Jun
3
Biking Michigan Avenue
Filed Under Cycling
Ever tried to bike along Michigan Avenue downtown?
Well I have. And you don’t stand much of a chance.
In the right-hand lane, there are buses traveling at a snail’s pace constantly belching their foul smoke all over you. You also have to be vigilant about taxis crossing in front of you to pick up a fare. At this rate it takes you 10 minutes to bike one city block.
Then there’s the second-to-right lane. Yes, you can avoid having buses and taxis hold you up if you choose this lane, but it’s skin against steel and the impatience of the other drivers will have you longing for the safety of the sidewalk.
But it’s only a vain thought, because one glance at the sidewalk shows that it’s nearly at a complete impasse, even for walkers. Trying to navigate a pointy bicycle through that crowd is just asking for a headache and bruised shins.
Jun
3
Global Warming: Judgement Day
Filed Under Global Warming
Parts of southern Spain are being reclassified as dessert. See this article in the New York times today. The picture says everything.
Images like this trigger in my mind a conversation between Ray and Winston. Ghost Busters fans will understand:
Ray: I remember Revelations 7:12…”And I looked, and he opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake. And the sun became as black as sack cloth, and the moon became as blood.”
Winston: “And the seas boiled and the skies fell.”
Ray: Judgement day.
Winston: Judgement day.
Ray: Every ancient religion has its own myth about the end of the world.
Winston: Myth? Ray, has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason we’ve been so busy lately is ’cause the dead HAVE been rising from the grave?
Ray: [Pause ] How ’bout a little music?
Winston: Yeah.
Come to think of it, the world HAS been pretty busy in the last few months with disaster-relief efforts from hurricanes to earthquakes to floods…
For the complete exchange between Ray and Winston as well as a bounty of other fantastic Ghost Busters quotes, check out this Web site.
May
27
Bringing a bike on the CTA
Filed Under Class Assignments, Cycling
How to put your bike on a CTA bus. A funny instructional video.
http://s8.video.blip.tv/1220003629396/Jdominick-BringingABikeOnTheCTA844.mp4
May
27
A natural therapy
Filed Under Misc
Studies show that children with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder greatly benefit from spending time in natural environments. Any natural environment, be it a forest or a backyard, can help with problems of inattention, impulsivity, or hyperactivity, and improve focus, creativity, social skills and self-esteem.
ADHD is an umbrella term that encompasses attention deficit disorder and symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity defined as greatly interfering with daily functioning. Children with ADHD also frequently exhibit underdeveloped social skills, poor self-concept, negative self-image, and high levels of clinical depression.
Amy Ritter, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign specializing in children with ADHD and nature, presented new interpretations of research at the Notebaert Nature Museum on Thursday, showing just why it is that nature is such an effective therapy for children with ADHD.
Nature offers “a place to recover from attention fatigue,” and this is especially important for children with ADHD. Refuge areas occur naturally in the outdoors, and if there are none, children tend to build them, said Ritter. Examples include tree houses, forts and hiding spaces.
Plasticity, which refers to an environment that has loose parts, is also very important. In natural settings, there are leaves, sticks and stones which children are free to handle, create with and destroy, she said.
Kids with ADD show tendency toward kinesthetic and tactile learning styles, which nature provides. It also encourages creativity. “No one tells you what this stick is for. It could be a phone, it could be a sword,” Ritter said.
Ritter believes spending time in nature is critical for helping children to develop necessary social skills. “They [Educators] think social development will just naturally happen. But we have programs to develop physical skills and academic skills –what about social skills?”
“We have had a lot of interest from all over the world, but as of yet I am not sure of any therapists who have started using natural environments as a therapy technique,” Ritter said.
“One problem that I see with medications is the idea of changing the child more than changing the way we view the child. It’s really important and to think about how we can change the environment to support them.”
Ritter works at the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory that has documented many connections between nature and human health. Studies show, for example, that trees near home boost your concentration and ability to cope, as well as reducing domestic violence, and certain residential landscaping can decrease crime.
For more information on these and other studies, please visit http://www.lhhl.uiuc.edu. To see what other lectures and exhibits are happening at the Nature Museum, visit www.naturemuseum.org.
May
22
I just got back from participating in the Ride of Silence. At least a hundred bicyclists gathered at Daley Plaza at 7 p.m. and headed en mass to five spots in the city where bicyclists have lost their lives in collisions with cars. Three of the deaths have happened in the past month.
We were old people and young, experienced city riders and totally innocent, in terrific shape and completely not, helmeted and unhelmeted, health nuts and smokers. The one thing that united us was that everyone there had either lost a loved one from a bike-on-car collision, or had been in a narrow shave themselves.
Looking around, you saw red or black bands around every arm and a quick sweep of the feet revealed one pant leg up, one pant leg down. It’s not our gang sign. The arm band is to honor fallen bikers, and the right pant leg up is so your jeans don’t get caught in the bike gears, tear, or cause you to have an accident.
Many of us had a sheet of paper safety-pinned to our back or backpack with a name of a fallen rider. I put a name by my rear bike wheel, so that traffic could read it. But just the thought of pinning a name of someone who is dead and died riding their bike in the city is too unnerving for me. It reminds me of war protests in which people lie down on the ground to show how many soldiers have been killed. I couldn’t do it. My imagination is just too vivid. I see myself dead, and that terrifies me. I noticed other people abstained from pinning a dead rider’s name to themselves, and I wonder if they shared my feelings.
It was called the Ride of Silence because we rode, well, in silence. The idea was to ride single-file, quietly, respecting all traffic rules, and to be a sort of funeral march to honor the memory of those who were killed while biking in the city.
Well we took up the entire lane for most of the ride, although there were points when we kept one or two abreast in the biking lane. Instead of respecting all traffic lights and stop signs, only the head of the mass would brake for red lights. Then the rest of the mass would flow on, even after the light had changed to red, disgruntling stationary cars that had the green on their side.
The vast majority of biking accidents involving cars happen in intersections. Perhaps that’s no surprise. But then it will come to you as no surprise that it was in intersections where the only altercations provoked by the ride occurred.
There were a couple of policemen on bikes that were with us to help stop traffic to let the entire mass pass. After we got north of the loop, however, the policemen were towards the back of the pack. To stop traffic toward the front of the pack, self-chosen volunteers would halt their bikes in front of drivers who were anxious to put a foot on the accelerator.
As I went through a red light with the rest of the group, I heard a man shouting from his SUV, literally foaming at the mouth. “The nerve!” More angry words poured out that were not quite coherent.
“I will have you arrested!” he shouted, revealing his police uniform. He was seething at the young bicyclist whose bike was parked directly in front of his vehicle.
“There are cops with us!” the young man said calmly. “There are cops with us,” he kept repeating. I rode on, but it didn’t seem that the police officer was about to let it go.
When we got to Ashland and Lincoln, and other busy intersections, cars were honking with impatience as we stopped the traffic flow. It took several minutes to get everyone through the intersection. The traffic on Ashland missed an entire light because of us, and they were none too pleased.
But it was empowering to be a part of it. I felt a sudden relief that I no longer had to constantly jerk my head backwards to check for cocky drivers who might try to cut it a little too close when they passed me. I was with people. I was protected. Safe.
How often can you ride your bike in the city and feel safe?
The quiet was almost erie. As a hundred bicyclists rode together, you could hear birds chirping in the trees. A few people hooted and shouted encouragements from the streets as we passed, thinking it was critical mass. But they were not greeted back with the “Happy Friday!” they were hoping for.
And although the silence was glorious, I was sad when I tried to share my awe and wonder with a fellow bicyclist, and was promptly shushed. Cyclists can be a no-fun lot sometimes. I can say that because I’m a cyclist.
For instance– one “altercation” I will say caused me slight embarrassment to be a part of the ride. This was one of the few confrontations that occurred not in an intersection. We were riding along, swallowing up an SUV that was trying to make its way without killing anybody. Eventually the driver surrendered and came to a stand-still to let us bikers pass so she wouldn’t have to worry that a slight move and her sideview mirror would clip off one of us. As we were pouring past her, I saw one rider stop at the passenger window. She rapped very hard on the window and screamed, “Get off your cell phone! It’s ILLEGAL!” she kept screaming about how it was against the law to talk on a cell phone and drive in the city of Chicago, and that it was a very irresponsible driving practice.
No doubt the rider has experienced a deep personal loss due to a negligent driver. And so she is justly upset at seeing a woman behind the wheel of an SUV jabbering away on a cell phone. But I was offended. She could have alerted the woman in a more friendly, hospitable way than a jarring rap rap rap on the window and angry words. I would not be surprised if the driver became immediately defensive at such an attack, where as calm words would have perhaps changed her behavior to the rider’s satisfaction.
Although there is nothing like riding with a large group of people, and it was a moving experience, I didn’t enjoy it half as much as Critical Mass rides.
Critical mass is an entirely different experience. It is loud, boisterous, full of noise and color. The Ride of Silence was thoughtful, reflective, with the only interruption to deep contemplation the squeak squeak of a bicycle carriage.
To read more about the Ride of Silence, check out an article in the Sun-Times.
Come on out to the next Critical Mass ride! May 30, 5:30 pm, Daley Plaza. For more information, visit Chicago Critical Mass.
May
12
Below is the transcription of an interview with Joe Huebner, Chicago cyclist, on March 25, 2008:
“I’ve been hit by a car three times, and I’ve collided with cars five times…
“I think most all cyclists that I know have been hit, or have collided with cars…
“Being hit more seriously usually is when someone doesn’t see you…
“The thing that I most stress is—show those drivers around you that you’re aware of what’s going on…
“The one thing that I find most disturbing or maybe frustrating is that although motorists have rules to abide by, and they have a choice whether or not to abide by them, cyclists don’t have a very structured rule system in the city, in the urban environment, as of now. So every cyclist is riding in a different way. I’m not saying everybody should ride in the same way, but I am saying that if we all are needing to get somewhere on different vehicles—in a limited amount of space—then some things need to be taken into consideration: safety, being seen, fitness levels come into play—those people are riding bikers much slower or much faster than other cyclists out there. Sidewalk riding versus street riding, trails riding versus street riding, things like that. All different genres and different flavors and different attitudes are out there…
“The education of how to ride a bike with some consideration out there—means—that right there—that starting point—means more to me than getting everybody on a bike, because of being greener or conservation of energy or conservation of fuel. Getting everybody on a bike would be almost as silly as everybody driving cars without stop signs or painted lanes to abide by…
“Cycling in an urban environment is a dangerous adventure.”
May
4
Critical Mass — Friday, March 25
Filed Under Cycling, Green Events
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Mitch Wu
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| Bikers flood the streets during the first warm critical mass. |
Friday March 25 marked the first WARM critical mass.
For those of you who don’t know- critical mass happens every last friday of the month, and is a time when bikers from all over the city come together to bike en masse. There is no political agenda, there are no leaders. It is to celebrate biking and to have fun. For more on how this started, click here.
Hundreds of cyclists (that’s right– I say cyclists because I don’t want to leave out the unis!) gathered at Daley Plaza around 5:30 pm, despite the threatening weather. The forecast said rain– possibly heavy rain with thunderstorms– and at the same time the sky was darkening, the wind was picking up.
Yeah, right. Like that’s gonna deter Chicago bike enthusiasts. If anything, it’s only more reason to take over the streets in jubilee.
In fact, it did rain. It POURED. To the delight of everyone there, I’m sure.
Check out the video I made with my friend Mitch Wu: http://s10.video.blip.tv/1370003358610/Cpl953h-ChicagoCriticalMassApril252008423.mp4
A big thank you to all cyclists, motorists, as well as those who fall into neither category, for giving generously of their time and spirit to make this video what it is.
For my first video, I think it turned out remarkably well. (While you’re watching, please try picturing me riding my bicycle with one hand, the other hand holding the video camera, as traffic is honking in support, some motorists are shouting in frustration, cyclists are halloo-ing and “Happy Friday!!!”-ing, police are intervening in any altercations and making sure the stragglers to keep up with the group, people are hanging out of windows whistling,and generally delicious chaos.)
May
4
Earth day give-a-ways—nah-ah-ah, you must sign up for our e-mailing list first!
Filed Under Green Events
The Green Apple Festival at Lincoln Park Zoo on April 20 and the Earth Day celebration in the Daley Plaza April 22 provided ample opportunity for green groups to beef up their e-mailing lists. (Hey, it’s greener than flyers!)
Those manning the stands put out all kinds of tempting give-a-ways to entice the crowd to come closer. From coupon codes to packets of wild flower seeds to mini-samples of “Simple Green All-Purpose Cleaner” (which says on the label is non-toxic and biodegradable), bargain hunters with a green eye smelled the whiff of free stuff.
More than once, I overheard a tug-of-war between people hungry for green give-a-ways and group reps. If a peruser could not manage to snatch one of the give-a-ways without notice, a polite, “won’t you sign up for our e-mailing list?” inevitably got them, hook, line and sinker.
(Marty Casey and Lovehammers perform “Trees” at the Earth Day celebration in Daley Plaza.)
But who’s afraid of e-mailing lists? I, for one, put myself down for every one of them. I use it as a way to keep up on events. But I noticed when I eagerly dive-bombed my way to the e-mailing list clipboard, ignoring the potential prizes for signing up, the weary reps flashed me a smile of delighted surprise.
Who will be the first to e-mail me, I wonder?
May
4
The climax is now
Filed Under Green Events
How could a view of such beauty invoke such sadness?
A solitary glacier sits stretching out of the arctic water. It leans like a tree as someone is getting ready to shout timber!
The water slurps around it like beavers nibbling away at the inevitable. It slowly takes on an hourglass figure.
The sound of the water moving in gentle ripples echoes in the darkened room. Every now and then a bird flies into view.
I am trying to imagine I am there, the wind chilling my face, looking out at this, taking in the magnitude of the beauty and the consequences.
The shimmering arctic waters act like a mirror for the sun, intensifying the sun’s rays and increasing the speed at which the water’s temperature is rising, and the final glacier will melt.
It is a breathtaking image, but one of immense sadness.
An older woman enters the room to watch it with me. “How long have you been waiting for it to fall?” she asks, laughing.
I imagine the polar bears swimming long distances in search of food and rest, until their exhaustion overtakes them and they drown.
Seeing it fall isn’t the climax. The climax is now, watching it stand.
Just as I write these words there is a thunderous crack, and the glacier falls with a terrific sound, its pieces disappearing below the surface of the water.
And I had been convinced I was watching a looped video.
This is but one of the contributions of many artists from around the world that comprises an exhibit of the effects of global warming. The exhibit, Melting Ice: A Hot Topic, is now at the Field Museum.
David Bucland—United Kingdom
End of Ice, 2005
Video, 40 minutes
The artist writes: “Filming the demise of an iceberg is both exhilarating and sad. As we watch it sink lower and lower, and finally collapse, our reflections turn towards the implication of the loss of ice.”
Apr
21
Families, hippies and environment nuts all turned out for the Green Apple Festival at Lincoln Park zoo on Sunday afternoon to delight in the (very loud) music, peruse various information stands put up by different environment organizations, and take in the eco-friendly demonstrations. Some highlights:
The Chicago Afrobeat Project was one of many bands to take the stage Sunday.
Hundreds of people attended.
People were really feeling it.
Hop a ride with BicyTaxi. They generally have routes along bike paths, but are sometime known to bike in the street, traffic accommodating them like it would a horse-and-buggy. Sometimes I try biking in a street lane, he said, but if the cars start honking at me, I get out of the way, he said.
The bicytaxis can fit two people comfortably, but a family with two small children are also welcome aboard. The going is slow but very pleasant. Prices are high though—
a ride from Grant Park to Navy Pier will cost you in the neighborhood of $40.
Among the stands was a Starbucks offering free samples. While most environment stands were lucky to have one or two interested folks, the starbucks stand was never lacking for eager customers.
What’
s this? Someone steps out of the starbucks line to ask about the weird-looking bicycle!
He peddles away, powering up five different kinds of lightbulbs. Slow down there, killer! We don’t know what will happen if you surpass a certain wattage, the standkeeper said. (See, isn’
t this more fun than standing in line for a mini-size cup of coffee?)
ComEd set up a display to show people up close what a solar panel looks like. Remarkably thin, and light. (They let me pick one up!) The power generated from the solar panels were hooked up to the popcorn machine, that you might be able to make out—it’
s behind that guy to the right.
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