Because Knowing is Half the Battle

Strange Chicago #1

In the vein of the Grizzly Man Joseph Zeman known to many as the pigeon man of Lincoln Square found he got along with birds much better than he did humans. If like me you found yourself driving down Western Avenue often you would eventually be lucky enough to see an old man sitting on a fire hydrant just north of Lawrence Avenue covered (and I mean covered) in pigeons. I still remember the first time I saw him I was shocked, a little sickened, and most of all intrigued. So here is a little info the Pigeon Man.

He first formed a relationship with the pigeons during the 47 years he ran a newsstand at the corner of LaSalle and Division. He would feed them, and over time, the pigeons came to trust him. He moved up to the hydrant on Western and Lawrence in 1997 when he sold the newsstand. He would sit for hours on that fire hydrant, feeding a large group of pigeons that would crowd around him and perch all over his body. Drivers crane their necks. Truck drivers roll down their windows. Folks on the sidewalk sometimes slap $5 or $10 in his hand (all of which he uses to buy treats for his friends). He comes every day saw his sitting on the hydrant as the most important work he has ever done. In his mind he was “advertising to the public how easy it is to be good without an attitude; it’s just as easy to show decency as it is to hate today.”

Zeman was an epileptic who was treated poorly as a child by his family, He said, “All my life I had so much backstabbing at home, real problems there. I got to love the animals more, so trustworthy. Fifty years, all I heard was `Shut up, shut up.’ I needed help at home ‘cause I was handicapped. They took advantage of me. Epileptic fits since the day I was born. Because I had so much trouble at home, I learned not to say nothing, keep to myself, just so I can’t be wrong anymore. So they came up to me [the pigeons]; I appreciated the friendship out of a bird more than a person. They’re wordless. They come up with pure appreciation.”

After more than half a century with the birds, Zeman said, he had learned many a lesson. “Stay quiet all your life. Nothing but trust and honesty, low profile all the time, just like I’m another bird, sitting there. They sit on me all day and half into the night. That’s where I got something about me that nobody else has.”

Sadly he died last year when he was hit by a van not far from his hydrant and his birds.

Chicago Gangs Word Tour (of duty)

So this news story is so good I could not pass it up. I was doing a little research on what gangs have what influence in different parts of the city as I traverse through schools in various Chicago neighborhoods and stumbled upon a dozen or so articles on this phenomena.

For those of you who do not know Chicago is the birthplace of the majority of modern gangs (with the noticable exception of the Crips and the Bloods). The various gangs that have spurned from Chicago fall into one of two camps the People and Folk Nations (Think of them as the American and National Leagues of Urban Warefare). It seems the three most extensive Chicago gangs, the Latin Kings, the Gangster’s Disciples, and the Vicelords have taken advantage of the army’s lax wartime recruitment standards and thus…

Gang tags are being found all over Iraq, on bulidings, army vehicles, in millitary installations, and even on mosques. This is not apparently a group of former gang bangers who joined up to change their lives but active gang members seeing the world and claiming turf.

In a series of interviews it was indicated that these gangsters were actually asked to join up by their gangs in order to steal supplies (army flak jackets have been found in Gresham and North Lawndale) and learn high end weapons operation and urban warfare tactics.

New York’s First Environmental Problem

Ok yeah heres my second post and its a repost but this is exactly the kind of thing that belongs in this blog so here it is. By the by if you like knowledge than dihard is a great blog for you.

dihard:

Was it the automobile? Was it lead from paint? Was it poor water conditions? Nope – it was horses!

That’s right. Horse manure and horse carcasses filled the streets of New York, Chicago, and other major cities in the US at the end of the 19th century. In the 1880s, NYC had 1,206,299 people, and about 170,000 horses for transportation. Because they were overworked and abused, the average streetcar horse had a life expectancy of only two to four years. They’d die on the street, where they were left or dumped into nearby rivers or bays.

In 1880, New York City removed 15,000 dead horses from the street. Chicago removed 9,202 horse carcasses in 1916.

Moving the 1,300 pound carcasses was no easy task – special trucks that hung low had to be made. An 1886 article in the Atlantic Monthly described Broadway as congested with “dead horses and vehicular entanglement” — and we think today’s traffic is bad.

And the manure! It’s estimated that each horse produced 15-30 pounds of manure per day. That means the 170,000 horses in New York and Brooklyn created 3-4 million pounds of manure EACH DAY. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that every street in the city would be buried 9 feet deep in horse manure by 1950. A New York editorial estimated that horse manure would rise to Manhattan’s 30 story buildings by 1930 — imagine that skyline! Also, each horse produced about a quart of urine daily. That makes about 40,000 gallons per day in NY & Brooklyn.

From horse pollution to car pollution: In 1898, the first international Urban Planning Conference was held in New York. The topic: how to deal with horse pollution. Luckily for them, the automobile was just beginning to usurp the horse’s role for transportation. Experimental motor cars had been around for quite some time, but cities had previously banned them or limited their use for reasons varying from cars frightening children and horses, to cars being “rich men’s deadly toys.” The most well known regulation was Britain’s Red Flag law which required all cars to be preceded by a man of foot carrying a red flag. That’s pretty interesting.

The horse pollution crisis in the 1890s ignited fears of pollution, traffic jams, coupled with the rising prices of hay, oats, and urban land, and ultimately led governments and urban city dwellers to embrace the automobile. By the early 1900s the horse had become unprofitable and a great environmental hazard. The car, the modern-day environmentalists’ nemesis, was, at the time, a savior. I wonder what will be ours.

Kinder Voting

Germany to institute voting rights for children?

In an apparent attempt to eliminate adultism (which word does not recognize as word) the German parliament is very seriously considering to instate cradle to grave voting rights. Forget 18, forget 16 (the current voting age in some German states, heck forget being of school age entirely this measure would give an equal vote to 60 year olds, 16 years olds, and 16 week olds. So if you really want the green party (a more than viable party in Germany, and much of Europe at that) to take an extra seat this year make sure to pop out that young patriot before Election Day.

While most people hear this and laugh, or moan in pain at the implications of letting a 6 year old have an equal say as a poli sci professor in whether or not to send the German army abroad (that is never good for anyone) explaining why is a slippery slope. While I certainly do not want children (or as would often be the case for young children) the arguments that often come up; Children who cannot even walk, read, or talk being able to vote or even my previous argument about the 6 year old and the poli sci teacher are wrought with inconsistency. The idea of a literacy requirement for voting brings up the images of racial segregation and mobility and communication being a qualification to vote would no doubt step on the toes (no pun intended of millions disabled Americans. And yes the basis of democracy, for better or worse, lies in the fact that a political junky who ways all of a candidates pros and cons has the same one vote that an apathetic ignoramus who votes based on the name or Us weekly pictorial he or she likes best.

Closing thought, you may have laughed about the name thing but in Chicago where we vote for judges who know one takes the time to learn anything about female candidates with Irish names consistently win the democratic primary regardless of ideological background