Urban Density = Gum Spots

Visiting Brooklyn a few weekends ago reminded me of the glories of urban density. So many people so close together, able to support a huge range of businesses within walking distance, having the critical mass needed to make mass transit really work, and just the sheer stimulation of so many buildings and humans living their lives all in one place... I can get in a delirious dither about density pretty quickly.

But there's one thing about it I'll never understand: sidewalk gum spots.


I know thousands of people traverse this stretch of concrete each week, and the gum is semi-permanent, probably lasting at least a year, maybe much longer. But even so, if every slab of concrete has this many gum blobs (and from my observation in Park Slope, Brooklyn, they did!), it means that a few people are spitting their gum on the sidewalk almost every day, or a whole lot of people are doing it once in a while.

Which is it? And why? Assuming the spitters are old enough to know better, or are accompanied by someone who is old enough to know better, this is surely a form of deviance at work. Why do people consciously undermine their own environment?

A month or so ago, I was in downtown Saint Paul for dinner and happened across a nice, fresh, pink wad of gum on the sidewalk. It hadn't been stepped on yet, and wasn't really stuck in place. So, being the good citizen that I am, I scrounged a piece of paper and picked it up to throw away.

It stands to reason that for every deviant who spits, there would be a civic-minded person who picks up the gum... but the window of opportunity for noticing and removing the gum is very small (before the stuff has been smashed and stuck) while the time available for spitting is infinite. And so we end up with black-pocked sidewalks.

Matt Maidre over at SpudArt.org has his own thoughts on gum spots, including turning them into a game of connect the dots, or thinking of them as a way to form new constellations. I tried his suggestions with the photo above, but didn't come up with anything interesting.

I guess I just can't find an upside to gum stuck to the sidewalk.

The Healing of America by T.R. Reid

I've just finished T.R. Reid's The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. In it, the veteran foreign correspondent takes his sore shoulder to doctors in countries around the world, each of which administers universal health care in a different systems, from single payer to completely privatized.

Here are the things that stuck with me the most:

• The fact that there isn't just one form of "socialized medicine," but instead multiple different systems. Beyond the classic idea of everything being state-owned, there are countries with state-owned hospitals but privatized family practitioners, countries that function the same way Medicare does, and countries that run insurance through employers -- except that everyone has to have insurance and people don't lose their insurance when they lose their jobs (with the government picking up the tab for the unemployed).
  
• Finding out that several countries have made the transition from an out-of-pocket system to universal health care in the last 20 years... and the change is doable.
• The sheer financial stupidity of our system. We're paying for multiple health insurance companies to keep track of all the billings and payments, figure out how they can deny our claims, and market their wares, but we're not paying for preventive care. So that a diabetic isn't covered for a $150 visit to a podiatrist, but s/he is covered for the $30,000 amputation needed later after gangrene sets in. And top that off with 700,000 medical bankruptcies each year.
  
• The number of people who die in the U.S. because of access inequality. "A U.S. government study found that accident victims who are uninsured are 37 percent more likely to die from their injuries than somebody with insurance... government and academic studies report that more than twenty thousand Americans die each year from treatable diseases" (page 149). There's a huge gulf left unfilled between an uninsured person's right to be treated in an emergency room and health care that catches cancer before it's too late or treats a chronic condition.
• The moral argument. Why should two people the same age, the same sex, in the same town, who both develop ovarian cancer have completely different outcomes because one has good health insurance and the other has none? Reid presents such a scenario and asks, "Because we have built a health care system that discriminates on the basis of wealth, the American health care system lets one woman live and the other die. Are we willing, as a society, to tolerate that inequality?"

Reid spends several pages of the book presenting the story of a young woman named Nikki White. The details of Nikki's story are all-too familiar, but sickening at the same time. When she finished college, she went off her parents' insurance. First she got a job without insurance, but she started to feel sick, so she changed jobs to one with insurance. She developed severe stomach pain, fatigue and skin lesions, and was diagnosed with lupus. While no picnic, lupus is a treatable chronic condition.

Too sick to continue working, Nikki left her job and was again without insurance. She applied for individual insurance and was turned down because of her preexisting condition. She moved back home to Tennessee, where she could get coverage from TennCare, the local version of Medicaid. She eventually found a doctor who would take the Medicaid payment level, and was prescribed the drug she needed, which requires ongoing testing and followup to prevent side-effects.

Then Tennessee cut back TennCare, and suddenly Nikki had "too much money" to qualify. She tried again to get individual insurance but was denied. After battling bureaucracy for months, she applied for Social Security disability, because if she had that, she would be eligible for Medicaid. Her application was denied.

Finally, Nikki received emergency care when she had a seizure from kidney failure and a perforated intestine. Under federal law, the hospital she entered had to treat her until she was stable. In 10 weeks she had 25 operations, but died anyway at age 32, leaving a large unpaid bill for the hospital.

Reid writes, "If Nikki had received the standard treatment regimen for lupus readily available to any American with heath insurance, she could have lived a normal life span" (page 212).

For this parent of a teenager and aunt of young people in their 20s, Nikki's story made for excruciating reading. Like the Women's Press's Nora's Story from last summer, it can't help but make you shake your head at the infuriating inequality of our system.

On the whole, the book is very thorough, but there were times when I wanted more information. In the systems that use privatized insurance (like Germany), I wish there had been more detail about how young people like Nikki make the transition from being on their parents' plans to their own plans. I wish there had been more information on how undocumented immigrants are covered or not covered in the various systems.

One final thing I discovered from the book -- Thomas Clement Douglas, the father of Canada's health care system, brought the system into being by enacting it in a single province (Saskatchewan -- did you know that? I didn't). Over the next decade, people in the rest of the provinces saw how it worked and wanted it too.

In my American ignorance of most things Canadian, I have never heard of Douglas, but according to Reid, "When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation polled the nation in 2004 to choose 'the greatest Canadian of all time,' Tommy Douglas won by a landslide, easily beating out the likes of Alexander Graham Bell and Wayne Gretzky" (page 133).

Michelle B. with a Capitol Tea

The blog Across the Great Divide somehow got ahold of the "track changes" version of Michelle Bachmann's press release about her recent Tea Party at the Capitol.

It's well worth a read for those who take their tea with a grain of salt.

Words on the Street

Now there's a name for a word salad horror movie. (Seen on Randolph Avenue in St. Paul.)


I had no idea there was such a thing. But Google tells me it's pretty common. Huh. (Seen on Snelling Avenue, St. Paul.)


I wonder if the "landing hot dog" has been mapped yet? Or a landing kimchi hot dog? (Seen under the Brooklyn Bridge.)


Another name that's bad for business... Both possible ways of hearing the name seem like a bad message for a hair-dresser -- it's either expensive or they cut off all your hair. Maybe both. Does that make it anti-clever? (Seen in Flatbush, Brooklyn.)

Half-Baked Layout with Less than Half an Illustration

I've posted pretty frequently about some of my favorite illustrators, like the Pioneer Press's Kirk Lyttle (here, here, here and here and, oh yeah, here) and the Star Tribune's L.K. Hanson (here and here). Maybe I write about them too much?

But when I see an indifferent illustration like the one that took up most of Monday's Variety front in the Star Tribune, my love of good illustrators makes a lot more sense:


The story is from the New York Times, and the art is by Charles Bloom of the Kansas City Star, via MCT, a newspaper-based stock art service. And it is one lame, lifeless piece of art.

I usually like flat-color art, but this is flat in a boring way. Its composition is static, and the faceless woman with the pointy extremities is just odd without any endearing details. Even the hues are boring -- her skin tone is so similar to the color of her hat-cookie and tube top it might almost as well be the same (except then she wouldn't be wearing a shirt, which would be a different kind of problem).

I started to wonder who Charles Bloom is, and whether his work is generally weak or if perhaps this piece wasn't representative of his body of work. (He wouldn't be the first bad illustrator employed by a daily newspaper, afterall.) On his personal website, I found out Bloom is no longer at the Star, and while I wouldn't add him to my list of great illustrators, he's much better than the cookie woman illo would lead me to believe.

Finally, digging around in the murkiness of his site's Flash interface, I found the original layout where the cookie woman was used, and it began to make sense. She was actually a background part of a larger illustration, so the lack of detail is more acceptable. The figure in the foreground, while still faceless and pointy, has a lot more visual interest, and the composition is much more dynamic.

The problem started when someone cut up the image to focus on this single background figure, and I can only assume that decision was made at the Star Tribune. So not only did they not bother to do an original piece for the story, they managed to make a decent illustrator look bad in the process.

Way to go, features department. The best I can say is, at least you made the deadline.

No Wonder I Have a Bad Sense of Direction

Me, too! Yet another reason to love the web comic xkcd.com.

(As seen on the always fascinating Strange Maps.)

Street Art in Brooklyn

My quick trip to Brooklyn a few weekends ago included one incredibly beautiful fall day, and my walk through several neighborhoods yielded a small harvest of photos to share.


Cortelyou Road, on the side of the Flatbush Food Co-op.


On or near H Street in Midwood near Flatbush.


The H Street train station in Midwood -- the southbound platform was closed for reconstruction.


Park Slope, across the street from the Park Slope Co-op.


On 7th Avenue in Park Slope.


Elephants in Dumbo (a neighborhood so named because it is Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).


Metal sculptures in Dumbo. Note the Manhattan Bridge arch in the background; there was a band playing inside the archway.


And the coolest street art of all, since it's everywhere -- the bark of the trees of Brooklyn.

Alfred Hitchcock Would Have Loved It

I recently heard that when Hitchcock was a kid, he had never been to New York City, but he studied the subway system anyway, and completely memorized it. Then when he finally did go to the city, he knew it like a native New Yorker.

On a recent trip to the Brooklyn, I visited the New York Transit Museum, and thought of Hitchcock.


The museum is located in downtown Brooklyn in the closed Court Street subway station, so the entrance is no more auspicious than any other station.


The first exhibit is called "Steel, Stone & Backbone: Building New York's Subways 1900-1925." My attention was caught by this full-size figure of one of the workers, gazing at me as I approached to read a sign listing average wages and comparing them with the costs of common purchases. The daily wages ranged from a high of $4.50 for teamsters to $3.50 for carpenters to $1.50 for laborers.


Another exhibit explained about the construction of New York's many bridges, particularly the Triborough Bridge connecting the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan, and it's hard to talk about bridges in New York without mentioning Robert Moses. The museum seemed to have a fairly simple-minded, adulatory attitude about Moses (for a more balanced view, see Robert Caro's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book The Power Broker.)


The core of the museum's collection is one level down further -- two closed tracks flanking a normal subway platform display dozens of wonderfully restored subway cars from the different eras of the subway's history.


This car is from the 1920s, with wicker seats, and appropriate-vintage signs overhead.


This Mad Men-era 1963 car was built to carry people on their way to the 1964-World's Fair.

There's a nice display about the tokens as well. This was the last token used before conversion to the Metro Card. It was the only token that couldn't be counterfeited of all the ones ever used, because the alloy was extremely unusual and the token receptacles were sensitive to the metals in it, flagging forged tokens immediately.


I loved a lot of the graphics on the trains and on displays along the platform. This one is from a Long Island Rail Road train.


Dozens of historical advertising signs line the train cars. This alarmist public service announcement is from the early 1960s.

It's well worth a visit (and the gift shop had a really nice selection of subway-related souvenirs at reasonable prices). It made this Twin Cities resident even more jealous of those who live in a place that has effective public transportation!

Mapping the Hot Dogs

Another of my recent discoveries from Strange Maps:


I love the mapping of food customs and language conventions related to food (like my long-ago post about the usage of soda vs. pop).

Who knew that people put coleslaw on hot dogs in West Virginia? Certainly not me. The descriptions of hot dog toppings in W.Va. almost make hot dogs sound like they're worth eating.

Halloween: The Kids Are All Right

Free Range Kids' Lenore Skenazy has a good (but not-too-well-edited) article about the destruction of Halloween on the Huffington Post today. In it, she points out that thorough research shows there were never any documented cases of strangers poisoning candy or any other Halloween treats. Like most of Skenazy's work, it's worth a read.

My own experience of Halloween as a child involved roaming my rural neighborhood with my sisters and some of the neighbor kids. Sometimes we wore low-effort, homemade costumes (the hobo with the burnt-cork-blackened face, the ghost made out of a sheet) or those light-weight, flammable acetate, pajama-like get-ups with the molded, cheap plastic masks. (The masks always had a piece of white elastic string attached with little pieces of metal, and it seems like the string always broke or the plastic cracked around the metal, so you would end up holding your mask on.)

We were never driven anywhere for trick or treating. Although, hmm... maybe once when the weather was really bad. It was almost more fun to get back home and watch the other trick-or-treaters come to our door. Each group of kids would have to come inside the living room so their costumes could be seen in the light.

Honestly, I don't remember the candy I got, though there definitely was some. There were a few apples, too, and homemade popcorn balls, which were okay. What I remember best are Mrs. Cromer's caramel apples. They were considered the greatest treat by everyone.

Reading through the comments responding to Skenazy's HuffPo article, I was most astounded by this one from a reader called HSC55:

Our town has been doing something for Halloween now for three years that I find sickening. Instead of having the kids run door to door to collect candy, we are supposed to fill our car trunks with candy and drive to the local high school. There, everyone parks in the parking lot, opens their trunk and the lazy, fat little kids get to gorge themselves without walking a block. Just think how much candy and calories they can pack in in 5 minutes when it used to take them that long to walk between houses. It's obscene.

Wow. And I thought the practice of taking kids to malls to trick-or-treat was bad.

The Brady Bunch Arcs to Arcturus

It's definitely worth clicking on the image to see it full-size.

From Strange Maps, a fascinating site that's just what it sounds like. Watch for some future posts on other great finds from Strange Maps.

(Originally from the comics site Abstruse Goose, via kottke.org).

Great Leap Forwards 2.0

One of British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg's signature songs, "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards," is from a 1988 album. Its lyrics reflect the time when it was written:

It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel Castro's brother spies a rich lady who's crying
Over luxury's disappointment
So he walks over and he's trying
To sympathize with her but thinks that he should warn her
That the Third World is just around the corner

In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That Dr Robert Oppenheimer's optimism fell
At the first hurdle

In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of people stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame-filled minutes of the fanzine writer

Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the Great Leap Forwards

Jumble sales are organized and pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?

Here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it

It's a mighty long way down rock 'n roll
From Top of the Pops to drawing the dole

If no one seems to understands
Start your own revolution, cut out the middleman

In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room

So join the struggle while you may
The Revolution is just a t-shirt away
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

Looking around on YouTube the other night I discovered that he updated the lyrics around 2006. It was disorienting to hear the new version, but some parts of it are pretty clever.