Regula’s new studio

October 8, 2007 at 7:25 pm | In family, Chicago, friends | 1 Comment

Regula Frey is opening her movement studio in Wilmette. She’s teaching yoga, pilates, body rolling and feldenkrais. Check it out! RegulasJoyOfMovement.com

Change to AboutUs.org

August 15, 2007 at 7:26 pm | In technology, Chicago | 5 Comments

I gave notice today that I’m leaving my job of 6+ years to join AboutUs.org full-time, one week per month on-site in Portland, OR and the rest of the time telecommuting from Chicago.  Yay!

Marshawn is dead because a motorist broke the law

July 17, 2007 at 6:27 pm | In transportation, the Commons, Chicago | 7 Comments

Chicagoland Bicycle Federation:

Marshawn is not dead because he was playing in the street. Like Maya Hirsch, another four-year-old killed last summer in Lincoln Park, Marshawn is dead because a motorist broke the law. This sort of behavior makes streets unsafe for children year round.

Marshall Square Parkway Garden Club planting day report

July 1, 2007 at 11:05 am | In Chicago, garden, organizing | Comments Off

Back in May, I wrote about another planting day in June, on Whipple, in a smaller area. Yesterday was that day, but not on Whipple. Due to some miscommunication, I thought we had the place all lined up, but we didn’t. We ended up playing at 2948 W. 24th St instead. We had 5 adults (Cathy from my C3 class, Joanne, John, Ben and myself from the HUB) and 4 children (ages 8-10) participate. We had to do a lot more work to get into the soil this time than last time, as it was so compacted. But work we did, and we got 2 hostas, 5 coral bells, 4 bleeding hearts and 8 day lillies into the ground, as well as a flat each of prarie grass and echanaicha. Joanne also did a great job building a fence out of sticks and zipties!

Conference Location Decided!

June 27, 2007 at 10:20 pm | In open space, Chicago, friends, invitations, globalchicago | 1 Comment

I’m very excited to have the Conference right here in my neighborhood. The full (updated) invitation:

You are invited to co-create the 4th Annual Chicago Conference for Good. PLEASE join us, bring friends and add spirit! Share this invitation with neighbors and colleagues, people you’d like to connect or reconnect with this July!

“…cuz people
who do stuff
need to know
more people
who do stuff.”
- ted ernst

Localizing Global Change: Issues and Opportunities

July 19-22 in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, IL USA

Discussion

What kind of stuff
have we been doing?

  • hosting and attending green dinners,
  • community gardening,
  • blogging,
  • digital excellence & inclusion,
  • chicago conservation corps training,
  • growing food,
  • organizing block clubs and parties,
  • depaving your yard and inviting neighbors,
  • restoring a riverbank,
  • planting native prairie in your local park
  • organizing your neighbors to work with the alderman or CAPS to get a camera,
  • or get one taken out,
  • recruiting volunteers,
  • organizing safe routes to school,
  • buying organic foods,
  • experimenting with new tech ways to connect people,
  • and living with less tech
  • driving less,
  • recycling more,
  • ensuring all differently brained people are seen as human beings,
  • seeing to it that the ADA laws are followed,
  • making social activists are supported and nurtured,
  • urban chicken egg farming
  • block clubs
  • traffic calming
  • peace parks
  • “doing.”… ,

The momentum of community is rising. Please join us! …for More and More.More and more people. More and more resources. More and more easy. More and more connected. More and more green. More and more power to do good things, in more and more local neighborhoods and organizations.

Three years ago, some of us convened a small but national conference on the future of philanthropy, technology and community action. Two years ago, more of us joined in to create a second and international conference which was also the first-ever omidyar.net members conference. Last year we did it again, and along the way these conversations have sparked half a dozen more conferences and action on at least four continents.

All the while, you’ve been busy doing all the things you do to try make the world a better place, and you’ve been noticing that more and more people are getting together for global community good. This year’s global gathering in Chicago is going to focus on “doing”. All good work. All kinds of local action. We welcome good people from everywhere to join with people we are actively inviting who are “doing” in Chicago neighborhoods. Bring your own local doing to share. We want to do more and more in all localities, and to do it more together.

This year’s conference will follow the same simple and active format as all the previous conferences. We’ll gather for one big opening, create a working agenda that includes all of our most important issues and questions, meet with friends and colleagues to actively address everything on the agenda, document and publish our notes online, and head back out into all the things we are doing with more energy, more clarity and more connections.

The momentum of community is rising. Please join us!
…for more and more global good on the ground where you live.

WHEN? July 19-22, 2007 …music and barbecue on Thursday night, conference all day Friday and Saturday, finishing by noon on Sunday, with airport drop-offs or excursions for out-of-towners on Sunday afternoon.

WHERE? General Robert E. Wood Boys & Girls Club, 2950 W. 25th Street, Chicago IL 60623

WHO SHOULD COME? Anyone who wants to get more and more into community, technology, environment, and other social justice kinds of work and practice. Anyone who wants to make more and more connections between all these sorts of things. And anyone who wants to have more and more fun and friends in the process of community leadership.

WHAT TO BRING? Food to eat/share, materials to show/share, ideas and questions, issues and projects that you care about and want to inform and be informed by others AND a total of $40 (scholarships may be available) to pay for basic costs of site and materials for all three days of meetings.

NOW WHAT? Send an email to register@globalchicago.net (or any other address we like), make a payment at paypal (details forthcoming), forward this invitation to friends and colleagues, people you work with — and people you want to work with. we’ll send you details about places and times and be glad to answer any other questions. Stay tuned to www.GlobalChicago.net for more information.

CO-CONVENERS? Ted Ernst, Hermilo Hinojosa, Kachina Katrina Zavalney, Michael Herman, Michael Maranda, Julie Peterson, Jean Russell, Dave Chakrabarti, and You…

Chicago Report on Digital Excellence

June 16, 2007 at 4:40 am | In technology, Chicago, globalchicago | 1 Comment

Excellent news from Michael about some of his work bearing fruit:

The long awaited report from the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Closing the Digital Divide was released Friday June 15th at the Community Media Summit convened by the Benton Foundation and the Community Media Workshop under the title The City that NetWorks: Transforming Society and Economy Through Digital Excellence.Digital Excellence is both means and end for Chicago as the City of Excellence. The Chicago Digital Access Alliance (CDAA) had a large hand in bringing this vision into the public sphere. We’ll turn a critical eye to the details of the report, as is our duty, but for now we celebrate it’s release and the vision that has been established, and we offer our deepest gratitude to Julia M. Stasch for her service to our city in chairing the Mayor’s Advisory Council and shepherding this visionary and historical document.

Trains scale-up better than planes

June 13, 2007 at 1:12 pm | In transportation, the Commons, train, Chicago | 7 Comments

Even as a big fan of passenger rail, I never would’ve guessed that this is true. Why do we fly again? The Equivalent of Midway Airport - Right Downtown:

Understanding the potential of Union Station requires thinking on a much larger scale than when thinking about airports.

For example: A 737, the workhorse of domestic flights, holds 130 people.

On the other hand, Amtrak’s smallest trains hold 200 people (with no center seats.)

During busy travel periods, Amtrak’s sleeper trains can exceed the seating capacity of 747s.Many peak-hour Metra trains exceed 1100 seats.

Many French TGV’s also have 1100 seats (no center seats and two bars) – twice the size of the new super-jumbo Airbus A380. They cover the distance of Chicago to Pittsburg or Memphis in just three hoursTrains also come out ahead in space requirements. Union Station’s 15 track south concourse is about same width as just one and a half gates at a major airport.

And since large buildings can be built immediately adjacent to a railroad station, many people can walk or take a quick cab ride to their final destination making huge parking lots unnecessary.

The result is much more intense economic activity at a lower cost.

July conference in Chicago on neighborhood leadership - join us!

June 7, 2007 at 3:07 am | In open space, Chicago, invitations | 1 Comment
     
    You are invited to co-create the 4th Annual Chicago Conference for Good. PLEASE join us, bring friends and add spirit! Share this invitation with neighbors and colleagues, people you’d like to connect or reconnect with this July!

“…cuz people
who do stuff
need to know
more people
who do stuff.”
- ted ernst

   
 

Localizing Global Change: Issues and Opportunities
   

 

July 19-22 @ Location TBA, in a Neighborhood, Chicago, IL USA

     
   

Discussion

What kind of stuff
have we been doing?

  • hosting and attending green dinners,
  • community gardening,
  • blogging,
  • digital inclusion,
  • chicago conservation corps training,
  • growing food,
  • organizing block clubs and parties,
  • depaving your yard and inviting neighbors,
  • restoring a riverbank,
  • planting native prairie in your local park
  • organizing your neighbors to work with the alderman or CAPS to get a camera,
  • or get one taken out,
  • recruiting volunteers,
  • organizing safe routes to school,
  • buying organic foods,
  • experimenting with new tech ways to connect people,
  • and living with less tech
  • driving less,
  • recycling more,
  • ensuring all differently brained people are seen as human beings,
  • seeing to it that the ADA laws are followed,
  • making social activists are supported and nurtured,
  • urban chicken egg farming
  • block clubs
  • traffic calming
  • peace parks
  • “doing.”… ,

  The momentum of community is rising. Please join us! …for More and More.More and more people. More and more resources. More and more easy. More and more connected. More and more green. More and more power to do good things, in more and more local neighborhoods and organizations.Three years ago, some of us convened a small but national conference on the future of philanthropy, technology and community action. Two years ago, more of us joined in to create a second and international conference which was also the first-ever omidyar.net members conference. Last year we did it again, and along the way these conversations have sparked half a dozen more conferences and action on at least four continents.All the while, you’ve been busy doing all the things you do to try make the world a better place, and you’ve been noticing that more and more people are getting together for global community good. This year’s global gathering in Chicago is going to focus on “doing”. All good work. All kinds of local action. We welcome good people from everywhere to join with people we are actively inviting who are “doing” in Chicago neighborhoods. Bring your own local doing to share. We want to do more and more in all localities, and to do it more together.

This year’s conference will follow the same simple and active format as all the previous conferences. We’ll gather for one big opening, create a working agenda that includes all of our most important issues and questions, meet with friends and colleagues to actively address everything on the agenda, document and publish our notes online, and head back out into all the things we are doing with more energy, more clarity and more connections.

The momentum of community is rising. Please join us!
…for more and more global good on the ground where you live.

WHEN? July 19-22, 2007 …music and barbecue on Thursday night, conference all day Friday and Saturday, finishing by noon on Sunday, with airport drop-offs or excursions for out-of-towners on Sunday afternoon.

WHERE? TBA (ideally someplace embedded in the life of a Neighborhood, Chicago)

WHO SHOULD COME? Anyone who wants to get more and more into community, technology, environment, and other social justice kinds of work and practice. Anyone who wants to make more and more connections between all these sorts of things. And anyone who wants to have more and more fun and friends in the process of community leadership.

WHAT TO BRING? Food to eat/share, materials to show/share, ideas and questions, issues and projects that you care about and want to inform and be informed by others AND a total of $40 (scholarships may be available) to pay for basic costs of site and materials for all three days of meetings.

NOW WHAT? Send an email to register@globalchicago.net (or any other address we like), make a payment at paypal (details forthcoming), forward this invitation to friends and colleagues, people you work with — and people you want to work with. we’ll send you details about places and times and be glad to answer any other questions. Stay tuned to www.GlobalChicago.net for more information.

CO-CONVENERS? Ted Ernst, Dave Chakrabarti, Michael Herman, Christina Jordan, Michael Maranda, Julie Peterson, Jean Russell, and You…


Marshall Square Parkway Garden Club at Carrillo’s, planting day report

May 19, 2007 at 11:54 pm | In the Commons, co-ops, compost, Chicago, friends, garden | 1 Comment

As I’ve written about before, today was planting day for the Marshall Square Parkway Garden Club at the Carrillo’s corner store, and the day couldn’t have been better, with beautiful sunshine and temps in the 70s.

On Thursday, Sarah Kaplan and I picked up the plants and tools at the Chicago Center for Green Technology, provided to us by Greencorps, through my involvement with the Chicago Conservation Corps. We each had a full bike trailer on the way home, with the wind at our backs. Fun!

Today we had a great turn-out, with Mr. and Mrs. Carrillo and their daughter Laura Rodriquez and Laura’s husband Rick, a neighbor from the 2400 block of Whipple, Mars (from Wicker Park, who found about the event through this website) and her mother (from Nebraska), and 5 of us from the HUB Housing Co-op, where I live.

We had 24 1-gallon pots, 3 each of 3 kinds of daylillies, 3 each of 2 kinds of hostas, 3 each of 2 kinds of bleedings hearts and 3 coralbells, and one flat of echanacia.  I was envisioning planting all of these is a fairly small area, removing the grass to do so, giving a really big impact in one dense area, or perhaps two smaller dense areas (the store is on the corner so has parkway in two places).  What actually happened was a sort-of dense area around one tree with 3 hostas and about 10 echanacias (these with no grass in-between, with 3 bleeding hearts nearby, planted in holes surrounded by grass (we didn’t take out hte grass except right where we planted), and then non-dense planting of all the rest.  Two or three trees had about 3 plants around each, with echancias to fill in, and some of the bleeding hearts ended up sort of off by themselves in the grass.

What’s really interesting about this in retrospect is that when a neighbor sees a full-on large-scale parkway garden, they may think it’s beyond their skills, experience or financial other means.  when they see two bleeding hearts in an otherwise solid stretch of 50 sq ft of grass, maybe that feels more accessible and they can do something like that themselves, without anything from me or other neighbors or the City.  That would be really cool!

Another thing about the day that was really cool was the amount of conversation that happened between neighbors.  Some of them came over to our place to see our compost and rainbarrels and talk about greenroofs and other goodness.  I really look forward to seeing these folks again, and I’m excited about the connections that were formed.

So we’re going to do another planting day in June, on Whipple, in a smaller area.  I need to check my calendar and the put in another order with Marissa.

Marshall Square Parkway Garden Club update - May 19th is planting day!

April 26, 2007 at 11:29 pm | In the Commons, Chicago, invitations, garden | 3 Comments

Since my last update about my Marshall Square Parkway Garden Club C3 project update, I’ve spoken with Laura about the corner store being our first planting location on May 19th and with Marissa about ordering supplies from the city. Yay! Please let me know if you can come that day. I’ll be announcing the time once I know when I can pick up the supplies.

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