The Times, Munster. June 15, 2012.
Urban gardens plant food for thought, too
As the region struggles to recover from the worst economy since the Great Depression, there are some intriguing signs of growth. Planting urban gardens is among them.
Last Saturday, a small group of volunteers planted tomatoes, cucumbers, collard greens, onions and eggplant at the Stewart House Urban Farm & Gardens in Gary.
This is one of many efforts to bring food production closer to the consumer. In Detroit, where a large percentage of the city lots are uninhabited, there is a push to begin gardening on that soil. The same thing could happen here.
Sandra Rodriguez, project manager for Stewart House, is a strong proponent for bringing food production to areas deemed food deserts because of the scarcity of grocery stores selling a wide variety of fresh produce and other foods at competitive prices.
“My personal passion is also to create an urban farm that is a jobs and revenue source for the community,” Rodriguez said.
The Stewart House effort is not the only urban garden in the area. In one form or other, the idea has been around for years.
Those who have been around long enough will remember planting or seeing victory gardens, or perhaps hearing their parents or grandparents talk of them. Those gardens helped put food on the table when times were difficult in the past.
In this era of austerity, it makes sense to encourage urban gardens, bringing food production back to the people. Consider these 21st century victory gardens.
They will make fresh foods more affordable and available in “food deserts” and will teach gardening skills that will serve people in urban areas well for generations to come.
Grow Northwest Indiana is promoting gardening throughout the region. Efforts by this organization and others to help provide fresh food, especially where it’s scarce, should be encouraged.
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The Indianapolis Star. June 14, 2012.
Without jobs and without homes
The wars have come home, intensifying the battle against homelessness.
The latest annual count of people without fixed shelter in Indianapolis showed a modest 5 percent increase over the previous year, and the numbers would have looked a lot better but for one category.
The number of homeless veterans soared by 34 percent, from 262 in 2011 to 351 when the tally was taken last January.
The head of the Hoosier Veterans Assistance Foundation, Charles Haenlein, told The Star’s Diana Penner he thinks the actual total is more like 400 to 500. And, indeed, some who work with the homeless consider the overall figure of 1,647 far lower than reality.
Officials of the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention insist they’ve developed highly sophisticated tracking methods and have produced an accurate picture. In any case, they agree it is not a pretty picture: too many people on the street or in shelters, too many families with children in those ranks, and too many men and women who have served their country in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The stereotype of the shiftless bum, say those who help the homeless, has never been more demonstrably false.
The economy is the culprit. An impressive array of programs providing affordable housing and support services, fueled by roughly $4 million in federal stimulus funds, has cut into a homeless population that hit 3,500 a decade ago. But jobs melted away after 2007, and returning veterans in particular have found them scarce.
Unlike previous wars, the current ones are being waged largely with National Guard members and Reservists, who do not have military careers to fall back on. Yet they have the same re-entry issues, such as post-traumatic stress, as their counterparts who don’t have to hunt for civilian jobs.
When they become homeless, or at risk of it, much is available for them and much can be added. More transitional housing, more emergency beds and more mental health outreach are vital investments. But the true need they reflect, along with others who became statistics due to lost jobs and foreclosed houses, is not one for homelessness services. They need an end to the long march of recession.
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Tribune-Star. June 13, 2012.
Patience with the texting ban
It takes time to assess the effectiveness of new laws, none more so than the texting ban that took effect last summer in Indiana. While far from perfect and a challenge for police to enforce, the law itself represented a good first step in getting the attention of, shall we say, a distracted populace which understands the dangers of texting while driving but seems unwilling to stop doing it.
The year-old law prohibits drivers from using a telecommunications device to type, transmit or read a text message or email. That’s fine, but police can’t check motorists’ phones to see if they are in violation, and drivers can still use their phones to check GPS coordinates, make calls or surf the Internet.
You don’t have to be out on the roadways for long before encountering other drivers obliviously texting away.
But let’s face it. It’s never going to be easy to judge how effective the current law has been. Police around the state have issued warnings and citations, although not in large numbers. There is no doubt the law deters some people, including teenagers, from texting or using their cellphones in a manner that distracts them from the task at hand.
Still, sharper teeth in the law or enhanced enforcement will never eliminate the dangerous practice. After all, do motorists still violate speed limits or other driving laws? Of course they do.
Does that mean the state should give up? Absolutely not.
Police are currently asking lawmakers to beef up the law so that it covers all activities that can distract motorists behind the wheel. Good for them. We’ve long been an advocate for the texting ban, and we support the notion of expanding the law to cover other forms of distraction and making it a bit easier for police to enforce it.
It would be wise, however, for the legislature to take a measured approach to the issue and listen closely to both law enforcement and safety experts in devising the most appropriate strategy for the future. That won’t happen quickly. We must move forward, but a certain amount of patience and careful evaluation is required.
Meanwhile, the real detriment to texting while driving should be the potential for a traffic catastrophe that could have disastrous consequences. Such tragedies still occur far too often.
We also urge police not to be shy about confronting violators. Public safety is at stake, and the law won’t make traveling safer if it’s not observed and enforced.
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Journal & Courier, Lafayette. June 13, 2012.
Nothing’s special if everything is
By now, you’ve probably heard about the graduation speech offered by David McCullough, an English teacher at Wellesley High School outside Boston.
It has become known as the “You’re Not Special” speech, thanks to a passage in which McCullough said the following:
“Contrary to what your soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh-grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader swooped in to save you … you’re nothing special.
“Yes, you’ve been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You’ve been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored. You’ve been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie. … But do not get the idea you’re anything special. Because you’re not.”
Seemingly minutes after the ceremony, the speech went viral and moms and dads coast-to-coast were offended, as was a onetime presidential hopeful. “Astrophysicists assure us the universe has no center; therefore, you cannot be it,” McCullough said. “Neither can Donald Trump, which someone should tell him. Although that hair is quite a phenomenon.”
The parental response went something like this: “How dare you say my child is not special? Why, you haven’t even met Dylan/Cassidy/McKenzie/Jackson/Chelsea.” True enough.
For an English teacher, McCullough, son of historian David McCullough, knows his math.
“Across the country no fewer than 3.2 million seniors are graduating about now from more than 37,000 high schools,” he said. “That’s 37,000 valedictorians … 37,000 class presidents … 92,000 harmonizing altos … 340,000 swaggering jocks … 2,185,9867 pairs of Uggs.”
Perhaps what McCullough was attempting to do was help the graduates understand that the real world is not as forgiving as the cocoon in which they have been living. It is tough out there,
We are all for building self-esteem in children, at home, at school, at church, at the multicolor ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese’s. We just wish it could all happen more privately. (We live in a world in which a child who refrains from flinging his restaurant meal off the table is rewarded with a boisterous “Good job!”)
We look back fondly on the days when America’s parents had more humility and less braggadocio about the achievements of their spawn.
And we are positively wistful for the days when the word “amazing” was reserved for a parting of the Red Sea or footsteps on the Sea of Tranquility.
