Wayward wheel.

Chicago, IL. I was driving down a street on the west side yesterday, I saw a wheel rolling down the road in the opposite lane. Wobbly, alone, and hubcap-naked, it headed towards where I was idling at a four-way stop sign. There wasn’t a car in the oncoming lane or anyone who had rolled the tire into the street from one of the weathered brownstone apartments nearby–it was just there. Just as it looked like it was going to nuzzle my front bumper, it reached the peak of its arc and the gently sloping pavement coaxed it back towards the curb. I released the clutch and rolled into the intersection, glancing down for long enough to see an impressive gouge in the asphalt tracing a line from the intersection to the brake rotor of a mid-1990s Pontiac, which was beached off to the side of the road in front of me. The driver stood next to the car, frozen, slackjawed, his eyes transfixed by the rotor-in-pavement. I’m not sure if he ever turned around and noticed his wheel, quietly rolling to freedom.

Laura’s conversation went live today and, fingers crossed, I’ll be able to have David Korten done by this time next week. As that editing is happening, I’m going to backtrack to Iowa and talk to Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network. She’s an advocate of the precautionary principle, which has been assailed by Max More and–though you haven’t heard him yet–Robert Zubrin, who I interviewed in Denver. Of course, when in Iowa, I’m going to do as the Iowans do: eat copious amounts of sausage gravy and use it to fuel a day or two of RAGBRAI cruising.

After paying my respects to Iowa, I’ll be back in Chicago trying to catch up on editing and recording a second round of conversation with Frances Whitehead. A second round, you say? We already spoke for nearly three hours, but we’d just reaches aesthetics and ethics when we ran out of time… so we’re resuming. It’ll be a while before I edit her conversation, but I already know it’s going to be a remarkable one.

Also, I’ve decided to try to bring this blog to life a bit more. One solution to my sluggish editing speed is that I can keep you posted in greater detail about conversations as they approach and after they happen. This looks nice on the page, but I’m expecting you to hold me to this promise.

-Aengus