christopher’s international blog

When you dance, do you feel self-conscious? Don’t worry. After an hour of instruction and two hours of open dance, you’ll feel welcome and a part of the celebration at Chicago Summer Dance. The city’s public dance series plays to all levels of dancers, whether you feel like Baby (Jennifer Grey) from Dirty Dancing (1987), or Gerry Fleck (Eugene Levy) in Best in Show (2000) who, in fact, had two left feet.

Chicago Summer Dance attendee and University of Chicago video technician Paul Karabush said he likes the social nature of dancing, and Chicago Summer Dance is approachable for everyone.

“The Chicago Summer Dance program is nice because they provide an hour lesson, and even if you don’t know how to do it, you can still participate with no problem” Karabush said.

From June 12 through August 24 Chicagoans and tourists dance evenings every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Spirit of Music Garden in Grant Park, located on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Harrison Street, or at one of the several satellite locations. Thursday nights have a world music theme, Fridays and Saturdays have popular dances such as swing, and Sundays have ballroom dances, according to a press release.

On Thursday, June 19, the Chicago Summer Dance theme was klezmer music. Klezmer is a genre of music stemming from eastern European music in the Jewish tradition, according to Britannica Online.

You’ve probably heard klezmer before, but you didn’t know that is what it’s called. It’s often played at weddings, and it’s kind of like a folksy jazz polka square dance.

Some of the instruments played in klezmer are the violin, flute, clarinet, trumpet, cello and drums. The clarinet is an easy way to identify the sound due to the way it ornaments the melodies.

Chicago Summer Dance attendee and Retired south shore high school biology and physical teacher Alan Engel said it’s similar to a square dance.

“For this type of dance you don’t need a partner, although I do like partner dancing. Some are circle dances,” Engel said.

Klezmer songs span a wide range of tones and styles, from slow and somber to upbeat and fast paced. One way to recognize klezmer is from it’s use as background music in many of the old movies and cartoons.

Chicago Summer Dance attendee and administrative assistant Lana Fischer said she likes this type of dancing because it’s fun and active. Engel said he likes klezmer dancing because it’s rhythmic. And Karabush said he likes the movment of dance, and particularly enjoys klezmer because it’s not complicated.

In addition to being exposed to something new and different, or old and the same, depending on how you want to look at it, you can join in the fun for free. Dancing to live klezmer music is a cultural experience made free and accessible by Chicago Summer Dance, now in its 12^th season. So all you fellas out there who have wives and girlfriends who like to dance, you have no excuse not to attend.

Besides being a cultural experience and free, Chicago Summer Dance takes place earlier in the evening than other dancing alternatives.

“I think the baby boomers, of which I am one, like the time of day the dances are held because it doesn’t start at 10 p.m. like many dance clubs. I don’t mind going to the clubs, but they do start much later than these events,” Karabush said.

Engel, who occassionally participates in international folk dancing on Monday nights in Evanston, said he has always like dancing, ever since high school when he was 15 years old. Engel said he likes dancing because it’s a form of self expression, it feels good, and it’s good exercise. The former high school teacher also said it’s a good way to meet and socialize with different people. Fischer agreed.

“Dancing makes me feel happy. It improves your mood. It’s like being at a party. This is like being at a wedding,” Fischer said.

Karabush said the program attracts a lot of tourists because consierges direct out of towners to the dances.

“It’s such a unique setting, it’s almost surreal for out of towners and Chicagoans to be dancing with this beautiful skyline as a setting,” Karabush said.

Musician for the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band and Orchestra who played at the June 19 Chicago Summer Dance Don Jacobs said what he likes the most about playing at Chicago Summer Dance is playing outside when the weather is good, and playing for an audience.

“I like knowing there’s an audience enjoying the music. I like putting smiles on people’s faces, and getting people out of their chairs to dance,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs was complimentary of the instructor who coordinated the one hour klezmer dance lesson.

“He teaches people more than just the steps of the dance. He gives people a feeling for the mood and spirit of the dances,” Jacobs said.

Summer Dance Program Manager with the Public Programming Association at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Carlos Tortolero, said some bands are easy to book because they’re already in Chicago, such as the klezmer band that played June 19. However, bands such as the one playing next weekend, who play Hungarian folk music, are more challenging to book because their music is so specific.

Tortelero said they act as the city’s agent. When they need a band from out of town with specific music like Hungarian folk, he has to try and coordinate a tour for the band in Chicago with multiple dates to make their trip worthwhile. He works with other venues to book bands he needs for Chicago Summer Dance.

Tortelero said he has seen the down side of the music business when it’s for profit, so he’s happy to be a part of the business without having to deal with that side of it.

“Putting smiles on people’s faces is way more rewarding. It’s all about finding programs that fit with the Summer Dance Community,” Tortelero said.

Tortelero said the Spirit of Music Garden in Grant Park dance floor has special meaning because it is a piece of art made with recycled materials.

It’s made out of recycled milk cartons with wooden floor supports and sand underneath it. It was constructed in 1997, and it used to be where Millenium Park is now. The artist was trying to show what could be done with refuse currently filling up our landfills, Tortelero said.

The popularity of Chicago Summer Dance manifested in the continued expansion of the dance floor. The dance floor went from 2500 square feet to 3500 to its current size, 4600 square feet, Tortelero said.

In addition to the Grant Park location, Chicago Summer Dance has three satellite dance venues: Athletic Field Park, 3546 West Addison Street, Humboldt Park Boathouse, 1359 North Sacramento Avenue, and Jackson Park 63^rd Street Beach, 6300 South Lake Shore Drive, Tortelero said.

Tortelero also said this is the first year they are having Chicago Summer Dance at Navy Pier. So far they’ve had Cuban music and dancing there.

Chicago Summer Dance provides a pure dance environment, Tortelero said. When they first started, it was before the smoking ban. So it was the place to dance without that concern, Tortelero said.

Tortelero said since Chicago Summer Dance began more hotels have discontinued hosting live bands in their ballrooms.

“The problem is a lot of the hotels got rid of ballroom orchestras. Also, some hotels have closed their ballrooms, the Congress Hotel, the Chicago Hilton. For the hotels, it’s a lot easier to put in a CD than hire a band. With Chicago Summer Dance they are trying to make sure that live music continues, and the music and dancing are experienced as they were intended – live,” Tortelero said.

At Chicago Summer Dance, those who find themselves timidly stepping onto dance floors will feel as welcome as those who know how to cut a rug.

“Dancing, dancing, dancing

She’s a dancing machine.”

- The Jackson Five, 1973

Chicago – Freezing temperatures blasted the city this week, and we’ve been cranking up our heaters to keep us toasty. If you look at your furnace, you might also see your hot water heater next to it.

A young professor at Loyola University who teaches students how to build their own personal sustainable food systems said this is one example of how we waste energy by design.

Loyola University professor Jonathan Netzky said water heaters are often next to furnaces, the sole function of which is to blow hot air throughout your home. He said we wouldn’t be wasting as much energy if we designed an integrated system with proper filtration between the water heater and furnace.

One integrated system that already exists is aquaponics, or the combination of fish farming and hydroponics. The plants absorb Nitrogen, which comes from the ammonia fish excrete. The plants also absorb minerals produced by the underwater composting of fish waste. The fish benefit from the water filtration provided by the plants.

“The Federal Farm Policy has never really supported these types of methods,” Netzky said. “The way that our major crops and meats are grown doesn’t take into account the symbiotic relationships they have with their environments. And that’s the really beautiful thing about aquaponics. It is a sustainable food production system. The sustainable characteristics relate to a minimum water consumption compared with any other form of agriculture.”

Netzky attended the "International Aquaponics and Tilapia Aquaculture

Course" at the University of the Virgin Islands this past June. The University of the Virgin Islands has one of the leading research facilities for aquaponics.

One of the professors leading the research is Don Bailey. Bailey said right now the focus of their study is stocking density and time to harvest for tilapia fish in an aquaponics system.

“I see aquaponics as more of a way of recovering waste nutrients,” Bailey said. “If a farmer is just doing a recirculating system, an intensive production, and recirculating the water around, they have to discharge a lot of that out into the environment because the waste of the fish builds up over time.”

The farmer has to delete the water, maybe even 20 percent a week, according to Bailey. In the University of the Virgin Island’s aquaponics system on St. Croix Island they are replacing less than 7 percent of the water per week.

“We have less of an environmental impact because we’re not releasing waste nutrients out into a stream or into some municipal sewage treatment plant,” Bailey said.

Pete Rice has been running his fish farm in southern Illinois since 1982. The Logan Hollow Fish Farm owner has about 180 acres of water in ponds varying in size from half an acre to 7 acres. Rice raises eight or nine species of fish, and most go to ponds for pond stocking.

Closed systems such as aquaponics inside buildings are still in the experimental stage, according to Rice.

“One of the biggest problems with closed systems is you’re dependent on a pump not going out, or the power not going out,” Rice said. “We’ve got generators, we’ve got systems in place. Yet, this summer we still lost 100,000 large mouth bass in one night because a pump failed.”

Now Rice has an oxygen system hooked in so, if the pump fails, pure oxygen is sent to the fish.

“That’s the last weak link in that system,” Rice said. “And it always seems to happen a month before you’re ready to sell your product. It never happens two days after you stock them. It’s just part of the fish business. Murphy’s law always seems to kick in.”

When you have an intense system such as aquaponics where you’re raising a huge amount of fish in a very small area, you’re dependent on your power not going out, a pump not going out, a fish not clogging your drain, or a disease, according to Rice.

“It’s like anything like confined hogs or cattle,” Rice said. “Anytime you confine those animals, large numbers in a small area, you’re just asking for a disease problem.”

It’s not like walking out and looking in the hog building and seeing something’s wrong because they’re underwater, according to Rice.

“Unless you see some dead fish, you usually don’t know there’s a problem,” Rice said.

In addition to the high operating costs of an aquaponics system and the intensity of the setup, fish medications and insecticides on the plants cannot be used, according to Bailey. The plants would absorb the medications and become contaminated, or the fish would absorb the pesticides and become contaminated.

But Bailey said that’s not a problem at their research center.

“The fish never get sick,” Bailey said. “The tilapia are pretty hardy. We have a little bit of mortality mostly caused by overcrowding. The disease organisms might be there, but they aren’t in an acute stage because the fish aren’t stressed.”

“Just like right now you might have the cold virus in you, but you don’t have a cold because you’re not stressed,” Bailey said. “But as soon as you get stressed by something you’ll catch a cold and you’ll be sick. Because these fish are in good, clean water, and they’re well fed, they really don’t have disease outbreaks.”

Netzky said an aquaponics system is an example of a stronger, more secure system. It’s stronger in the sense that there is far less waste being released from it, and it has a much more minimal impact on the environment in terms of the amount of water needed.

Netzky also started a consulting company for sustainable food systems in 2004 called Local Alternative, Inc. He said aquaponics is a more secure system because it allows for food to be grown closer to where it’s consumed.

The goal is to have highly productive food systems regionally located, and more food per square foot with fewer resources, according to Netzky.

“It’s simply a matter of designing a system of greater character,” Netzky said. “I believe it’s a cutting edge method of agriculture. In general, it’s like furthering the production capacity in the same way we extend the seasons of crops.”

Bailey doesn’t see aquaponics changing much or becoming more significant in the next 5 to 10 years.

“The integration, I think, a lot of people find too expensive to really get into in a large, commercial scale,” Bailey said. “And so I don’t see it really expanding commercially too much. There will be a few niche markets that it gets to, but there’s not a big trend toward it.”

Rice agreed.

“I don’t see a whole lot changing in the way fish are raised,” Rice said. “I can see where there’s going to be more of it. There’s going to be more farms popping up. There are more people raising fish in Illinois than there was 10 years ago. There are a lot more smaller scale people, but they’re raising a more high dollar fish.”

Bailey said any change to the outlook for aquaponics would have to be market driven. He said operating costs would have to decrease, and clients would have to officiate the benefits of having fresh crop during winter.

Copyright 2008

by Christopher Brinckerhoff

Chicago – This January I was in a green journalism class at Columbia College. We met some interesting people, and I learned some things I didn’t know before.

Here’s a trip through some of the green-minded people we met and a few of the things I learned.

The first person we met was Keller Williams green realtor Celeste Karan. One of the interesting points Karan made was the difference between LEED building certification and Energy Star certification.

LEED certification is more based on building materials and plans to build green. LEED has a more architecture focus. LEED is based on plans, not performance.

Energy Star ratings are based on the performance of the buildings after they are constructed. It is more focused on the energy efficiency of the built buildings. Energy Star first started rating appliances, and has expanded into rating buildings.

The next person we met was a green landscape designer at WRD Environmental named Meredith Sessions. One of the interesting stories Sessions shared concerned perception of what looks like a good-looking landscape.

Sessions told us about a project she worked on at an old folks home. Her firm was trying to convince the residents that native flora was a beautiful landscape, as opposed to the tightly manicured landscapes we’ve come to enjoy in the United States. It might look like a bunch of overgrown weeds compared to the golf course look, but it’s better for the environment.

Next we met a green librarian, Kelly Reiss at the Chicago Center for Green Technology. She told us their library is a good resource for green interior decorators because they have lots of samples of different green materials. The coolest thing about visiting with Reiss was that they give out those energy saver light bulbs for goodwill freebies. I got two. Sweet.

Then we met Reader editor Mick Dumke. He said one of the things he enjoys writing about besides politics is the environment. Dumke confirmed our suspicion that Chicago is not the greenest city in the U.S. as the mayor has claimed. In fact, we’ve got a ways to go before that claim holds water. The water bottle tax that began last year has not resulted in better funding for recycling as the representatives at the time claimed it would. Actually, Chicago is rebooting its recycling program with several pilot programs being tested.

We also went out to Altgeld Gardens and met green community organizer Cheryl Johnson. Johnson has taken the lead with an organization her mother Hazel Johnson founded, People for Community Recovery. This meeting introduced us first hand to the concept of environmental justice. The people with the least amount of money tend to live in the worst quality environments, whether it is near polluting factories or the contaminated soil left behind by such processes.

Altgeld Gardens tenant council is supposed to represent the community on improving this situation, but the management company that oversees the property, Johnson pointed out, employs many members. The conflict of interest has stifled efforts to improve the quality of life there.

Another person we met was Samuel Villasenor of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. Again, some of the same issues of environmental justice came up here. But Villasenor’s organization puts on interesting awareness events such as tours to points of blight called Toxic Tours. This shows people first-hand what some of the environmental issues the community faces are.

On our last day of class we spoke with a green farmers market representative, Sherry Doyle. She gave us some interesting food for thought as far as being able to get healthier food. Doyle told us about places online where we can order healthier food. She also told us where to find meat that’s not from a factory farm.

Also on our last day we met Mel Knicherson from the Environmental Law and Policy Organization. Knicherson put the situation in realistic perspective. Though many people are aware of the problems we face with agriculture, energy and our environment, it is a very slow process to actually change the habits of companies and large groups of people.

The final thought I have on all this green journalism stuff was said best by Kermit the Frog, “It’s not easy being green.”

Copyright 2009

by Christopher Brinckerhoff

Chicago – On Wednesday an environmental justice advocate stopped by my Green Journalism class at Columbia. Samuel Villasenor, the clean power coordinator for Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) brought some green facts to light concerning his neighborhood.

Highlights included:

1. Make with the parks.

Villasenor explained Little Village has about 91,000 residents within a five-mile radius. It’s a densely populated area, and they currently have one public park. Plans are underway to build another park for the community on space owned by Honeywell.

One of the reasons why Little Village is in need of more parks is because they have lots of young people in their community. Without something productive to do after school, some join gangs.

“We do suffer from gang violence,” Villasenor said. “It’s a good idea to put in more parks. We see a lot of gang activity after school, and it slows down at five or six when the parents get home.”

In addition to social wellness, LVEJO is striving to improve the community’s physical health too. One program the organization has to increase awareness of their pursuit for a better quality of life is a walking tour through town that stops at many of the pollution sources. It’s called the Toxic Tour.

2. Toxic soup.

Between a coal power plant, industrial chemical cleaning factory, and brown fields, Little Village faces challenging environmental issues. Through it all, LVEJO is trying to shut down the coal power plant and bring more awareness of the community’s public health.

There are two coal power plants left in the city, and they were grandfathered in with updated emissions regulations in the 70’s, according to Villasenor. One is in Pilsen, and the other is in Little Village.

The plants produce gases including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Particulate matter includes mercury, soot and dust.

Villasenor said he expects the Pilsen power plant could shut down before the one in Little Village. He said his organization’s cause was given a boost last fall when Mayor Richard Daley publicly acknowledged the two coal power plants were the biggest single source of pollution in our city.

Villasenor said part of the reason why the Mayor addressed this now is because the city’s bid for the 2016 Olympics is a focal point for the long-time Mayor.

“That’s his baby,” Villasenor said.

LVEJO has launched a community-organized campaign to shut down their coal power plant permanently in the wake of being the international event’s host city.

With Little Village’s plan for a new park, the proposed space is currently a brown field owned by Honeywell. Honeywell was not the owner of the property when it’s soil was contaminated. That company was an asphalt manufacturer.

Villasenor said after much negotiation the city has begun the process of cleaning the soil for the construction of the new park, but has yet to agree on a price to acquire the property from Honeywell. He said Honeywell wants $7 million for the space, and they paid $2.5 million for it. The LVEJO spokesperson added that the Chicago Park District’s total budget for the park is $10 million.

If the Park District paid $7 million to Honeywell for the land, there would only be $3 million to build the park. Residents have expressed interest in a variety of amenities for the park. Senior centers, basketball courts and pools are a few of the requests that made the shortlist.

Another environmental challenge Little Village faces is an industrial cleaning facility in their neighborhood called Meyer Steel Drum (MSD). MSD collects large metal drums from various manufactures and others throughout the city, disposes of their toxic contents, cleans them out, and returns them to their clients.

A LVEJO representative photographed MSD engaging in illegal dumping of toxic chemicals in the middle of the night. That exposure and the subsequent violations issued to MSD by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) catalyzed a restraining order on LVEJO members from getting too close to MSD in the same way again.

All of these environmental circumstances in Little Village can cause health threats including asthma and pneumonia, cancer, brain development hindrances, aggravated diabetes and heart conditions, according to Villasenor.

“Instead of asking are people suffering, we should be asking should people suffer?” Villasenor said.

Copyright 2009

719

by Christopher Brinckerhoff

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Chicago – This past Monday my Green Journalism class ventured to the other side of the tracks and spoke with the director of a health-focused community organization in Altgeld Gardens on the South side.

Cheryl Johnson, director of People for Community Recovery, told us it can be very challenging to draw attention to her community’s environmental health issues because of local politics. Officials, including members of their own tenant council, discourage people from visiting Altgeld Gardens in order to keep residents at bay.

People for Community Recovery was started in 1979 by Cheryl’s mother, Hazel Johnson. Hazel became aware there was a higher incidence of cancer on the Southeast side of Chicago than anywhere else in the city.

People for Community Recovery puts pressure on corporations and government representatives to hold them accountable to public housing communities and other poor communities.

Cheryl said People for Community Recovery was one of the first African-American groups to receive an environment award from former president George Bush senior in 1992. She pointed out the framed certificate on a wall filled with accolades her mother and the group have received. The presidential acknowledgement was for their participation in the Presidential Conservation Challenge program.

“Hazel had the ability to go around the country and educate people about living in an environment like this because she heard on the television back in the 80’s the South side of Chicago has the highest incidence of cancer than any other area in the city of Chicago,” Cheryl said. “And she wanted to know why.”

The land Altgeld Gardens occupies was a landfill prior to the 1940’s. In addition to the toxins released into the soil for this reason, today Altgeld Gardens is surrounded by factories, incinerators, refineries, toxic waste dumps, and more landfills.

People for Community Recovery is a part of the environmental justice movement. The movement is the intersection of the civil rights movement and the environmental movement, according to their website. The goal is to address the disparities between the quality of life in rich communities and poor communities.

Cheryl’s family has been a victim of environmental injustice. Her father died of lung cancer. Yet, she decided to remain in Altgeld Gardens and raise her family while continuing the work her mother started.

“People in my community think cancer is normal,” Cheryl said. “You get more information, for example, Sally died yesterday. What did she die of? Cancer. Oh, she just died. But if someone gets shot with bullets, girl, what happened? More information. In opposite we should be asking more information about why your sister got cancer. How did she get the cancer? Does anybody else have the cancer? Does your neighbor have cancer? So that’s what we’re really trying to find out because no government agency wants to do an epidemiological study of this area because they’re looking at the liability from it instead of looking at it from being proactive.”

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Copyright 2009

494

by Christopher Brinckerhoff

Chicago – Green is hip. Home and building construction is one area where being green seems to be gaining traction with the public. Representatives for elaborate new developments will proudly tell you if the construction is LEED certified.

For example, last year I spoke with Columbia College communications vice president Mark Lloyd for another story, he told me the $20 million media center the college is building is LEED certified at the platinum level.

I didn’t really know what that meant, and he explained it had to do with constructing a green structure, and that platinum was the highest level. That sounded pretty good, but what it takes to get LEED certified is different than what it takes to acquire other types of certifications.

Actually, there are quite a few accreditation organizations out there, according to a green realtor, Celeste Karan of Keller Williams, who spoke to my Green Journalism class at Columbia last week.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The USGB has an annual event called Greenbuild International Conference and Expo. The Greenbuild 2009 will focus on the American Southwest, and will take place in Phoenix, Arizona.

Energy Star operates another green certification program. While LEED is supported by a non-profit organization called the U.S. Green Building Council (USGB), Energy Star bills itself as “a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy helping us all save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices,” according to their website.

Karan summarized the differences between LEED and Energy Star certifications nicely. She said architects created LEED, and engineers developed Energy Star. Karan, who has been involved in multiple green construction projects and sales, said just because a building is LEED certified does not necessarily mean it is energy efficient. Platinum LEED certification does not guarantee it is green, according to Karan’s definition.

Energy Star accreditation is based on performance measurements taken after the construction project is completed, according to Karan. In doing so Energy Star has positioned itself as a more difficult certification to acquire. In fact, not many buildings can claim to be Energy Star certified compared to LEED certified.

One of the most important things people should understand is that there are different accreditation programs out there, and they have different criteria. LEED certification is focused on the materials used in the build and what the project claims it will accomplish. On the other hand, Energy Star makes recommendations on what can be done to make a building more energy efficient. But at the end of the day the Energy Star rating is based on the verifiable performance of the completed work.

A friend of mine has been in the flooring business for over 25 years. He agreed that when industry leaders talk about going green, they are appealing to their clients’ requests more than a desire to provide products and services with less impact on the environment.

Rainbarrel

Photo caption: A City of Chicago rain barrel outside a green building demonstration home at the Chicago Department of Environment. The department runs a program where citizens can purchase rain barrels for a fraction of the regular retail price. One of the department’s officials said the program is very popular, and they sell out of the barrels whenever they get them in stock. Photo by Christopher Brinckerhoff.

The flooring guru said he sees the green situation in two parts. First, there’s the public discourse increasingly including green conversation. As more people learn to be more environmentally conscious, they will look to the products and services they purchase to be green. And that’s good. The more people ask for green, the more green things will become.

At the same time, we need to be aware of the validity of green claims as they relate to actual success. That leads to the other part of the green situation – the time and energy it takes to produce green products and services. For example, if a carpet is manufactured with more natural materials, but it takes the use of more petrochemicals to manufacture it, that kind of defeats the purpose.

Another example of this energy analysis came up in my class when bamboo flooring was brought up. Bamboo flooring has been said to be a green product. It’s made from a renewable, natural material. However, as Karan pointed out, where does bamboo come from? Asia. It has to be shipped to the states using petroleum and spewing toxic fumes into our atmosphere. At the same time, hardwoods such as oak and maple are produced in the U.S. for hardwood flooring. An energy analysis of the whole lives of these products is necessary to understand which one is actually less hurtful to our environment.

The Energy Star website also has some general information for addressing energy challenges. One is a list of things you can do to decrease your energy bills. One of the suggestions in the list is to turn down the temperature on your water heater to 120 degrees F.

Perhaps in the future we will be analyzing the greenness of products and services in a more unified and complete way. Home building will continue to be a focus of green attention because, for example, our homes can produce twice as many greenhouse gases as our automobiles in a given year, according to the Energy Star website. The reason is that we get our electricity from power plants that emit exhaust.

What do you think will happen? How could the LEED certification and Energy Star certification programs be coordinated? Should they remain separate and continue to focus on different aspects of green building? What role should our government play in the future development of green building? What role will you play?

Chicagodepartmentofenvironment

Photo caption: Inside the front lobby of the Chicago Department of Environment office building. My Green Journalism class visited there last week. The building is LEED certified, but lacks an Energy Star certification. Photo by Christopher Brinckerhoff.

Copyright 2008

900

by Christopher Brinckerhoff

Chicago – When people talk green, what do they mean? Is it our green environment, the Green Party, green recycling, or green energy use? Does green mean green construction, green landscaping, green decoration materials, green transportation, or does it mean being naïve?

Green means all this stuff. But what is easy to miss is the color green. Green is the color of money. And claims of being green have flooded our marketplace. In fact, being green means making lots of green, and we consumers eat it up faster than a Metra locomotive barreling through a skipped stop on an express route.

Two professionals: a green realtor, and a green landscape designer specialize in different green areas. The green realtor said some of her clients have a tight budget, and for them if being green means reducing their bottom line cost, that’s the way to go. For other clients being green can be a lifestyle choice. They have some money and they want to express their environmental conscientiousness with green purchases.

Keller Williams realtor Celeste Karan specializes in green. She said there are misconceptions about building green, and there is also some confusion in defining what green means.

“When you’re talking about misconceptions you’re usually talking about why people don’t build green,” Karan said. “When you’re dealing with getting over the sort of inertia of changing the way that builders build. Those misconceptions usually have to do with the idea that it’s much more expensive, that the products that they need aren’t available, that it’s too hard. That’s the other one that I love. But one of the main issues that we have with definition clarity is that green is such a nebulous term. Nobody knows what it means. So what the people that I’m working with are trying to do is to sort of help define what green is in a sense of what is useful, what’s actually measurable, what gets the job done. Are we just talking about feeling good about things. Are we just talking about getting something because it’s prettier or cool, or are we having something that actually performs and really reduces pollution, reduces energy use.”

Go ahead. Get a bamboo floor. The green enthusiasts say bamboo is a fast growing replenishable resource for floors. But if you live in Chicagoland, where does the bamboo for your floor come from? Asia, China. It has to be shipped or flown here, burning up plenty of petroleum along the way. How about using hardwood flooring from locally grown hardwood logging forests instead?

WRD Environmental is a small landscaping firm located at the Chicago Center for Green Technology on Sacramento Boulevard. Landscape designer Meredith Sessions said one of their primary goals is to capture rain water where it falls instead of sourcing all of our water needs from our water utilities.

Sessions said the Chicago area experiences something called the hot plate effect. Since most of our green spaces have been covered by concrete, steel and blacktop it’s a few degrees hotter in the metropolitan region than it is elsewhere. This can lead to problems for our energy systems and environment.

“An increase of just a few degrees in the summer doubles the number of people who use their air conditioners, and really puts a strain on energy systems and wildlife, and on us,” Sessions said.

Fish are adversely affected by warmer streams, Sessions said.

By creating landscapes that trap water and allow it to go into the earth instead of into the sewers we reduce heat and pollution, according to Sessions.

Here’s a link to the U.S. government’s green effort. Also, here are couple links to sites with green products.

Copyright 2008

by Christopher Brinckerhoff

Chicago – We often hear about what distinguishes our city, what gives us character, and what makes us special. But we have more in common with other major cities than we do not. One significant similarity is our share of folks who have to make do with very little. One local organization is addressing this by farming food for our food banks.

Green Net Chicago’s website says Ginkgo Organic Gardens on North Kenmore Avenue was started in 1994 by Uptown community gardeners as a responses to local hunger.

“They saw, on the one hand, surplus produce in urban gardens end up on the compost pile, and on the other, not-for-profit organizations unable to afford fresh produce for the homeless and hungry persons they serve,” the site says. “Ginkgo Organic Gardens—a community garden that operates as a food bank—solves this problem. Volunteers grow organic vegetables, herbs, fruit and flowers, and then donate them to Uptown-area not-for-profit organizations.”

Creating gardens to help those in need is a more direct solution to the problem. Instead of asking for food and money to be donated, these gardens create a renewable source of food.

Ginkgo Organic Gardens was planted on a vacant lot on the North side. In 1998 they were in danger of losing the property because a third party had bought the back taxes on the lot and was seeking to have it condemned, according to NeighborSpace’s website.

NeighborSpace is one of the groups that helped save the garden, their site says. NeighborSpace is an organization that partners with its three founding governmental agencies: the City of Chicago, the Chicago Park District, and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. They also work with other nonprofit organizations and local community groups including the Ginkgo Organic Gardens Steering Committee, the group that runs the Gardens.

Ginkgo Organic Gardens Steering Committee local leader Eric Salus is on NeighborSpace’s site about the potential condemnation in 1998.

“Fortunately our original lease through the Department of Environment was still active, and the City corrected the oversight,” Salus said. “NeighborSpace was newly formed and adopted the garden as its first North-side property.”

“Fighting hunger is our mission, but we also strive to educate others on the need for safe local food sources, and to support sustainable agriculture practices everywhere,” Salus said. “ We are proud that NeighborSpace has included Ginkgo Organic Gardens in the patchwork quilt of green spaces throughout the city, and believe the strength of this great city will continue to grow so long as there is a diversity of places in which to grow.”

One of the organizations that volunteered at Ginkgo Organic Gardens recently is The Kitchen. On their website writer Joanna recorded her experience.

“We've spent the past few Saturday mornings digging in the dirt at Ginkgo Organic Gardens on Chicago's north side,” Joanna said. “This community garden, located on a residential street in a formerly vacant lot, produces approximately 1,500 pounds of produce each year, and donates it to Vital Bridges' Grocery Land, a local food pantry serving people living with AIDS.”

“Gardening experience is not a requirement to volunteer, which is good, because we have very little,” Joanna said. “But they put us right to work, weeding beds in preparation for planting, breaking down branches for mulch and laying down ground cover. We've been surprised to discover how much we like to weed – it's oddly calming. Knowing that our efforts will help feed those less fortunate makes it even more meaningful, especially as food pantries are struggling with rising food costs.”

Ginkgo Organic Gardens presently donates plants to Vital Bridges' GroceryLand, according to NeighborSpace’s site. In the past the Gardens have also donated to Lakeview Pantry, Inspiration Cafe, and the Native American Medical Center.

Copyright 2008

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by Christopher Brinckerhoff

Chicago – Hybrid cars and alternative fuels have filled up the public dialog about our fuel crisis in terms of transportation. Public transit is busier than ever. Yet, the improvement and expansion of our transit systems and railroads has largely been absent from this conversation.

Metropolitan Planning Council vice president of external relations Peter Skosey said one reason why public transit has not been at the forefront of the public dialog about our fuel crisis is because overall, proportionally, few people utilize it as their mode of transportation.

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“In the major media and, certainly, the national media the number of people who ride transit is still in the single digits,” Skosey said. “While it might be important to us in our region because we do have a pretty robust transit system here, and as much as we like to complain about slow zones and late trains, we still have a really good transit system that moves like a million people a day. But if you look at nationally speaking, transit ridership is less than 10 percent.”

There were about 55% more passenger vehicles on the road in 2005 than there were in 1980, according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States. There was also an increase in the proportion of trucks compared with cars in the same time period.

Midwest high speed rail association executive director Rick Harnish said the expansion of railroads is absent from the public dialog about almost every issue that railroads can help solve. The reasons for this are many, and hard to rank in significance. But one of the top reasons is the railroad infrastructure is privately owned. Another reason is railroad advocates have become discouraged over time.

“And one reason, that I can’t prove in any way, is accepting railroads as a key part of the solution challenges a lot of assumptions about how wealth is generated and enjoyed,” Harnish said. “To accept that we need to expand the railroad network very quickly requires an acceptance that we won’t be able to drive.”

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Skosey said in order to improve these systems, the public dialog needs to shift to recognize metropolitan regions as essential means to our economic growth. That means looking at more and larger areas instead of focusing on a few major cities as isolated pillars of production. The metropolitan region of Chicago includes all the suburbs as well as parts of Indiana.

“The change is already happening,” Harnish said. “Now it’s a matter of getting the pace of change to accelerate. Transit ridership is up everywhere where it’s available. The one thing that is holding back growth of Amtrak is a lack of seats. So there’s a clear change toward a desire for people to bike or take public transit. What needs to change is the quality of public transit.”

“The issue of public transportation versus automobile versus bicycle versus simple walking, those issues are a means to an end,” Skosey said.

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Arlington Heights Ford general sales manager John Guido, Jr. said the biggest thing that has changed about automobiles in the last twenty years is people’s perception of their needs.

In the 90s Ford had a line of SUVs they promoted with a process called outfitting. People looked to their vehicles to perform multiple functions, and the size and features of the vehicles were important to people.

The idea changed from, “I need to be able to do everything,” to “I need to be able to do the basics,” Guido, Jr. said.

The sales manager’s father, John Guido, owns the dealership and also is president of the Ford Advertising Board in Chicago.

“Americans have been in love with their cars for over 100 years,” Guido said. “There are two reasons why. First, it’s the second biggest purchase they’ll ever make. And second, a car tells you something about the personality of the person driving it.”

“It’s like their lifestyle,” Guido said. “Why do people buy certain breeds of dogs?”

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Our World War II victory determined how we built our transportation infrastructure, according to Harnish.

“After the war other countries had to decide how to rebuild their cities,” Harnish said. “They rebuilt them the same as they were before, as part of an emotional healing. We dealt with our emotional trauma by building something completely new.”

The U.S. was the leading producer of oil until about 1971, according to Harnish.

“So much of the infrastructure that we built since the end of the war, somewhere around in the 60s we decided people weren’t going to walk anymore,” Harnish said. “We’ve got all this infrastructure that is unpleasant to walk in. And the first part of every trip is walking. Either you’re walking to your car or you’re walking to the transit station. We’ve made this walk to the train station unpleasant, and sometimes unsafe. So that plays into every decision about if we’re going to walk, drive or take public transit.”

Skosey said, “The bottom line is as regions grow and more people move into them, as ours is expected by 2030 to have 2 million more people, how are these people going to move around? And where are they moving to?”

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“The challenge has arisen because we have increased congestion and a greater jobs to housing mismatch, and those are the issues we’re trying to overcome because we know that congestion costs our region $7.3 billion dollars per year,” Skosey said.

“You could address that by simply doing better land use decisions and putting jobs closer to where people can afford to live,” Skosey said. “So if we increased the employment opportunities say, for example, Will County, fewer people would be commuting from Will County to DuPage for work, and that would reduce congestion.”

Guido, Jr. said it used to be that the foreign car companies used to have the edge on quality, and domestics had the best deals. He said it was like an old car salesman adage that said, “If you don’t have the steak, sell the sizzle.”

The foreign models had the steak and the domestic models had the sizzle. But now domestic models are competitive on quality as well, according to Guido, Jr. Ford’s 2009 F series pick-ups, which were released last month, get 21 miles per gallon.

When asked what a baby step would be toward the improved transit system quality he referred to, Harnish was succinct.

“Buy more buses,” Harnish said.

Copyright 2008

by Christopher Brinckerhoff

Chicago – The city is abuzz with the recent injury of Bears starting quarterback Kyle Orton. The veteran football player turned his ankle this week playing against the Detroit Lions.

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Rex Grossman, the quarterback who led our team to a Super Bowl two seasons ago, will likely play November 9 against the Tennessee Titans, according to reports.

This is a big deal to fans who watched their home team lose the Super Bowl, and falter last season with Grossman at the helm. Orton's selection over Grossman to start this season drew lots of attention.

For some fans, the quarterback selection of their team is something they can readily identify with because they follow sports every day.

Extensive media coverage of the Orton Grossman switch might've received even more prominent coverage if it weren't for the national and state election this week.

In fact, people more easily identify with sports teams than they do with politicians, according to experts.

Cultural anthropologist and professor at the Northern Illinois University’s Anthropology Department Kendall Thu said, “People really don’t know what politicians do, but they do know what sports teams do, and that seems to reflect what they aspire to in their own lives. So it’s easier to connect.”

Thu said one of the goals of cultural anthropologists is to determine whether or not there are learned traits present in all cultures around the world.

“There are actually very few, it turns out,” Thu said. “But oddly enough, sports, as broadly defined, is one of those universals. It doesn’t make any difference whether they’re hunters and gatherers or modern societies. All cultures have sports manifest in one way or the other.”

Harper College Sociology professor Patricia Hamlen said sports teams are a part of people’s identity because it’s a way to create solidarity without inflicting harm on each other.

“It’s a pretty safe way to create competition and solidarity within cities and between cities,” Hamlen said. “There can be competition without that competition being deadly.”

Social class and the way fans relate with their teams may correlate with each other, according to Hamlen. Working class towns may relate to their teams differently than other kinds of towns.

“I think Chicago is an excellent example of that,” Hamlen said. “We have many sports teams that don’t do well. But we show incredible loyalty to them. I’m wondering if part of that is because this is a working class town. And a working class town has an underdog mentality. That’s kind of projected in how we support our teams regardless of how well they do.”

“In my view, sports allow people to live out a life vicariously,” Thu said. “The sports arena is supposed to be an arena that reflects the ideal values in American culture."

"In sports, you’re supposed to abide by a certain set of rules, similar to the rules in American society as a whole, where, if you follow the rules and you work hard and you compete hard then you can be successful," Thu said.

"In sports the rules are set up at least ostensibly so that the winners express those that have the most talent, the hardest work, the best teamwork, the best individual effort," Thu said. "So in a sense, sports reflects American cultural values as a whole.”

Sports fan Raymundo Bazan has lived in the Chicago area since he was four months old. He works as a restaurant server. The 32 year old Berwynian said his favorite sports are baseball and basketball. The Cubs are his top team.

Bazan agreed that Chicagoans dote on their teams, in part, because they seek relief from their employment obligations.

“We are true fans,” Bazan said. “Everybody works hard and everybody waits for the beginning to get some stress out from work. When the Cubs play the stadium is full every time. No matter what, if they win or lose, we are still there.”

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Thu said sports act as a representation of all the principles in a democratic society.

“If you play by the rules, if you work hard, if you learn the game, if you educate yourself, if you work together, work as a community, work as a team, if you commit yourself, all of those things that are in one way or the other manifest in American culture in general are acutely pronounced in the sports arena,” Thu said.

“It’s not as clear as life in general,” Thu said. “People are very cynical about people who succeed oftentimes because they think that American culture is corrupt, and they can succeed in backhanded ways. Well in sports, to a certain extent, there’s a clear picture of who is successful or not. Although, the picture gets clouded when you have the use of steroids, and NBA officials are gambling on the game.”

Copyright 2008