murder and writing

Does Neighborhood Gardening Matter?

Community Garden Coordinator, Gregory Bratton, is a persuasive advocate for his craft and, especially, for the creations of community residents who, under this Master Gardener's skilled guidance, have wrestled with trash-dominated vacant city lots and made them productively green.

Working collaboratively with the support of such concerned entities as Chicago Department of Environment, the Bush Homeowners and Tenants Association, and Healthy Southeast Chicago, Bratton has been able to acquire desolate spaces and, with willing community volunteers, turn them into food-producing engines for their neighborhood. 

Under Bratton's direction, those residents not only grow the products for their ultimate consumption, they become knowledgeable gardeners, themselves, working at several locations, including the Buffalo Senior Inspirational Community Garden, 8250 S. Buffalo; Bush Community Garden of Hope, at 8559 S. Buffalo; and the Hot Wheels Senior  Community Garden plots, at 8900 S. Brandon. This last, street-front, space is a gift from the adjacent Artists Garden and is intended specifically for seniors with mobility problems, who cannot readily navigate through a more traditionally laid out garden.

Plants each garden expects to share this year include: onions; leeks; red cabbage; eggplant dusky and snowy white; bell peppers; Georgia greens; tomatoes: Beef Master/Better Boy/Big Boy/Cluster Grande; potatoes; melons; squash; cucumbers; lettuce; sweet and hot peppers/chiles; chives; basil; and thyme.

These neighborhood gardens are recognized achievers, some having won City of Chicago First Place awards in 2005, 2006, 2007, and Second Place in 2008.

Operating on a shoestring, Bratton has learned how to maximize any resources that come his way.  In this series of photos, we see him guiding neighborhood volunteers, in warmer weather, in the construction--from plastic rods and sheeting--of a mini-greenhouse structure that Bratton calls a "hoop-house."  With this relatively simple-looking structure, the community is able to turn a seasonal bonus into a year-round resource.    

In an era when heads of state are rapidly becoming poster boys for lunacy, and captains of economic disaster work at making the sinking of the Titanic look like a small boating event, Gregory Bratton helps his community to navigate productively past the hazards of high prices, low quality, and scarcity, to a healthier existence than they would ever have realized had those abandoned city lots been permitted to house only trash and its associated vermin, while sickening residents' souls with the pervasive blight.

What do you think? Does neighborhood gardening matter? 

"At-home vacation" opportunities abound in the Calumet Region

by Kevin P. Murphy

Caught between an unstable economy that drastically limits household recreational funds, and health advocates who urge families to become more active and more involved in their world, Calumet Region residents may take advantage of a near-by resource that offers low-cost (usually no-cost) opportunities for families to tune up both their physiques and their psyches.  

From the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on the East, to Chicago's Dan Ryan Woods on the West, sites in Michigan City, Hammond, Griffith, Gary, Chicago, Riverdale, and South Holland, offer rich opportunities for individuals and families to explore and improve, while gaining beneficial effects from environments often amazingly different from their everyday world.

Throughout the year, organizations all across the Calumet Region work steadily at reclaiming natural sites that, in some instances, have suffered more than a century of extreme neglect.  

Recently (April 12), for example, volunteers met at the Burnham Greenway (near Avenue C) and 112th Street, in Chicago, to clean up a several-block-long stretch of the Greenway, removing debris discarded by thoughtless people.

Guided by Steward, John Pastirik, volunteers--ranging in age from 5 to 70+--separated the litter into "recyclable" (further subdivided into containers intended specifically for metal, glass and plastic) and "non-recyclable" containers, guided firmly by the 5-year-old, who was the reigning recyclable expert that day.

And, the following weekend (April 19), more than 40 people gathered at Powderhorn Prairie--a preserve whose eastern border is the Indiana-Illinois state line--to participate in one--or both--of two environmental events being conducted there.  The first project, sponsored by the Friends of the Forest Preserves, was a Powderhorn Prairie Stewardship Workday, which began at 9:00 A.M., to involve volunteers in removing brush and restoring the prairie and marsh to help native plants thrive.

The stewardship activities were guided by FOTFP's Alice Brandon and Benjamin Cox, along with Doug Chien of the Sierra Club, and Treekeeper/Steward, John Pastirik, of the Calumet Ecological Park Association, working with a wide range of participants, such as volunteers from the Southeast Environmental Task Force, Chicago's Washington High School, and Von Steuben High School, south side and south suburban residents, as well as residents of Chicago's far north side, including Cook County Commissioner/Forest Preserve District Commissioner, Mike Quigley, of the 10th District, a regular participant in Forest Preserve District stewardship activities. 

At 10:00 A.M., the second project, co-sponsored by The Field Museum, Chicago Department of Environment, Friends of the Forest Preserves (FOTP), and the Sierra Club, was "Calumet Discovery Day," a celebration of Earth Day via field-based discovery and exploration guided by Laurel Ross, Field Museum Urban Conservation Director, Environmental & Conservation Programs, and Field Museum Scientist, Doug Stotz.  Activities began with a bird hike led by Stotz, along with a demonstration on how the site is managed to protect plants and animals.

The month of May concluded with two event-filled weekends that strongly appealed to at-home-vacationers.  First, the "8th Annual Wolf Lake Bi-State Wetlands Wind and Water Festival," ran the weekend of May 24-25.   Free to the public, the festival featured canoeing and kayaking, fishing clinics, kite-flying, wind-surfing instruction, and cricket frog-calling, among other things. 

VIDEO: Jerry Carter, of the Southeast Chicago Sportsmens' Club, guides South Chicago children in the use of fishing gear at Wolf Lake:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrXE7Ifzhsw

ViDEO: Rebecca Moss, of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, includes face painting among the services of the FPDCC local environmental treasures table:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMjbWoFPJAY&feature=user

VIDEO: Young patrons of the Wolf Lake Wind and Water Festival were given opportunities to learn, and to participate in, a  variety of healthy outdoor sports.  This  video shows young kite flyers, canoeists and student wind-surfers venturing forth in their newly discovered sports activities:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57Ns1c9yd_A&feature=user

And, on May 31 the very first "10th Ward Green Summit" offered events focused particularly on the "greening" of the community, to show how important such knowledge is to communities, and provided information regarding the latest in green opportunities, such as affordable, energy-efficient homes, roof gardens, community gardens, simple ways that people can improve their energy efficiency, the restoration of Hegewisch Marsh, the new Ford Environmental Education Center ("Best Nest"), and the Wolf Lake and Eggers Grove Forest Preserves.

VIDEO: At "The Zone Community Youth Center," Chicago Department of Environment's Jerry Attere updates audience on the status of the proposed Ford Calumet Environmental Education Center:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g7U4G85-u0

VIDEO: At Villa Guadalupe Seniors Center, staff from Landon Bone Baker Architects brainstorm with community residents about planned green residential architecture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAUEr-aLzMo&feature=user

Starting at 9:00 A.M., and running until 2:00 P.M., the free-to-the-public event featured two buses that toured 20 "green" sites via special routes laid out for the day.  The northern route (13 sites) included visits to existing and proposed green housing sites and community gardens. The southern route (7 sites) highlighted recreational and stewardship sites.  

The Zone Community Youth Center, on the south, and Villa Guadalupe, on the north, both featured displays on green initiatives, among other environmental projects.

This is just a sampling of the kinds of "at-home-vacation" opportunities provided by member organizations of the Calumet Stewardship Initiative (CSI) across the region throughout the year.  CSI is a collaborative association of more than 24 cultural and environmental organizations dedicated to preserving our rich environmental heritage. Families who care about their environment may find out about such "vacation" opportunities by checking the "Activities Schedule" page of this website: http://www.calumetstewardshipinitiative.org. Compared to alternatives--such as tours in places like Appalachia or Costa Rica--the price is certainly right and, pragmatically speaking, such activity benefits our own regional neighborhood.  Environmentalism, like charity, can begin at home.

(Videos by Kevin P. Murphy.)

(Photos by Joann M. Podkul and Kevin P. Murphy)

© Copyright 2008 Kevin P. Murphy

THE DAY THAT “DUH MARE” BECAME “THE MAYOR”

A serendipitous discovery of talent long hidden by media editing.

by Kevin P. Murphy

Chicago-12/02/06: We experienced an unexpected--and delightful--revelation today concerning Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley. Joann and I were at Chicago’s De La Salle Institute, attending “Mayor Daley’s Fall Assembly” conference, which offered workshops on community organizing, making homes safe and healthy, familiarizing seniors with available benefits, defending against identity theft and confidence games, accessing government via current technology, recognizing signs of drug use in one’s community, building community wealth and financial literacy, protecting one’s house of worship from vandalism and hate crimes, appropriate behavior during routine traffic stops and, the one we attended with a group of neighborhood primary and secondary students, “Making it Real,” in which a group of convicted felons told the audience about the reasons for their being imprisoned, the tactics of gang recruitment (all but one of the dozen or so convicts present in the conference room had been gang members), and the circumstances of their criminal experiences, to inform the audience, especially the young, potential gang recruits, of the unpleasant realities likely to befall those who become enmeshed in that way of life.

Mayor Daley was the keynote speaker at the opening ceremony, and his performance was an unexpected surprise. Having heard the mayor mostly in media-defined moments (i.e., television news broadcasts) until this event, I had not considered him to be a particularly gifted speaker. In fact, I had thought of his speaking as somewhat wooden. What a mistaken view that turned out to be! For a bit more than five minutes, Mayor Daley spoke, seemingly ad lib, presenting an impassioned, literate appreciation of Chicago’s CAPs program, and of its participants, which included police, city service departments and the citizen volunteers assembled in the huge De La Salle gymnasium that morning.

I found the mayor’s opening remarks especially poignant when he included, among those specific parties in the hall, the lone television crew covering the event. “ . . . I’d like to thank Channel 7 (Channel 7/ABC-TV) for being here--why?--because as soon as you have a picket sign across the street in front of Central Police Headquarters, every TV and radio station will be there.” Daley said that video and radio coverage of negative “news” in neighborhoods is invariably extensive, in contrast to media’s non-coverage of positive events--like the more than 3000 people attending the “Fall Assembly” program, who were present because they care about their community. “Now that is positive news!” the mayor said, the kind of positive citizen involvement that does not attract the media--so Channel 7’s lone presence was deeply appreciated. 

And, in that recognition of the too obvious fact that media--especially the electronic branches of media--are more likely to resemble buzzards circling carrion than objective heralds of information affecting the community, the mayor also spotlighted (without specifying it) the fact that his image as a speaker has been similarly shaped, not with objective exposition, but with negative political “spin,” a process at which the media excel. 

Think about it--how is it that images of accused persons not in favor with the media never seem to show those persons smiling like the pleasant neighbors that they may have been in their neighborhoods, to their families, fellow churchgoers, etc.? The answer is simple: editors CHOOSE the shot--of many taken--that will convey the impression that they want the readers to receive. Similarly, when, for some twisted political, economic, or other equally invalid reason, the media decide that some local villain is to be presented as a saint, every photo printed will suggest a halo surrounding that person, and every quote attributed to that same monster will ring of wisdom and gentility. (And why is it that scandalous behavior of media persons is rarely made visible by the media?) Clearly, there is little objectivity to be found in “news” broadcasting. 

But, if I had ever doubted that the media are untrustworthy, Mayor Daley’s sterling performance today engraved that message in granite. This guy CAN express himself eloquently, and passionately. Just don’t expect the media to show him like that.

And, please, do not misunderstand my position with respect to the mayor. There are areas in which I disagree strongly with Mr. Daley, but I also respect what his administration has made happen in Chicago. The city is beautiful in many parts and getting more so as time progresses. While our neighborhood seems to be among the last of those likely to receive major beautification projects on its major streets, the city’s street network, overall, is becoming sufficiently lovely to warrant contemplation of a trip around town as the equivalent of a trip to some fabled garden spot. We have traveled enough, on the ground, by auto, to say with confidence that such is not a guaranteed feature of many major cities. Meanwhile, at the micro level of city management, the newly initiated Chicago Conservation Corps program is training citizen volunteers to bring environmental improvement to their own communities, with support available to them from the Chicago Department of the Environment, which also provides the training for C.C.C. (“C3”) candidates. 

Similarly, at the law enforcement and city management level, Chicago’s CAPS (Chicago’s Alternative Policing Strategy) program provides a mechanism by which police and city government representatives meet with citizens at the local Beat level on a monthly basis to proactively (as contrasted to remedially) deal with community problems ranging from housing safety issues to street crime prevention. Such activity speaks well of the city administration’s determination to make Chicago a most attractive place to work and to live, rebuilding segments worn beyond recovery, while revitalizing and sustaining older communities as much as possible. 

But the underlying message to me this day was that too much of what we are subjected to by mass media, given their “If it bleeds, it leads” mentality, is a major distortion of social reality. Any screw-up, criminal or procedural, on the part of our representatives, is portrayed as the norm, rather than the exception. Any criminal behavior on the part of neighbors is presented as the norm, rather than the exception, leading us, in time, to wonder if we, ourselves, are not the only people in our society who are NOT actively engaged in crime and/or corruption. Thus, instead of acknowledging that, at any given moment of the day, there are people in this land who are generously caring for others, or honestly resisting any temptation to take the crooked path, and/or consciously restraining themselves from violently expressing outrage at someone else’s stupidity or criminality, the media bombard us with reports of behaviors that are, in fact, in the minority of human actions on any given day. And that was driven home strongly in the mayor’s “Fall Assembly.”

Decades ago, I engaged in a several-month correspondence with Illinois senator, Adlai E. Stevenson III, in which I urged that he introduce legislation requiring the broadcast news media to begin and end each broadcast with “advisory labeling” of the sort then required on cigarette packages. That labeling would have said something to the effect that, “This news broadcast features a few events that we have chosen from among the vast amount of events occurring today. People all over the nation have done positive things today. But these negative events are what we have chosen to highlight.”

The senator did not choose to follow that suggestion, fearing the interference of government with First Amendment rights of broadcasters. I still maintain that no one has the First Amendment right to yell “Fire!“ in a crowded theater when, in fact, there is no fire and he knows that there is no fire. Media do not, in my opinion, have the right to “sculpt” the news with political intent, without being required to acknowledge that that is what they are doing. Too many people in our society still believe that anything broadcast or printed as news must be true, that the media are required to be truthful in their presentation of information. As Mayor Daley so eloquently demonstrated during his keynote speech, “it ain’t necessarily so.”

© Copyright 2006 Kevin P. Murphy.

Flying cars? Now, that’s a sobering thought!

If you think that George Jetson was the first airborne motorist, check Google for "flying cars." The idea is almost as old as aviation--if you define broadly and include flying carpets, the idea is older than aviation. While it is intriguing, especially when one is sitting in a linear, rush hour, parking lot, there are some disturbing aspects to it.

by Kevin P. Murphy

I read an article recently that talked extensively about the increasing probability that commuters will fly their automobiles to and from work--or wherever they happen to be headed at a given moment. And I grow cold at the prospect of a three-dimensional playing field for people who now flagrantly violate speed limits, ignore stop signs and even stop lights on their fevered journeys to places that most of them don’t even want to be (usually, work).

Now, I must not only worry about unexpected visits through our front wall from out-of-control idiots who drive down our neighborhood street at 40 mph--or more--without regard for the stop signs at either end of the block, nor the children playing in front of their homes and often spilling out onto the street in the midst of their games. Next, we will have to contemplate the “dropping in” of out-of-control idiots who happen to lose control overhead, possibly while engaging in dogfights above our neighborhood’s primary school, where today they merely triple-park and block the street several times a day, while demonstrating negative “citizenship” to their children and anyone else who happens to try using the street during those pickup and drop-off moments of madness. (Fights have broken out occasionally, as hair-trigger tempers flared up over positioning issues on the ground. Won’t the 3-D versions be amazing?)

The current ferment, such as it is, depicts the airborne highway as one in which computers and GPS navigation systems will urge us to, in a usurping of the old Greyhound motto, “Leave the driving to us!”

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes working on a Windows-based computer will know how reliable such machines are likely to be: 

Picture yourself at 9,000 feet on your home-bound trip from Las Vegas to Flagstaff when you receive a call on your cell phone. No sooner have you answered than your integrated flight deck control screen goes to the familiar BSOD (“Blue Screen of Death”) and posts the message, 

“Unexpected radio frequencies indicate that you have just made an unauthorized command to the CPU. You are not a developer. As a consequence, this system will now shut down. To prevent shutdown and restore control, please reboot, enter your 37-digit key code, followed by your full name as recorded on your original purchase certificate, your recorded home address, telephone number, facsimile machine number, cellular telephone number, and the name of the technician who sold you this software--along with his corporate ID number and nickname. You will have 45 seconds to restore the system, after which time, all power will be shut down. 42, 41, 37, 28, 83, 112, 25, Shutdown . . . . “ 

At this point, your “flying car” is spinning hopelessly out of control, as it rushes you toward a certain meeting with that other BSOD (“The Brown Screen of Death”--the floor of the desert valley below)--but not to worry. As your car went out of control, it spun into prohibited air space over Hoover Dam and the North American Air Defense Command has targeted you for vaporization at 2500 feet. 

Unlikely as the foregoing scenario may seem, I still have the occasional nightmare from days of teaching managers at a local college after one of them confided that, on long flights across country, he set his autopilot and slept for a while when he was unduly tired--or whatever--and that was quite a few years ago, before hi-tech gadgets made automation and computer control not only credible but even desirable. So, I don’t know about you, but I am not sanguine about the prospect of hotrods roaring overhead on their way to the local brewski emporium, secure in the (unwarranted) belief that their little flying car will “bring ‘em back alive” (and safely out of our space), whether they are conscious or not. 

Given all those decades of scorn, is it possible that “Chicken Little” was, after all, a prophet?

© Copyright 2006 Kevin P. Murphy. All rights reserved.

(Note: October, 2007 Update--Terrafugia, Inc., is developing the first practical (it appears) flying car, called, Transition--land, fold its wings, and drive home. Who says that nightmares cannot become reality?)

nwi.com: Book fondly remembers old Comiskey Park, growing up in 'Southeast Chicago'

http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2007/05/05/entertainment/books/doc770874223ff0ba94862572c8005f4f49.prt

posted online: Saturday, May 05, 2007

Book fondly remembers old Comiskey Park, growing up in 'Southeast Chicago' 

James J. Klekowski's photo essay includes personal history of a neighborhood, an era

BY KEVIN MURPHY

Times Correspondent 

Regional history books are especially gratifying when they also involve the reader's personal history.

In "1990: So Long, Old Comiskey Park: A Photo Essay," author James J. Klekowski not only presents a photo essay regarding the final year of Comiskey Park's life, he also provides a thumbnail sketch of growing up in a part of the Chicago universe that many believe does not exist -- the Southeast Side, or, as veteran residents identify it, "Southeast Chicago."

Included with vital information about the community's history during his lifetime are vignettes that define clearly the powerful impact of heavy industry, even in its declining years, as Klekowski and his chums resurrect an abandoned flat car, and successfully struggle to reconnect it with working rails so they may have a several-block-long, full-scale "model train" all their own. 

He also provides early evidence of his own artistic tendencies in his description of his youthful reaction to a dead cat that became the First Base "mascot" at his neighborhood sandlot.

Only 12 pages long, Klekowski's "Prologue" packs in a lot of information. He not only brings to life growing up in a unique neighborhood but also leavens the mix with insights from his career as a location scout for television series (such as "E.R.") and major motion pictures (such as "Flatliners," "Prancer," "Only the Lonely," "Eden Court") shot in Chicago. 

Some of those productions tie directly into the Comiskey Park's history. So we learn not only about the community he lived in and the circumstances of his involvement with Comiskey Park, but we also get some unique insights into the logistical demands that must be attended to if a movie is to be made successfully on location. 

There is irony in the book, because Klekowski clearly has affection for the subject, yet confesses to not being a great fan of sports teams in general, nor of the spectator role in particular.  

As he puts it, "I never gave sports much room in my life. I still don't." In that, we share a similar background. Though I grew up loving the White Sox, my last visit to Comiskey Park was as a pre-teenager in the company of my father. 

Yet, we both deplored the destruction of Old Comiskey Park. 

Happily, thanks to the determination of his elder brother, Frank, Klekowski drew on his experience as a professional filmmaker and award-winning photographer to immortalize the glorious palace before it was bulldozed into a parking lot -- the new ensign of our "culture."

Although Klekowski packs a lot of enlightenment into a small amount of text, the photography is the major component of this work, which evokes memories of a time when black and white, and their infinite gradations of gray, were the dominant hues of photographic communication.  

This is the medium that dominated the visual experience of the true lovers of Comiskey Park. It is the medium that had the power to awaken my childhood memories of sitting in the upper grandstand in right field, through an agonizingly long game with the Boston Red Sox, that the real Sox eventually lost by a run or two -- probably in the 99th inning (OK, anywhere from the 13th to the 18th, but that was how long those games always felt to me). 

So, if you are a White Sox fan, a Comiskey Park mourner, if you get uncomfortable with marketing that strips the significance of local communities in favor of mass-product identification, or if you are simply a fan of local history on a human scale, this is a book you'll enjoy.

ifyouread

"1990: So Long, Old Comiskey Park: A Photo Essay," by James J. Klekowski (Partners Book Distributing, $28)

Copyright © 2007 nwi.com

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