Humanize the Earth!

A few days ago, I wrote: finally, a use for spam! where I talked about wanting to work and live in a do-ocracy. Today I started reading Naked Conversations, about business blogging, and it occured to me that I haven’t written about my work at AboutUs.  AboutUs is a small company based in Portland, OR, that’s attempting to do it’s work as a do-ocracy, and teach the world that the world wide web is a two-way medium, and even more than that, is a place for collaboration.

Until today, when I had an idea about a way for AboutUs to get better, I’d make a wiki page about it, or talk about it in the company IRC channel, or I’d attempt to make the change myself.  It occurs to me that company employees (I’m a part-time contractor) could be communicating with each other and the public by blog as well.

AboutUs already does a fantastic job and communicating openly with it’s users, fans and critics (see ConcernsPage, for example), and yet the potential is there for much more.

Some things I’d like to see AboutUs doing:

• Publish a feed of some sort about technical changes to the site.  I’m pretty sure page names are no case-insensitive as of last week, but haven’t seen an official (or unofficial) announcement.  Maybe this could be a blog or wikipage with an RSS feed?
• For projects (see OurWork for a list of projects) that can stand to move slower, even just a little bit slower, put less staff resources into them on a weekly basis.  This slower pace, along with a clear list of tasks that staff thinks need to be accomplished on the project, allows visitors to the site to get involved and help.
• Encourage employees to blog, even just once a week or less, about what’s currently exciting them at work, or anything they like.
• I’ll write more when I think of more.

I really love the work that we’re doing and am excited to be working in this kind of an open organization, with such a great culture, and I am excited to see that culture evolve and get even better.

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.

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.

I just went to IdentityCommons.org and found myself at PlanetWork.net instead, with no mention of Identity Commons on the page at all. What happened?

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.

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.

Right on, Michael!

what’s really wrong with public transit?

To start: there isn’t enough of it, of decent quality, interconnected and given priority.

I was in last fall’s Chicago Conservation Corps leader class, and wow, does it ever seem like the winter’s been long, with respect to my project. Don’t get me wrong, I love winter. Anyway, just wanted to report a wonderful conversation with folks at my local corner store tonight.

I don’t speak much Spanish, and the owners don’t speak much English, but I go in there all the time and we pretend we’re communicating. We’ve talked in the past about them selling recycled paper products and also about the possibilities of me getting ahold of free plants to beautify the parkways in the neighborhood. We’ve talked about it a couple of times, but never (until tonight) with any actual communication taking place. :-)

So tonight I went into the store with a 4-pack of recycled toilet paper to show them, and ask them to stock. We we around and around in circles between me and the wife and the husband, without anyone really knowing what we were talking about. Eventually they called their daughter to come translate. She explained to her folks and thought that they’d be able to get recycled products from their regular supplier. We exchanged phone numbers and some more chit chat, and then …

her mom talked about the free plants I’d talked about before. So I explained a bit about C3 and the East Village parkways and how we could do that in our neighborhood as well. Turns out she’s on the board of the Little Village Development Council, or something like that, and can see big visions of doing the whole street. I’m all for that, and also am realistic that sometimes small projects go smoother than big ones, so I talked about doing one parkway, and then another, and then another. She suggested the corner store as the first site! Awesome!

So now I need to get everything in gear for supplies we need and then pick a date for planting!

Please go read this very short book by Pete Leki: How to Disappear. I love it. I’ve also been working on a wiki with Michael here How to Disappear Wiki. We’re not sure yet what’ll come of the wiki project, but we’d really like to see this book widely read.

A while back, I posted about how our basic infrastructure should be provided collectively. I was speaking about trains, but could’ve just as easily been talking about overnight bus service in Winnepeg, or community wireless internet. We don’t expect our police department to cover 50% of it’s budget by writing tickets (in Chicago the tickets are mostly written by the Department of Revenue anyway), nor do we expect the Fire Department to cover it’s own budget. Streetlights don’t pay for themselves? Why do we require Amtrak to cover it’s own bills? Highways certainly don’t pay for themselves. We subsidize the heck out of both roads and fuel. Anyway, just ranting again. Public service means by and for the public.