Bonnie Tinker

Before going any further, RantWoman wants to express her heartfelt condolences to Bonnie Tinker's family and many loved ones. RantWoman hardly expects that what she pens here will be the last anyone writes of Bonnie, but since the news is horrifically fresh, RantWoman will simply begin.

Dang Twitter! Dang Twitter! Dang Twitter!

Today is the second time in the short interval of RantWoman's experimentation with Twitter when RantWoman has fired up her computer, turned to Twitter expecting breaking news from multiple outlets seasoned with irony from The Onion and instead hit gut-wrenching bad news. Last time it was the train crash outside Washington DC streamed in with a cousin's pained tweets after she was in a multi-vehicle accident. This time, this time: RantWoman ran her #fgc09 search and gasped. Portland Friend Bonnie Tinker was killed in a bike accident while biking on the campus of Virginia Tech during the FGC gathering.

A couple news accounts:
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/13907

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/local_activist_bonnie_tinker_d.html

A blogger from FGC
http://imperfectserenity.blogspot.com/2009/07/remembering-bonnie-tinker.html

RantWoman did not know Bonnie well but always felt very centered in her company, in groups with her children and grandchildren. RantWoman remembers one evening at NPYM annual session when some kind of a minute needed to be wordsmithed NOW in time for the next day's Meeting for Business. The sense of the group was very close but something was stuck; RantWoman and Bonnie and maybe one other person pulled away in private, found the right words and the whole group breathed in gratitude.

RantWoman read the circumstances of Bonnie's accident and finds herself saying a special prayer of geography and local custom and the kinds of things likely to be on the road. RantWoman could look up some nerdy statistics to back this up, but she thinks bicyclists are a lot more common in west coast cities than in some other parts of the country. Dump trucks certainly hit bicyclists sometimes in West Coast cities, but RantWoman thanks all the outspoken bicyclists making themselves known about traffic safety matters; RantWoman suspects that more dump truck drivers in Portland know to look for bicyclists than in Blacksburg VA.

A tweet from the #fgc09 thread mentioned 8800+ miles riddeen by Meeting for Bicycling, only 1 accident and a couple other small injuries. "Only 1 accident." RantWoman will say prayers: a lifestyle with a smaller carbon footprint can put a lot more bicyclists in the path of dumptrucks. Most likely, we want to pedal that much harder, but prayers all around too.

More to the point, the most important part of Bonnie's life is her work with Love Makes a Family