12-step program for gasoholics?

Well, I don't suppose anyone is surprised that the media talking heads are predicting that gas prices could hit $4 or $5 a gallon by Memorial Day.

Prices have been rising steadily since the unrest started in Egypt a couple of weeks ago, and now that Libya has come un-hinged, the gas companies are not wasting a minute raising prices for the consumer. Come on, they went up 5-cents in the last 24 hours based on rumors that Ghadafi is going to blow up Libya's oil wells.

Even though Libya produces just 2% of the world's oil!

Now, I don't fault the local station owners - they have such a small margin to work with, and they don't call the shots. No, I believe the blame lies primarily with the corporate honchos who seem to book record profits each year, regardless of what happens -- oil surpluses, oil shortages, giant oil spills covering the Gulf.

But the average person really needs to take some responsiblity for the situation. After all, it is America's gas-guzzling lifestyle that makes us so economically vulnerable to the political drama in just a handful of countries and that makes it so easy for a half-dozen or so corporate CEOs to bring the world economy to its knees.

There is an answer. We need to kick the gas habit.

Time for a 12-step program for gasoholics:

- group your errands so you drive less

- shut the car engine off if you are going to be idling for 20 seconds or more - a car gets zero miles to the gallon when idling

- make sure your tires are properly inflated -- you can improve mileage by 15% that way

- drive smarter: go the speed limit, no jack-rabbit starts, no tail-gating or anything else that causes one to drive in a herky-jerky way (you get the picture)

- if you have to have a car, get one that's more fuel efficient than whatever you are driving now

- walk, carpool, take public transportation, use a bicycle -- anything that means turning over the ignition in one's car less frequently -- a lot less

- buy food that is grown locally - food transportation uses a large amount of gasoline, especially when the average item in the grocery store has travelled 3,000 miles to get to that shelf...

- replace the gas lawn mower with an electric or manual model

- go meatless one day a week, and be sure you buy your meat from a local farmer

- turn the thermostat down in winter and up in summer - at least 2 degrees

- pay the neighborhood kid $20 to shovel your driveway instead of starting the snow-blower (okay, the Feb 2 snow was a bit more than the kid could manage...)

.... that's 11 ideas. What do you suggest for number 12?

Go Play Outside!

Those are the three words that American children do not hear enough. Michelle Obama talks about battling childhood obesity. Chicago Wilderness runs the Leave No Child Inside project. A whole organization called the Children & Nature Network now exists to encourage and support people and organizations working to connect young people with nature.

Results of a recent University of Michigan study show that our brains work better when we have regular exposure to nature. This echoes the results of many other studies that say there are abundant reasons to spend more time in nature. Health. Kids are less likely to have attention-deficit disorder. Hospital patients get well faster. And... there is an ever-growing list of reasons to spend time outdoors. The Association for Psychological Science has a nice summary of the Michigan study on their website.

The effects of nature on the brain are especially important during the years from birth through age 11, when many of the basic patterns and processes in the brain are being formed. The term videophilia has been coined by researchers to describe the new state we are living in. They define videophilia as meaning "the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activites involving electronic media."

Videophilia has been a trend since 1987 -- about the time that video games, home movies, VCRs, home computers, etc started to appear. Since 1987 the trend has also been that there are fewer visits to local, state & national parks. There are fewer hikers than before 1987. There are fewer campers. You get the picture.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but a good start would seem to be "Go Play Outside!"

Driving (me) Insane

Did you ever think about the amount of space in our communities that is devoted to parking? A lot. Next time you go to the store, note the size of the parking lot. Guaranteed, it is huge.

Americans are obsessed with our cars. We drive to work. Drive to the store for a gallon of milk. Drive to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. Drive to the pizza place to pick up a pie for dinner. Drive, Drive, Drive.

In McHenry County, the average person has a commute of greater than half an hour each way, each day, and the vast majority of those people drive. They drive alone in their cars to and from their jobs five days a week.

My husband and I are very average in that way. His commute is about 35 minutes each way, and mine is about 25. I manage to carpool once in a while with a co-worker, but not nearly as often as I should.

All this driving has consequences to the environment, generating carbon dioxide and other exhaust chemicals that contribute to air pollution. The reliance on the car has impacts on our health too. We don't walk as much as we should -- when was the last time you walked to the store? the library? to visit a friend? Are you carrying a few extra pounds? Do you drive to the gym for a work out?

But the rest of the world is very different.

My friend Kathy Bergan Schmidt sent me this article from the Milwaukee newspaper. The author lives in Spain, where he and his family DO NOT OWN A CAR. Get this, they walk. Walk to the store. Walk to the movies. Walk to visit friends. Their property taxes are also a fraction of what ours are.

I bring this up because the McHenry County board is reviewing a new land use plan for the county, and the draft that was given them by their planning commission proposes that tens of thousands of new residents move to areas that are currently farmland, and are far removed from jobs, schools and shopping. This type of development is commonly known as sprawl.

Studies by American Farmland Trust and others have shown that sprawl is expensive for communities. It is more expensive to provide services like school buses, fire protection, road maintenance, etc. to all those scattered homes. So, taxes increase to cover the costs -- taxes increase for everyone, not just the folks who live in sprawlville.

And the crazy thing is that there are rumors that some board members think that even more sprawl should be permitted.

Let's think about this:

more sprawl = more cars on the road

more sprawl = less walking, more driving

more sprawl = higher property taxes

Any questions?

Fight for the right to bike in Crytal Lake!

There is a petition circulating by a group called McHenry County Bicyle Advocates, seeking support for a campaign to ensure that bicycle lanes are provided along Rakow Road in Crystal Lake when that road is widened. Adding a multi-use trail along the side of the road may only increase project costs by 2-3%. Total project costs are estimated at $30 million.

With gas prices expected to go up again, and the economy expected to drag for a while longer, more people are choosing to use bicycles - and even their feet - for getting around. And Rakow Road shouldn't be a nice short-cut just for cars.

TLC member Eberhard Veit is President of MCBA, and he is putting a lot of energy into this campaign.

You can find more information at their website: http://www.mcbicycleadvocates.org/, and you can contact Eberhard by email at eberhard.veit@eisenmann.com to find out where you can sign a petition, or how you can get a blank petition to help collect signatures.

Ephemeral Ponds

On April 19th, Mike Redmer from the US Fish & Wildlife Service gave a tour of ephemeral ponds in the High Point area of Alden Township to a group of about 15 local residents.

Mike slogged through several seasonal ponds in his wading boots, pulling frogs, salamanders, aquatic insects and other tiny critters out for the group to see. He has a magical ability to find these often "invisible" residents of the spring ponds.

Ephemeral ponds are those that do not hold water throughout the year, but are typically only flooded in the spring due to the winter snow melt and the spring rains that cause the ground to be saturated. The ponds exist long enough for frogs and other small animals to emerge, but then disappear as the ground dries up.

These small, fleeting spots play a critical role in the lifecycle of these aquatic animals, but they are not very well understood by most people. The Alden High Point area is one of the richest regions in all Chicagoland for these ephemeral ponds, and so provides a critical habitat area for frogs, turtles and salamanders.

The last photo shows three salamanders that Mike fished out of a window well near one of the areas that the group explored. He commented that salamanders often fall into uncovered window wells, and die because they cannot climb back out.

The Ephemeral Ponds program was held as part of a series of three landowner educational programs that TLC is offering this year in the Alden Township area. There will be a second program on May 12th covering headwater streams, springs and seeps and led by Cindy Skrukrud from the Sierra Club. The final program in the series will take residents on a tour of oak woodlands in the Alden area in June.

Getting Ready for Spring!

There is so much going on this year at TLC -- or there are so many cool projects in the works, especially for Spring! Here is a run down on the next few months:

- March 29th, prescribed/ecological burn training at TLC offices with burn at Westwood Park

- April 5th, ecological burn training at Prime Industrial Park, McHenry, coordinated by TLC for the business park's business owners (like Medela, Follett, and others) who are interested in using ecological burning to manage the nice wetland that is in the middle of the park

- April 5th, Garden Fest at MCC - TLC will have a booth there, giving local residents a chance to order their 60 gallon rainbarrels at a wholesale price of $79!

- April 19th, TLC sponsored Ephemeral Ponds program in Alden Township with Fish & Wildlife Service's Mike Redmer

- April 23rd, Deadline for Rainbarrel orders

- May 9 & 10, pick up Rainbarrels at the TLC office

- May 10th, TLC-sponsored Seeps, Springs & Streams program in Alden Township with Sierra Club's Cindy Skrukrud

- May - date to be determined - Project Quercus training for oak woodland monitors!

Check out the TLC website: http://www.conservemc.org/ for more information!

Imagine McHenry County: Talking about Walking

Imagine a place where people can walk to the neighborhood store to get a carton of milk. A place where many kids can walk to school, walk to the pool, walk to the library. A place where folks walk to the bank, walk to the train, and even walk to work.

Okay, all this thinking about walking everywhere is making me tired! But, in a way, that's the point. Walking is exercise - and I know just one person who doesn't need more exercise! In other words, we can all do with a bit more walking in our daily lives.

Well, one of the interesting things that emerged from the Imagine McHenry County survey and public forum last year was that people want walkable communities. Sixty-three percent of people who attended the public forum thought it was very important to give people more transportations options, including to make communities more "walkable."

This notion actually correlates with another item that was identified as important to local residents: the ease of getting around by car, with 67% of survey respondents saying that this is important to them. Additionally, 82% of survey respondents thought it was going to be a big challenge in the future to have a county where it is easy to get around by car.

While some folks in some places seem to think that the answer to traffic problems is more and wider roads, it seems to me that more people are realizing that this old-fashioned idea of walking might be part of the answer. Again, 63% of the people at the IMC public forum thought it was important to create more options for moving around the county, including designing more walkable communities.

It is a fact that there will never be enough money - local, state, and/or federal - to build the roads that people want. There isn't even enough funding to maintain the roads we have today! We need to find new ways of solving the traffic problem - we can't expect to just throw more money at it.

I'm working from home today while new windows are being installed upstairs. Mid-morning, I took a break to walk to the bank. Our bank is 5 blocks away, and on my way there, I passed a grammar school, the high school, a rental shop, and a gas station with a convenience store. It occurred to me that I actually live in a walkable part of Harvard.

Thinking a bit beyond my walk to the bank, it occurs to me that a drug store, a hardware store, a pizza parlor, a diner, an ice cream shop, our auto service station, as well as assorted other small businesses are all within eight blocks if I walk in the other direction. I don't have to get in the car to visit any of these places.

The sad fact is that I rarely walk to any of those places. I hop in the car. It is much quicker. And, on a different day, I might have driven the five blocks to the bank. But not today. Today, I noticed that the weather was beautiful (70s, low humidity), plus I wasn't in a hurry to go somewhere. So, today I walked.

And I'm glad I did. I learned something. Or remembered something that I knew once upon a time.

When I was a kid, I walked to and from school - grammar school and then high school. I walked to the corner drug store for candy (or sometimes to buy cigarettes for my parents, but that's another story). I walked to my friends' houses. I could even walk to the beach - it was about a mile away, but it was an easy walk. My brother walked to the local barber. There was even a toy store near the drug store, and we walked there. We walked to the train station to meet Dad when he came home from work. And he walked to the station in the morning to catch the train into the City.

I know what you are thinking, and I'm just not that old!

This walking was a part of life in many "inner ring" suburbs of Chicago just 30 years ago.

Maybe it's time we remember how to build our communities like that again?