Along for the Ride: Streetcar Music Festival

[shashin type="photo" id="156" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="left"]

Guitars, cellos, saxophones, toy pianos; how could I not include the Streetcar Mobile Music Fest as this week's Along for the Ride?

Click play to listen: [audio:http://lascheratlarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Along-for-the-Ride-Portland-Streetcar-Mobile-MusicFest.mp3|titles=Along for the Ride - Portland Streetcar Mobile Music Fest]

Hosted by PDX Pop Now!, The New Rail~Volutionaries, Women's Transportation Seminar and Portland Streetcar, Inc., the event featured musicians performing aboard various streetcars throughout the night. As Art Pearce told Portland Afoot's Michael Andersen, it was the "Sunday Parkways of transit." Instead of reading about it here, why not listen to what it was like when I went Along for the Ride? While you're listening, click here to take a glance at my photos, which you can see after the jump (you can also find out how to contribute a few bucks to keep "Along for the Ride." alive).

I can't say the experience was a normal glimpse at everyday life aboard the streetcar, but it did seem to entertain two distinct groups of people: regular streetcar riders who stumbled upon the musicians as they explored Downtown and Northwest Portland, and an audience who came out specifically for the event. Some rode the entire length to listen to a particular musician's full set. Others, like me, hopped from streetcar to streetcar for a chance to experience the variety of performances. Indeed, I became so focused on listening to the music that I nearly forget I was riding the streetcar, and definitely lost track of which neighborhoods I was in when. Click any of the images to enlarge and start a slideshow. [shashin type="albumphotos" id="7" size="small" crop="y" columns="4" caption="y" order="date" position="center"]

Along for the Ride: Max Blue Line 1 -- Hillsboro

[shashin type="photo" id="169" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="left"]

This week's installment of Along for the Ride, my series of weekly chronicles of Portland, OR-area transit lines. is an audio postcard from a rush hour trip aboard the MAX Blue Line to Hillsboro. In a future edition, I'll explore the rest of the line, from Downtown Portland, east to Gresham.

Listen to the Story

[audio:http://lascheratlarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Along-For-The-Ride-Max-Blue-Line-to-Hillsboro.mp3|titles=Along For The Ride - Max Blue Line to Hillsboro]

Along for the Ride is an evolving experiment in exploring Portland's transit system. I'm excited to hear what you have to say about it. If you like this project or if you hate it, why not let me know? Comment! Share the project on your social networks. Participate by suggesting routes to take and things to see along the way, or anything else you think might improve this project. And, if you want to make it more possible for me to ride more often, and to take time doing these stories, why not offer a few dollars? Just click below.

Roads traveled, stories unraveled

For the next week or so, each day I'll recount some element of my October trip to and from the 2010 Society of Environmental Journalists conference. I'll combine my recollection of what I saw, experienced or learned, tweets I made at the time, photographs and links to some of the cool things I learned. Check back each day for new reflections, tales and reports. At the end of my updates I'll post a link to read the story as one narrative (and post a complete photo album as well). Be prepared. This series will include a mix of storytelling styles -- don't expect straight journalism, or complete creativity. In fact, don't expect anything but a journey.

"The only way out is through," I thought, pulling my scarf tightly around my neck as I burrowed into my sleeping bag. Admittedly, I didn't realize when I mumbled this that I was (not quite precisely) quoting Robert Frost. For a week or so, for a variety of reasons, a dear friend and I had been throwing this phrase around. Never was it more true to me than this moment.

Likely resembling little more than a lump of a polypropylene undershirt, two sweaters, a down vest, a pair of long underwear, waterproof gloves, fleece socks and a knit hat, I burrowed deeper into my bag as temperatures outside my tent dropped below freezing. I'd already felt the tickles of a cold coming on before I arrived after dark to Wallowa Lake State Park. Did I really want to push getting sick before the SEJ conference after working so hard to get there?

I'd already paid $16 for the site, after all, a whopping $16. The closest motel was 5 miles back in Joseph and another $70. If I wanted to actually see the lake, I'd have to return once more the next morning.

No, I could do it. Adventurers did this and far, far more everyday, right ? Besides, I had a car with a heater, seat warmers and a reclining seat. I wasn't exactly isolated (really, it's pretty ridiculous I even thought the word "adventurer").

It's now a few days before Christmas and I'm packing for a holiday trip to my mother's house. I grab a dop kit and find some cold medicine inside. The discovery reminds me how long I've been taking to tell this story. Holding the medicine in my hand, I remember my trip's first day.

Sixty miles east of Portland, after a brief stop in Hood River for coffee and a bagel, I felt the first hint of a scratch in my throat. Ten miles later, my throat burned. As I progressed further eastward, my eyes watered. My face burned. Each mile closer to Missoula seemed to bring new aches. Pain coursed behind my eyes, but, no, I wasn't going to succumb. I would battle through. I was far too excited about the conference, about the people I'd meet and the places I'd go and the ideas I'd generate. As the week progressed and after I arrived at the conference, each day I did what I could to set the cold aside as late into the night as possible. Back where I was staying for the event, at the Hutchins Hostel, I'd return to the bottom of a bunk bed in a room I shared with other conference-goers and try, desperately – and unsuccessfully -- to muffle hacks and coughs, stringing sleepless night upon sleepless night throughout the length of an event that I'd been looking forward to for months.

Tweeting the road: Bagels, coffee, homemade cookies, i am well stocked for the road. Ps it is a glorious day in Hood River. - Oct. 11

Still holding the cold medicine as I walk to my suitcase to finish packing for my holiday trip, I see dark lines stretching across the United States. Rather, I notice lines across a map of the country tacked to a wall in my apartment.

Each line traces a route I've driven at some point in my life. The record tells a story as comprehensive and accurate as I can attempt. Much of my memory stretches across this map. In the nine years I've been tracking my journeys in this way, I've had to buy at least one new map, and I've done my best to stretch my recollection as far back into my youth and my memory as I can accurately recall.

The map only documents roads I've driven, or ridden along, and it's at such a scale that the nuances of my trips get lost. I've had to guess at routes taken during a few trips because they took place on stretches not charted by this map, or so long ago that I can't recall their exact path. Nevertheless, each time I return from a journey I look forward to tracing my trips on the map. Doing so is the only reason I keep pencils around my house.

More than two months after I've returned from one journey, though, I've yet to trace its path. I still haven't traced my trip from Portland to Missoula and back, and I can't quite express why not. Perhaps I don't feel like the trip's over, like I've truly returned. Perhaps I can't record it until I've described it, until I've wrapped the journey in words and pictures and recollections that I realize are fading with each day.

Some of you might not be interested in such ponderings.

“Get to the point,” you'll say. “Tell me about the conference. Tell me what you learned, what you saw along the way, what the latest news is. I only have so much time. Don't you know attention spans are ever so slight? Haven't you ever heard of an editor?"

Indeed I do, and I have. As I've noted elsewhere, as so many have noted before, though, to truly travel you can't simply move from Point A to Point B. You can't experience this world's multiplicity of dimensions through a straight line.

The truth is, of course, I did wait to write this down. I let the story fester. I let it fall away and apart. Like anyone might, I've been making excuses for months now for not chronicling my trip. My terrible cold on the road. Assignments due just upon my return. Job applications. Novel Writing. Story development. Other conferences to attend as a reporter. Holidays. I could think of any number of reasons why you're reading this now, today, this very second, and only now, but this is the moment, this is when these words take shape.

I've also, I'm coming to realize and admit, been utterly incapacitated for months by writer's block - really the worst I've known - despite having felt so inspired, so driven by the conference (and, despite having completed the rough draft of my first serious stab at fiction during NaNoWriMo, which, it should be said, was the only thing to really begin to loosen this writer's block).

But somewhere in the middle of the first sleepless night of my journey, in that jury rigged tent, as the cold descended -- both in the form of my illness and the weather -- I wrote clumsily, with gloved hands, in an irregularly kept journal, beginning with the following fragment: 10/11/2010

Sometimes I ponder the choices I make, or my difficulty making them. I end up here, in what promises to be a beautiful setting, but aching. I ache with the impact of pride, of love, of adventure.

The first day never quite goes right. Surprises for both the better and worse arise and you're left not quite certain how to process them.

I'm fighting a cold I refuse to catch, but hearing creeks splash from what seems like all sides. My tent is jury-rigged together – I'm missing a stake so I put a rock in the corner to hold one side down – but outside the stars pepper the sky in such a way that clichés actually serve them well.

Nobody knows where I am (how near or how far). Were I not ill, I'm not sure whether I'd really want them to.

Sneak preview! expect to learn more about grizzly bear behavior through absolutely adorable videos from a study in Glacier National Park)

In Transit

In Spring, 2009, I wrote this commentary about my personal experiences with transit in Los Angeles. An assignment for a class, it was something of a companion to the reporting I'd done for my master's project, the work that became “R We There Yet.”  

In Transit

“Have you seen my boy Wayne?” the driver, smiling, calls out to a man on the sidewalk as he pulls over the #26 Short Line along Avalon Boulevard in the middle of South Central Los Angeles. It's a Saturday afternoon in early February. This isn't an official stop, and it's not the first time the driver has pulled over to say hi to a pedestrian he recognizes.

I'm sitting a few rows behind the driver, and suddenly it hits me: I realize that I'm falling head over heels for Metro, the largest transit operator in Los Angeles County.

More formally known as the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Agency, Metro offers more than buses and trains. It exudes personality, a personality interwoven with this vast community. Many claim Los Angeles has no public transit, but I know otherwise, and this afternoon's ride only cements my opinion. A bus driver stopping randomly alongside the road might not be the model of efficiency, but he embodies the charm of transit in Los Angeles. I've heard of bus drivers who croon Rat Pack hits as they carry passengers to and from their homes; I've watched flirtation blossom to affection on the platforms of the Green Line. I've watched drunken partiers stumble down bus aisles then politely strike conversation with late night commuters. I've even seen gangbangers politely offer their seats to elderly and disabled passengers.

Occasionally, I'll overhear someone declare “I'd take public transit in Los Angeles if it went near me” and I'm baffled. Metro operates more than 2,000 buses on 200 routes during its peak hours, as well as two subways, three above-ground light rail lines, and a “busway”—an old train right of way in the San Fernando Valley that has been transformed into a roadway devoted to fast-moving, high-capacity buses. My own exploration suggests just how many places in Los Angeles the system reaches.

I can take the bus to the beach or down Sunset Strip. I can visit friends in the Miracle Mile and family in Pacific Palisades. I can do my grocery shopping at the Hollywood Farmer's Market or browse the boutiques on Melrose and Third Street. I can eat my way across the city, grabbing noodles in the Okinawan neighborhoods of Gardena or Korean barbecue from a hole-in-the-wall on Olympic Boulevard. I can even take the bus to the happiest place on Earth. That's right, for less than two bucks I can catch a ride from Downtown L.A. to Disneyland.

Every ride gets me to my destination, but there's more. Every ride is an adventure. Every ride leaves me with a story to tell.

When I drive, I have to find my way around wherever it is I am. Driving requires me to focus on the road, not my surroundings. Riding the bus let's me leave the details to the bus driver. I am free to enjoy the scenery, eavesdrop on fellow passengers, read books, listen to friends, nap, study, or write. I can come and go when I please, without searching for parking or worrying about what condition I'll find my car when I get back. If I over-imbibe after a night out I can get home without worrying about risking anyone's life.

Recently, I had an experience that helped me put this in perspective. A few weeks ago I decided to take my car on an errand, ironically enough at Union Station, Metro's hub and headquarters (where I went in search of Metro souvenirs for a friend). Normally to get from my house to Union Station, I pay $1.25 for a Metro ticket or buy a $5 day pass and hop on the Red Line subway at Wilshire and Vermont. At Union Station, I can transfer to other rail lines, get on a bus headed any direction, or even pay $4 to catch a shuttle that will take me straight to my terminal at Los Angeles International Airport.

But this day, I drove, thinking I needed my car for flexibility to get to the station then off to USC in time for a yoga class. I negotiated tractor trailers and impatient commuters on Highway 101, merged onto Alameda St. and pulled into the station's parking lot. At Metro's gift shop I spent some time browsing for my friend's present and pondered buying a transit pass, then got back in my car. I paid six dollars for parking and headed to the 110 to make my way to USC. There, I fed two more dollars to a meter on Jefferson for two hours more of parking. After class, I drove through start and stop traffic up a packed Vermont Avenue. Relaxed when I left class, I felt my loosened muscles tense as I inched through the two miles home.

According to estimates from AAA, the day's driving probably cost me more than four dollars simply for fuel and wear and tear on my car. Add in parking and I spent more than $12 on a couple quick errands. Had I taken the bus, I could have completed the same trips for less than half that, and let someone else do the driving.

Seems like a great deal. So what's the catch?

For some people it's the stigma.

This morning I rode the #204 — which travels 13 miles through the center of Los Angeles along Vermont Avenue between Los Feliz to the North and the community of Athens in the South, near the 105 freeway. I sat in the rear of the bus facing one set of windows with my back to another set. I watched the passing streetscape, the morning's first bustle of commerce and the people running to catch the bus down sidewalks spotted with gum. But my view was clouded by rain spots caked on the windows' exterior, and the jagged contours of graffiti etched into the thick plexiglass. Scanning the bus's interior, I saw tags all over, from the backs of seats to the curved gray ceilings of the vehicle.

But despite the graffiti, the buses are clean and well lit.

Some people are simply confused by Metro. They avoid it because the transit network seems so foreign.

Caged in our automobiles, learning a transit system can be like learning a new language. At first, the squiggles and lines criss-crossing route maps and the figures filling bus schedules can look like hieroglyphics, but given time and a little bit of trust they quickly begin to make sense, and soon, the serenity of understanding this secret code sets in.

“The city does not have a reputation for really having any public transportation,” Erin Steva, a spokeswoman for the California Public Interest Research Group, says. “Clearly it does and it does work for many different people, but it does need to improve.”

Steva rides her bike and takes the #603 and #201 buses and the Purple Line Subway to her office near the intersection of Wilshire and Western Avenues.

So how can Angelenos make the bus work for them? They don't have to do anything more than stretch their legs, leave their cars parked in their driveway, walk down the street and board one of hundreds of bus routes crisscrossing the city and the surrounding county. It's not a perfect network, but it's a delightfully quirky system far removed from the fist-clenching aggravation of traffic jams and parking woes. L.A.'s buses, like its bike trails and its rail and subway networks, need vast improvements and expansion, but the billions of dollars it will cost to invest in the system's future are easier to accept for those who’ve spent any time using and even enjoying it.

Last fall, voters were so fed up with traffic that they voted to tax themselves to pay to improve transit in Los Angeles County. In the midst of an economic crisis they passed Measure R, which guarantees $40 billion in sales tax revenue to pay for transit infrastructure improvements over the next 30 years. Even though $8 billion of that might go toward improving Metro's bus network, it might not be enough. Measure R pays for capital improvements, for new things — things like new railways, bus only lanes, and timed traffic signals. It doesn't pay for people. It won't pay for bus drivers' salaries or maintenance crews.

So Metro's day to day operations remain at risk. To cover gaps, Metro's board finds itself choosing between slashing routes and raising fares. The latter isn't politically expedient, but the former could dramatically impact tens of thousands of people's lives. Metro’s fares are some of the lowest in the country; yet officials know that about 75 percent of the system's bus riders make less than $12,000 each year. While taking the bus is an attractive option to me, those riders don't get to make a choice. They need the bus and the train to get to and from work, to take their kids to school, to get to the doctor's office, to visit their friends and to run errands. If service is cut, their very lives will be at risk.

If more people who CAN choose realized how easy, how comfortable, and yes, how charming it is to ride a bus, perhaps we'd put more pressure on politicians to avoid making such lose-lose decisions, to avoid starving a lifeline so essential to our city. We can ride the bus, learn how much freedom and adventure it can bring to our lives and demand transit as a right.

Thousands of years ago, the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said “The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one's feet” The lesson isn't any less true when it comes to journeys of a few miles from the movie lots of Hollywood to the classrooms of UCLA, or between the spectacular views from Griffith Park to the crashing waves of Manhattan Beach. From the broad boulevards of the San Fernando valley to the Art Deco towers of Downtown's historic core, the journey toward a sustainable future for Los Angeles begins with small steps—beginning with an appreciation for what exists today.

Writing (and driving) gone wild

The Umpqua River Valley as seen from Oregon Highway 38 in August, 2004. Photo by Bill Lascher.

---

Transitory nature | What you may read | Join the journey

---

Today I leave Los Angeles for Portland, Oregon.

As I do, I look forward to taking an as-yet undetermined path to my new home hundreds of miles north.

I don't know how exactly I'll get to Portland, though I've set a few ground rules. I won't set a firm date to get there. Though the trip could easily take as little as a day and a half, I don't want to constrain myself to any schedule, lest I miss the world I pass through (you can help me get there, too). I may backtrack. I may make detours. I may decide to linger in one spot staring at the sky for hours. I may rush. I may wander.

Which brings me to rule #2, perhaps the most exciting and most questionable part of my plans. To best experience the journey I plan to completely avoid freeways and even divided highways. Getting to Oregon from Southern California in January makes this a rather daunting task, particularly because I also plan to steer clear of the coast. As stunning as the coast is, I've seen much of it and hunger for a new path, at least this time around.

Instead, after a brief visit to Ventura, I might start crossing the mountains of the Los Padres Forest along Highway 33 or perhaps head east to U.S. 395, the Eastern Sierras, and a detour through Nevada. It's likely I'll have to ditch certain highways for local roads as some stretches, like the 33 in Ventura, become highways. Perhaps I'll find myself crisscrossing farmland on country roads in the San Joaquin Valley. Most certainly I'll travel along dozens of unknown roads upon which I've yet to decide. I may very likely encounter snowy passes, and, though I have chains, I don't intend to be stupid and may have to make a number of adjustments to the paths I set (I won't, however, bring a GPS because I treasure my sense of direction and my ability to read a map).

On the other hand, I'm most likely to pass through a California and an Oregon oft-ignored. I'm free to turn elsewhere if an obstacle proves more than I'd like to surmount, if I simply tire of where I am, or if I'm curious if what's down that side road, and I'm free to experience the landscape I see along the way as a result of those decisions. I'm also leaving myself free to change the parameters of this journey, though I don't expect to too drastically.

I have no set plans for what I intend to write or how frequently I'll do so (and I may be constrained by wi-fi options or simply too caught up in adventuring at certain points along the way), but I imagine some account of what I see, where I am, where I am not, and who I meet will pass upon this screen.

Transitory nature

After reading about my plans for a road trip, some of you might question my commitment to shifting society away from its focus on single-passenger automobiles toward more sustainable, rationally planned transportation strategies. Yes, I do own a car and yes, I do enjoy driving it, though I never have qualms leaving it behind to take transit, ride a bike, or just walk. I can say that I plan to determine how to offset the carbon footprint of my journey once I have a good sense of its reach (including the distance traveled, the food I consume, and an estimate of the resources I use to write and post about my trip). What you make of my intentions beyond that is your business.

What I will say is that there are different ways to experience the automobile, and to experience the landscape through which it can take a person.

Despite my passion for transit — and a history of misadventures on solo road trips — I'm thrilled about this journey. Indeed, I have come to realize it's quite difficult to really discern a “misadventure” from simply an adventure. Like life, it's all interpretation. Too much of this world focuses on perceived destinations, and not the road we travel to reach those destinations.

That statement has been made so many times in so many ways. What I might add is that we are constantly in motion, even when we are “home.” As hard as we struggle for stillness, as passionately as we seek peace, we are in motion. Fulfillment might be more than freedom from desire, it might require accepting our transitory nature. Perhaps more than anything, I believe in the fluidity of life, and find transition to be the most constant force we face.

What you may read

This weekend, after encountering yet another bevy of predictions about exciting new technologies, prognostications about the evolution of journalism and fretting over worrisome new trends in the news business, I realized just how pointless it is to dissect the minute details of the future of media. Afterward, I made a statement I've already shared publicly and think is relevant to my motivation for this journey:

“Let's go out there and tell the stories we see, tell them well, and stop worrying about who's reading them and what they're worth.”

I'm taking this journey in part because I want to tell a story of the road. You may read it. You may not. Though I welcome donations, I don't expect it, and definitely will not put a price on my writing. More importantly, I know my writing and my ability to record what I see would suffer if I did.

What you read here, and this adventure itself, are products of imagination, not crowd-sourcing. Is there an audience for it? Who cares? Or rather, the audience is this one now, the one reading these words, whether the reading occurs today, two months from now or decades hence. This is simply an effort to describe one sliver of the world as filtered through my eyes, not by metrics and news budgets or obsessing over what I think my readers want to see. Though I definitely do not know, I think my readers, whoever and whenever they might be, want to see what they don't know they'll see, what they won't expect, just as on the road I hope to see what I don't know I'll see and what I don't expect.

I am not a backpack journalist. I am not part of a media industry in upheaval, nor a media innovator. I am not a technophile, nor a Luddite. I will not constrain myself by trying to pinpoint ways to present my narrative or funding channels to tap. I am simply an observer willing to use whatever tools are handy to tell a story and to uncover those parts of the story that might matter, but might not easily be seen at the surface.

Join the journey

If you feel you'd like to see what I come up with, perhaps you'd like to throw some change my way, or perhaps you'd like to avoid doing so, or, perhaps, you'd like to give me some cash and don't want to see what I come up with. If you do want to offer money, you can safely drop it in my PayPal account by clicking here or on the button in this site's right-hand column.

I’m not going to ask for a specific amount of money, and I don't only welcome money, as you'll see below. I’m not going to define what you'll see in return for your support. I’m not going to outline how much I expect to write or how often. I’m not using a formal service to raise money, just asking whether you might want to buy me a gallon of gas, some coffee, a bite to eat or, heck, a night's lodging. I’m not following any rules or any standard practices for fund-raising, just as I'm not following any set route to my destination.

Should you so choose, please fuel my journey. Fuel my writing. Fill my tank. Fill my belly. Fill my cup. Just as my route and my writing won’t be restricted by artificial constraints and deadlines, your choice to support my efforts or not won’t have constraints. You can offer $100, $1, 50 cents or nothing at all.

If you want to support me in another manner, perhaps consider offsetting some of my carbon impact (though, like I said, I won't know its extent until after this trip) or maybe share this with a friendnor someone else who might want to read it or see the photos or video I take, if I happen to take photos or video.

Or do something creative of your own. Take an adventure in the manner best suited you and maybe share a tale of it with me. Or avoid adventure. Or don't share your plans with me and revel in your privacy. Write your own piece about a totally different topic or don't write anything. Make dinner for your best friend. Play.

I won’t mind if you offer nothing. If I raise nothing more than the cost of a cup of gas station coffee I’ll still be pleased, as I’ll still have had that opportunity for the journey. So please, please don’t feel bad if you can’t afford to support me, or if you simply don’t want to (particularly those family and friends who have been so extremely generous and helpful to me lately).

Perhaps asking strapped friends, family and strangers to drop some change in my jar or take their own adventures instead is a bit insane without any concrete commitments and with such murky goals. But there’s no certainty to the road and, more importantly, writing thrives in the wild. Perhaps we can try to set it free here.

Adaptive Reuse: Parking Meters to Bike Racks

I'm in the midst of preparing some posts about the Expanding Vision of Sustainable Mobility summit hosted this week by the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. In doing so, I'm semi-procrastinating by skimming long-ago bookmarked blog entries and websites I set aside for reference in my master's project exploring the possibility of a transit revolution in the Los Angeles area. This might be a bit late, but I was impressed by this January post from StreetsBlog LA about the Los Angeles Department of Transportation's (LADOT) plans to convert old parking meters to bike racks.

Some readers may know I'm working on a magazine-length news feature exploring the opportunities to change transit behaviors, policies and infrastructure in Los Angeles given the constraints of current resources, technology and politics. I'm most interested in what steps can be taken to permanently change how people move about the region. One thing I'm learning and hearing from others is that a crucial reaction to our economic and environmental crises is to effectively reuse, redeploy and repurpose the infrastructure and materials we already have available to us.

Although the piece is already drafted and I’m just putting some finishing touches on a rewrite, it seemed the Pasadena conference would be a tremendous opportunity to either augment my reporting or begin thinking about further stories on the topic.

Overall, the energy and motivation at the conference was inspiring. Yet, I was struck that the visions at the conference were not largely expansive. Perhaps it’s because Art Center’s industrial design programs feed the automotive industry, but there really seemed to be a focus on redesigning the automobile, rather than transportation infrastructure as a whole.

This effort by LADOT is a great example of simple creative thought. When it begins, it could be a model for how institutions can participate in adaptive reuse and the department is worthy of at least a brief note of recognition for this project.