I’m so excited about this! (I know, everybody says that about their Kickstarter project, but I’ve got the excitement chemicals speeding around my system EVEN AT THIS VERY MOMENT.) Photo from today’s weekly production meeting for The Pedal Turns the Crank. I love Khai’s rough sketches, but the major conceptual breakthrough? That I’ve been banging my head against for months (for years, if you’re counting since I first had the idea that this could be a picture book)? The scribbles at lower right. Those are the final breakthrough that had to happen. This whole book is families having bike adventu ..read more

Regular posting about The Pedal Turns the Crank is a goal for me, leading up to the unveiling of the pre-launch Kickstarter page, and I’ve been posting some of Khai’s rough art and writing about the project, but today it occurred to me that I could show how some of the design stuff for the Kickstarter is coming along, too. After reading an article about how to get on podcasts at Jane Friedman’s website, I started putting together a one-sheet (aka press kit, aka media kit), following the tips in the article. So in the spirit of letting people see how things are going, even if they’re not ..read more

Khai showing off his notes from Friday’s production meeting at the Danbury Hackerspace (where I base my print/ebook design company, Typeflow). One of the throughlines in our Kickstarter kids’ picture book, The Pedal Turns the Crank, will be diversity of all kinds, all of them in love with the bike. That means different kinds of families, different kinds of backgrounds, different kinds of locations, and everybody having adventures on bikes, with adults watching out for the children (who are the stars). It also means different bike cultures. We’re not letting ourselves nail down yet to exactly w ..read more

I have “Pedal Turns the Crank Kickstarter buzz” on my calendar every day, and I’m not sure exactly how to get that going – but it’s day 1, so… here are some of Khai Tran’s bicycle studies (he’s been drawing a LOT of bicycles lately) and some of his free-associating Post-its based on my ongoing Google Sheet brain dump of different kinds of bikes, bike cultures, families, clothes, etc. Diversity in all things, always with bicycles as the through-line. The backstory (short version): The pedal turns the… CRANK! The crank turns the… CHAINWHEEL! The chainwheel turns the… CHAIN! *** This little call ..read more

Instead of sitting home, I roused myself and went to the Hackerspace, and instead of driving there, I rode there. On my way, a white pickup slowed right in the spot, sort of analogous to a blind spot, where I can’t see the human figure in the car, is but their fender is keeping pace right next to and behind me and the driver yells something greetingish and then keeps trying to say stuff as I’m calling “What? Who is that? I can’t see you, who is that? What?” I can’t have a backwards conversation at 15mph. I slow so the window will pull alongside and I can see in, but it slows too. Cut to the en ..read more

This is what I said on June 27 to the Bethel Religious Display Committee. This committee was convened in response to conflict over the placement of this banner, which, for the first time in the town’s history, was in a public square at the same time as a manger scene: The committee’s mandate was to make recommendations to the town government about how to deal with that conflict.   My name is Keith Snyder. I live on Main Street.   I timed myself reading this, and it comes to about six minutes, so thank you in advance for allowing me that chunk of time.   The pro-creche sid ..read more

A man on the porch was giving me the staredown. The Cornwall County Market makes great breakfast burritos with tater tots in them and I remembered (incorrectly, it turned out) that it had an ATM. The staring man was older than me by maybe five years, and presented as tough guy, beefy biker subclass, with a tuft of white goat beard, a black shirt with some design on it or other, and a baseball cap. I recall something on his head, anyway; I think it was a baseball cap. But I don’t know what the cap or the shirt said, because where I was looking, as I came up the steps onto the porch, was straigh ..read more