by admin | Jan 15, 2024 | Activism, Blogging, Books, Chicago, Christianity, Civil rights, History, Religion
Holidays have a way of taming and diluting the real importance of the legacies and events they are meant to commemorate. This tendency is particularly true of today’s holiday celebrating the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. These efforts reflect some...
by admin | Aug 21, 2023 | Books, Climate, Disaster, Drought, Emergency Management, Floodplain management, Geography, Government, Natural Hazards, Nebraska, Resilience, Tornado, Urban Planning, Volunteerism, Weather, Wildfire
The view from this week’s brief video blog is from Chicago’s 606 Trail, but David Taylor, our videographer for Planning to Turn the Tide, and I were actually headed out on a much longer trail for nearly two weeks. In a car containing his video equipment, we departed...
by admin | Aug 11, 2023 | Books, Chicago, Environment, Movies, Nature, Urban forest, Volunteerism
It was a simple ask. Our Chicago First Ward Alderman, Daniel La Spata, included a notice in his e-newsletter about a Saturday morning outing, organizing at his ward office on Milwaukee Avenue, for volunteers to join Openlands Chicago tree keepers to help place mulch...
by admin | Jun 21, 2023 | Activism, Blogging, Books, Careers, Climate, Coastal Management, Disaster, Disaster policy, Floodplain management, Florida, Hazard Mitigation, Journalism, Movies, Natural Hazards, Personal history, Philanthropy, Public policy, Public safety, Resilience, Travel, Urban Planning, Weather, Wildfire, Writing
One reason I have long loved being an urban planner is that, ultimately, planning is about imagining a better future. Or should be, anyway. Although I was in my early thirties before I returned to school for a pair of graduate degrees in Urban and Regional Planning...
by admin | Sep 12, 2022 | Activism, Books, Chicago, Crime, Government, Immigration, National security, Personal history, Public policy, Racism, Religion, Social Equity, Social Science, Terrorism
When I first moved to Chicago, in November 1985, I came alone from Omaha. My wife, who grew up in Nebraska, chose to stay there until the fall semester was over. She was teaching across the river in the Council Bluffs, Iowa, public schools. I needed to settle in with...
by admin | Sep 5, 2022 | Blogging, Books, Education, History, Immigration, Journalism, Literature, Personal history, Writing
My mother was definitely a neatnik. Everything in its place, but don’t keep too many things in the first place. If something did not have an obvious use, get rid of it. A sentimentalist, she was not. She lived her life in the suburbs of Cleveland, which is where I...
