

But, anyway, I think you have raised a fundamental question: all the people at the UN are talking about sustainable development. Yet, few of them ride bicycles. Is that being hypocritical? Or is it a design flaw with the bicycle - it's just not made for suits (really, they're not too bad if you wear a pant clip so the pants don't get caught in the chain). As for nun habits (outfits), I don't know how suitable they are, but I think. Some convents allow modernized uniforms. They - like school uniforms - are decent and unexcitable, which is what Muslim clerics want because of their unruly ruling minds. But fashion is flexible. It is whimsical, although some styles are classical, like brogues, or hush puppies, or beach flipflops. Usually people say: this is a challenge for the fashion designers - an ergonomic, bicycle-friendly garb that creates a new dynamic image for the purveyors of peace, pragmatism, and the hidden potential. One solution would be to wear tights and a Pakistani-style long tunic. Superman favored the former, and the long tunic garb (in Africa, called a kanzu) would help unite the suit-wearing western world with the tunic wearing Muslim world. World peace through ergonomic and functional fashion, and an endorsement for the widespread proliferation of bicycles!!

As for the suitability of recumbent bikes for suit-wearing people of either gender, I can offer no information. I don't see any Korean monks riding bikes, but some of them have cell phones. Is there a correlation here?

You have raised a host (non-manna-like) of important questions. They merit greater attention, maybe even an ad hoc or investigative committee. It could and should go as far as the UN or the UNPO (the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization - http://www.unpo.org/).

You could downpedal the rhetoric of your polemic. It is one thing to say: Pedal power to the celebs! Pedal power to the feds all around the world! Pedal power to the people! Pedal power to the volunteers! Pedal power until the bells peal! But, I urge you to deeply consider the sociocultural repercussions and ramifications, the dialectical materialism, the emancipatory implications, the potential for upsetting mindsets of local, national, or global key figures, not to mention the local citizenry, the mind-reeling effect that such an event and/or image would have world-wide.

I must apologize that I have written this a bit in haste, and not spent a long time editing it. It will just have to stand on it own literary merit's two feet, unassisted and by itself. I'm not looking for stardom, but I really think that bikes are pivotal in the peace movement, even for people who do or don't want to be saints. Bike pooling and pedicabs could well help restore a sense of community to our neighborhoods, provide meaningful employment for unemployed youth, help keep the air clean for the Beijing Olympics, and even draw all the reporters away from trying to get into Afghanistan, and start getting them to report on real people who live at the grassroots level of our emerging and sometimes more democratic society. The poor are the salt of the earth, but salt is not good for your bike. I rode a bike in the winter once in Canada, and the salt and sand that they put on the roads there got into my chain inadvertently and by mistake. The effect was corrosive. So no matter if you eat saltfish, or get salt in your bike chain, use salt for currency, put salt licks out for the cattle somewhere on a cattle ranch, or put pinches of salt into your cooking - you may think of yourself as poor, or you may not. But whoever you are, think about helping the world. It's a lonely place for people. Some people say it's lonely at the top. Maybe all the famous people are really lonely. If they rode bikes in the countryside, they would doubtlessly and inevitably feel lonelier. It would just exaggerate the problem, acerbically and ruthlessly. It could drive some of them to despair, even while they're riding their bikes.

But the real important thing is that we try to find meaningful images. Even if we can't find them, we can write about them. Even written-about images are powerful. It's like they too are worth a thousand words, even if there is no picture around that is worth that many words - like the Chinese proverb says- to look at. There are lots of other proverbs from other cultures, too, but maybe that's the only when that correlates word counts of artistic reviews with individual paintings. In this day of the internet, and the rapid profileration of the information boom, that would be a difficult, almost impossible, task to do. People are probably commenting on all kinds of art work - left, right, and center - that hardly anybody's seen yet.

I met a German fellow once who called his bike a steel donkey. Maybe it was a bike shop business name in Munich, maybe not. But that image and phrase stuck in my mind. It's kind of a jarring phrase, a juxtaposition, a Zen-like random pairing of words that normally don't fit together. That is a prime example of a moronic doublet, unconditionally and epitomely. There's a clothing store in Canada called Big Steel. It is also a moronic doublet. Anyone who thinks about that phrase realizes that business owner skillfully did three things: (1) he or she made a pun with the word steel and its homonym steal; (2) he or she made subtle reference to the idiom That sale was a big steal. (which means the price was better by far than fair, and the customer got a good deal); (3) he or she put two strange words together, thus forming the doublet (since you don't say that bigness is really an intrinsic property of steel. You should really say, hoist up that big piece of steel. This shop owner, based perhaps in Toronto, had advance intuition about the importance of doublets, and his or her business I think became a commercial success story. Only now, for the first time in this essay, is the importance of moronic doublets really pointed out and brought forward bathing in the public eye.

It just goes to show that it's the unexpected and the unknown that really impact on our lives. Your unexpected image of Mother Theresa on a bike (was it seen in a vision or dream?), the painstaking and laborious work that you did to publicize your concern for the lack of such an image, all of these attest to something - or, rather, which.., no - they are all laudable events that paved the way (so to speak) for this discussion on bicycles and Mother Theresa, even if she didn't really ride a bike on tarmack.