Now Coming to a Town Near You

I heard/saw the most wonderful presentation earlier today by author Gina Olszowski who spoke about her first book: Now Coming to a Town Near You: Voices of Urban Sprawl.

Gina is a Geneva native, alumna of Drake University with a background in advertising, and a passion for photography.

Growing up, Gina watched as the Geneva area turned from "the country" to the suburbs, and she wondered why - even though all of the adults she knew were sad every time a farm was developed - farms continued to be developed, one after another.

She started taking pictures and talking to people - farmers, residents, elected officials, urban planners, etc. She started to connect the dots. This wasn't really the landscape that people wanted, but they felt helpless to do anything, and that made them sad - sad for the things lost, sad for the memories of their time on the land that others would never share - and sometimes, sad that they just stood by and let it happen.

What is this "it"? Many call it sprawl, but after looking at just a few pages of the book, and reading a few of the personal stories, I think I want to start calling it "urban creep." Lots of folks seemed to be saying that the growth and change just kind of crept up on them, and before they knew it, everything they once knew was gone.

(I like "urban creep" too because of the word creep - it is so definitely a negative word, isn't it? A person can sprawl out on a bed or a couch, and that isn't bad, but when traffic creeps along, or insects are creepy, or a person is a creep, it isn't good.)

We have a copy of the book in the office, and I gave one to Arlene at Read Between the Lynes bookstore on the Woodstock Square, and hope that she will even have a "meet the author" type event and start carrying Gina's books.

You can also order them through Gina's website: http://www.atownnearyou.com/ - $19.95 plus tax & shipping. And being a community-minded person, she is donating two-thirds of the profit to The Conservation Foundation - a land conservation group in Naperville (kind of like TLC but larger, and covering several counties).

Oh, and did I mention that Gina is 24 years old, and she just did this because she thought that there was a story to tell - a story that people needed to hear - a story told by their friends and neighbors - a story being repeated over and over and over again.

"Now Coming to a Town Near You" !! If everyone chose to speak up about the change they are seeing, and to make different choices in their lives, we could stop the creep from coming to the towns near us!