Category Archives: Volunteerism

APA Chapters Step Up to Host Film Project

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Over the past few months, we have posted ten short blog videos detailing the progress of Planning to Turn the Tide, the documentary on planning for resilience against natural disasters being produced by the American Planning Association’s Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. In this post, we highlight the support of APA Chapters by featuring a staff member from APA Florida, Suzie Gray, who talks about her role at the APA Florida conference we visited in Jacksonville in early September.

Florida APA annual conference reception at Hyatt Regency Jacksonville

From our first interactions with Florida Chapter representatives and staff, they have been enthusiastic about supporting the project. Not only did they supply numerous contacts, suggesting people for interviews or information, but they also extended a gracious invitation for us to visit their annual conference in Jacksonville, which took place September 5-8. We have forged similar alliances with other APA chapters since then, one of which was illustrated in Colorado in July, and most recently in Texas, the subject of upcoming blog videos. These are really important opportunities for professional collaboration and support within the framework of a larger professional organization, but it also affords us an effective base of operations during a conference, especially in the use of space suitable for recorded interviews.

Click here to watch the video featuring Suzie Gray discussing her work with us under the banner of the Florida APA Chapter.

The core team of the HMDR video project wishes to thank APA Florida staff and volunteers for their wonderful assistance in putting us in touch with the best planning voices in their state and lending their credibility to what we are trying to accomplish. Our challenge would be much greater without them.

To support the HMDR film-making effort, use either the donations link here or the QR code below. We will acknowledge all donors, whose help we greatly appreciate. Make this your film too as we move forward.

Jim Schwab

Labor Day Blessing

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“Retire from what?”

The Chicago Tribune says Jimmy Buffett asked that question once when they asked him about retirement. He died September 1, just as the Labor Day weekend began, from an aggressive skin cancer called Merkel cell cancer. In his lifetime, he succeeded first in making a name in the music world with a unique style that focused on the “play hard” part of life, but he also marketed his persona and brand with a vengeance because he also worked hard. I recall watching a segment of 60 Minutes in which he described himself as a workaholic, utterly contradicting the world of leisure his songs seemed to evoke.

Work hard, play hard. Retire from what? What difference does it make if you love what you do and life has rewarded your passion?

Jimmy Buffett on the USS Harry Truman, 2008. Photo from Wikipedia

Jimmy Buffett died at age 76. At 73, I can easily imagine living many more years, but I doubt that I will become a billionaire, nor do I care. Life has, in my humble view, already rewarded my passions just by letting me continue to enjoy what I do. One friend and colleague said, “which is never,” when in a jousting, friendly conversation, I allowed that maybe, just maybe, there would be a day when I would stop working.

The only question for me is whether I work for pay or for the love of the challenge. Life since I “allegedly retired” (my phrase) from the American Planning Association more than six years ago has mixed both elements, as I expected, though the specific combinations of activities and assignments has shifted in unexpected ways. I realized when I left that I had reached a point in life where my wife and I could live well enough with our “cushion,” the pensions and Social Security and IRAs we had earned and invested. Everything else was a bonus, though sometimes that bonus gets used to help family and special causes.

I have done far less book writing than I planned, my teaching has paused at the university level but morphed into professional training, and, as readers have noticed, I took on the challenge of learning how to manage a documentary film operation and develop the script, while using long-standing interview skills to capture content. I am volunteering my time on the film because we are developing it on a shoestring (to get started, at least) and because the whole point of this labor of love is to change hearts and minds about planning for disasters and climate change without worrying about getting paid for it. Put another way, it was in large part my idea. No one asked me to do it, though many have been grateful for the opportunity to be part of it. But I still get paid to teach and to consult, though I am dialing back the latter to make room for the work of passion. Recently, I spent a couple of weeks writing a grant proposal that may allow a church to install a solar rooftop. More on that later if we succeed. A higher power can thank me for helping lead his people into the paradise of renewable energy and mitigating global warming.

“Retire from what?”

As long as the work puts a smile on your face, as long as you can blur the lines between work and play, and take pride and joy both in whatever you achieve, who cares whether anyone calls it retirement. Yes, as we get older, health issues start to take a toll. In another month, I will be forced to sit back and recover from some serious surgery, but I was 69 before I faced the first surgery of my life, for cataracts. (Don’t worry. In the tradition of making lemonade out of tropical lemons, I have decided the coming convalescence is perfectly timed for watching the Cubs in the National League playoffs.)

Jimmy Buffett died too soon, in my opinion, but a higher power than I gets to make those decisions. We do not live forever. Make your time worthwhile and let it make you happy until the very end.

“Retire from what?”

Why do people think I coined the term “allegedly retired?” Passions add value to life. Live your passions while you can. And remember to eat a cheeseburger in paradise.

Jim Schwab

P.S.: This blog, also a labor of love, just topped 40,000 subscribers in the last few days. I hope I have added some joy and provoked some creative thought for all of you. And a special thank you to Allison Hardin, who designed a special T-shirt for a surprise “retirement” party for me during the APA National Planning Conference in May 2017. It read, “Ask me about my blog.”

Heading Out on the Film Trail

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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 Chicago on Thursday, July 6, and drove across Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska to arrive two days later in Broomfield, Colorado, the site of the 2023 annual Natural Hazards Workshop. We returned to Chicago on Tuesday evening, July 18.

Click here to view this new video blog installment in our ongoing series.

Why such a long road trip for this documentary film of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division? We had long hoped that we could combine travel to Colorado and Iowa in a single trip. This project, dependent on grants and individual and corporate donations, does not thrive on an expensive news media budget. It is driven by a great deal of volunteer support from planners and supporters of the planning community across the country, and specifically by ad hoc groups organized in the locations where we have chosen to film segments that we think will be of the greatest educational and inspirational value in the final product. Part of the answer, therefore, lies in a diligent frugality with our donors’ money.

Flying is inevitable to some locations. In this case, however, an extensive network of grassroots contacts let us bring several elements of the production together in a short, concentrated time scale. First, we are extremely grateful to the University of Colorado’s Natural Hazards Center, which welcomed our operation enthusiastically at its conference at the Omni Interlocken Hotel and Resort in Broomfield, which took place July 9-12. Their embrace allowed us to film interviews at the hotel throughout the conference.

At the same time, support from the Colorado Chapter of the American Planning Association, as well as other volunteers, made it possible to arrange meaningful visits to communities along the Front Range that have been affected over the past decade by drought, wildfire, and flooding, and to interview people who could share their knowledge and experience, which will be detailed in upcoming blog posts over the next few weeks. That filled out the first week.

Over the following weekend, we made our way back east again to Iowa, stopping in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids to discuss some meaningful Iowa planning innovations at both the state and local levels, dealing mostly with floods but also larger implications of climate change. I will note here that, while we stayed overnight in Lincoln on this return trip, we experienced what I had already seen in Chicago two weeks earlier: significant air pollution sweeping through Nebraska as a result of drifting smoke from raging wildfires in Canada.

Chad Nabity

Little more than a week earlier, on our way out to Colorado, we had stopped in Grand Island, Nebraska, to visit on a late Friday afternoon with Chad Nabity, AICP, the planning director for Hall County and Grand Island. Chad is the sort of remarkable professional who loves to give back to his profession. He currently serves the American Planning Association as Chair of the Divisions Council, of which HMDR is a member. In our chat at his office in City Hall, as well as at a nearby chocolate shop, he discussed Grand Island’s encounters with natural disasters, which included some flooding issues but also the Night of the Twisters in 1980, when seven tornadoes visited Grand Island in rapid succession, devastating parts of the community and triggering frantic emergency response efforts. Chad himself was entering high school that year in Grand Island. Although his parents’ house suffered little damage, he says, “not the same for close friends of mine.” Later, Chad went off to college, earned his planning degree, and eventually returned as a Grand Island native in the position he now holds. Not surprisingly, Chad is also a member of HMDR.

The evening became famous enough to draw Hollywood attention, resulting in the first Family Channel movie production, titled, you guessed it, Night of the Twisters. The movie itself drew from a 1984 young adult book of the same name by Ivy Ruckman. I guess we are not the first to think of making a movie about disasters, but I confess to viewing most such movies with a jaundiced eye because of their tendency to sensationalize such events.

We are producing an educational documentary because we are more interested in telling the story of how to prevent or mitigate such hazards, how to create resilient communities, and how to persist in the long road to recovery that inevitably follows. We want to build a community of interest for better planning for disaster resilience.

If you think that is a worthwhile enterprise, I will once again mention our need for financial support. Use the QR code below or this link to help us out. We will truly appreciate it.

Jim Schwab

Not Too Mulch to Ask

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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 around street trees nearby on Armitage and Milwaukee Avenues, and just, well, clean up a bit.

I admit to being an easy sell on urban trees. There is a beautiful century-old American elm in our backyard. Nearly fifteen years ago, I led an American Planning Association project, funded by the U.S. Forest Service, that resulted in a report called Planning the Urban Forest. It’s not that I believe the right trees in the right places improve the livability of our neighborhoods; I know it because of extensive research over many years that I have digested from numerous sources that prove it. I have written about it in published articles.

Volunteers in front of Ald. La Spata’s office, Saturday, July 29, 2023. All photos provided by Huan Song of Openlands.

So, once in a while, I try to put my muscle and time where my mouth is and just get out and do the real thing. All I had to do was register online so that Openlands knew how many people would participate. Besides, working to improve the survivability of real trees in a street-side environment is always an opportunity to learn something. Add my proclivity as a compulsive extrovert, loving the chance to meet and talk to new people, and I was sold. La Spata seemed pleasantly surprised when I showed up just before 9 a.m., but he shouldn’t have been. This is fun stuff for me.

But first, a word about Openlands, the organization with which he allied to provide this volunteer service opportunity. Openlands is now entering its seventh decade as a regional conservation organization, having been launched in 1963. They have consistently offered a regional vision for a landscape of land and water trails, urban forests, and public gardens, all with an eye to enhancing access for city residents. Together with the Morton Arboretum, based in Lisle, Illinois, they have provided a strong voice for the value of open space and trees in the metropolitan area that have kept people aware of the opportunities for a healthier and more biodiverse environment. While I have not been directly involved in Openlands, I have served for several years on an advisory board for Morton Arboretum’s Chicago Regional Trees Initiative, which has produced model ordinances and programs for communities throughout the region. I highly recommend visiting either or both websites and learning more about their programs in this time when climate change is threatening our urban quality of life.

But back to the scene of the volunteer work. More than a dozen volunteers, many of them certified Tree Keepers for Openlands, showed up. We initially were briefed on the day’s activities, including the areas where we would be working. We would not be planting trees—that is up to the city when it comes to street trees. Nor would we be pruning, which must be done by professional arborists. But we would be working with someone from the Chicago Streets and Sanitation Department, which provided a city truck to pick up any debris we picked up, or garbage, such as empty mulch bags, that the operation generated. Mostly, we used mulch to fill in boxes around street trees, not overloading the site but enough to protect the trees.

We also dug up and removed some burlap bags that contractors had left around some street trees, in order to allow them to grow and breathe better. That was not always easy because they become buried in the compacted soil, making them hard to extract and remove. Aside from personal fitness, I sometimes wondered what other benefits came from my twice-weekly strength and cardio workouts at a local gym. Now, I realized I was well trained to provide the powerful yank that some of these bags needed to pull them out of muddy soil for disposal. Fitness can serve practical purposes.

We were also fortunate that the weather was perfect for the occasion. The high temperature was in the low to mid 70s that day, so the only time I sweated a bit was when, on one occasion, I had to labor extra hard to remove one of those burlap bags. It was sunny but bearable. I had forgotten my sunglasses, but really did not need them.

Toward the end, as our crew had worked its way northwest on one side of Milwaukee Avenue and then back down the other toward the ward office, we were adding mulch in front of a relatively new nonprofit used bookstore, Open Books. If there is one diversion that can get my attention in addition to trees, it is browsing a bookstore, where some trees find a new but lasting use. I also needed to use the bathroom, so I asked the clerk at the checkout desk. On the way back, I mentioned that, on her birthday a few days earlier, my wife and I saw Oppenheimer at a movie theater before getting dinner nearby. Did the store have copies of American Prometheus, the Kai Bird book that inspired the movie? She looked, and they did, and I walked out with a used copy for a little over $13. Combining that with improving the neighborhood environment made for a successful morning, I felt.

But soon, as noon approached, we had a debriefing on what we had accomplished and any useful suggestions from volunteers. I suggested making wire cutters available because we had encountered chicken wire in some of the tree boxes, something much more problematic than burlap boxes, which eventually biodegrade. I don’t recall what else was mentioned, but our crew leader took notes.

Next to the aldermanic office was an outlet for Jersey Mike’s. I had joked that we should all walk in and tell them we had heard that they were planning to feed the volunteers. We laughed but obviously did no such thing. But the thought of a good sandwich burrowed into my brain, and with less than half a mile to walk home, I entered the store and ordered a turkey sandwich, Mike’s way, and took my prize home for lunch, accompanied by Cheetos and a chocolate chip cookie. The sandwich was the only likely source of nutrition, I suspect, but along with some lemonade from the refrigerator, it felt like an adequate reward for making a small difference in a big city.

Jim Schwab

Consider Your Victims

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We are probably all born with a certain focus on our own needs. The first job of a baby is to survive, but ideally, we learn from parents, especially, but also from others around us that somebody else cares and takes care of us when we most need the help. With any luck, we learn to extend that same concern from ourselves to others, and as we grow, we learn how we can support and cooperate with our fellow human beings. Empathy must be taught, and not everyone learns, or learns well.

I would like to believe that this article will reach someone and cause them to think about any potential victims of their actions. Maybe it will, but I also doubt that the most violent among us are reading my blog. I have good reason to suspect that my content over the past eight years, while apparently attracting more than 31,000 subscribers, has not provided much raw meat for those who feel the need to attack others to get what they want. They may not read much at all. But I can hope.

But I must wonder sometimes whether perpetrators of violent crimes, especially those involving theft, give much consideration to their victims. The overwhelming majority of victims of violence mean something to someone. In some cases, they may have networks of friends upon whom they are positive influences. They may be positive assets for local communities, whether those be neighborhoods, religious congregations, schools, or extended families. They mean something to other people, and the community will be weaker without them.

Or do their attackers just see them as vulnerable prey, much as a bobcat might view a rodent when the cat is hungry?

I keep wondering about one such recent victim in Chicago. We have plenty of victims in Chicago, often of gun violence, though in this case no gun was involved. His car was the object of desire, and a 73-year-old man, moving slowly, became the target of an attempted carjacking. The two youths hit him in the head, then pushed him in the chest, and he died of a heart attack. Two young men, 18 and 17, now face serious charges and may end up sacrificing many years of their lives in prison. Their future looks bleak.

Keith Cooper at a 5K “Ditch the Weight & Guns” walk & run in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. Photo provided by Keinika Carlton.

Keith Cooper, the victim, was a member of Augustana Lutheran Church, to which I belong, and a vital, active part of the Hyde Park neighborhood that surrounds it. He was a proud Marine Corps veteran, having joined in 1968 at age 21 and served in Vietnam. When you needed a volunteer, he was likely to be there.

Keith with daughter Keinika, her husband Curtis Carlton, and granddaughters Alyna and Mikayla. Photo provided by Keinika Carlton.

“He just loved to help,” his daughter, Keinika, says. “He was a community-based individual.” When she was growing up, she recalls, he taught his children that “you can’t complain if you don’t do anything.” Ever seeking to mentor those he loved, he brought granddaughter Mikayla, now 11, to Sunday school when he came to church. Keinika said he joined Augustana about ten years ago. He was, however, already familiar with the church from growing up in the neighborhood near 54th and Kimbark on Chicago’s South Side.

But it was more than growing up near the church. Keith told the current pastor, the Rev. Nancy Goede, that he had been baptized there as a child. Keinika had Sunday school attendance slips from 1959, when he was 12. Later, as a teen, he served as an acolyte. He drifted away in his teens, but returned as a mature adult. In recent years, I often served with him as an usher.

Keith Cooper with daughter Keinika. Photo provided by Keinika Carlton.

He joined the church shortly after two heart surgeries that were necessitated by a torn aorta and involved heart valve replacement. Keinika describes her time in the waiting room as “nerve wracking.” Her father underwent rehab to rebuild his body. For this very reason, she says, when she learned of the nature of the attack the day it occurred, she knew why his heart failed. She knew, she says, that he would not survive.

That is, however, part of the problem with random victimization of an old man the attackers never knew. It probably never occurred to them that their physical assault could result in death. They knew nothing of this personal history, or why he seemed to be moving slowly, if that was their perception, but now they own the consequences. As Judge Charles S. Beach II said in addressing Frank Harris, the 18-year-old, as they were charged in court with murder, “To say that it’s painful for me is an understatement—because anytime that I see a young man such as you before me with such a terrible thing on their shoulders, it’s painful for us and society and just about everyone.”

As Keinika asked during an interview with me last week, “Did you all even think this through?”

Kimbark Plaza at E. 53rd St. and Kimbark in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

What is stunning about the entire incident is that it occurred in broad daylight in a busy commercial strip, Kimbark Plaza. It occurred roughly between 12:30 and 12:40 p.m. in a crowded parking lot, with numerous surveillance cameras. There were reportedly dozens of witnesses in nearby stores, many of whom came out, including an off-duty paramedic who tried to revive him as he lay on the ground, unresponsive, until police arrived. Sadly, he was already dead when an ambulance brought him to nearby University of Chicago Hospital. He had been at Kimbark Plaza to run errands. He often shopped for groceries at Hyde Park Produce.

Meanwhile, having failed to open the car, a Hyundai Santa Fe SUV, the two young men fled but were identified and arrested by police about a half-mile away, trying to change clothes in a synagogue courtyard. Harris was about to become a senior in high school, but the two had some prior arrests, including other carjackings in May and last December.

Keith will be sorely missed by those who knew him—and there were plenty who did. As the Hyde Park Jazz Festival grew as an area attraction each summer, it was Keith who helped arrange for some artists to perform at Augustana. When volunteers were needed to park cars for events like the Jazz Fest or the 57th St. Arts Fair, earning parking fees to support the church, it was most often Keith who could be found collecting the fees and directing people to available spaces. For his 74th birthday, which would have occurred July 22, his Facebook request was to raise $500 for his beloved church. My wife attended one of his AARP-sponsored driver skills refresher courses at the church for seniors who could then get small discounts on their car insurance. Keith was the host. Keinika says he was involved in a recent Juneteenth festival. I could go on, but you get the idea. Church, school, neighborhood, the city of Chicago, he loved them all and supported them all.

From years of passing conversations with him, I gathered the impression that part of his motivation may have come from his own struggles. At one point earlier in his life, he was briefly homeless. He knew what that felt like and gladly assisted with a monthly community breakfast for disadvantaged people. Bill Tompsett, a retired attorney and long-time member of Augustana, says he helped by greeting people as they arrived, but when he was missing for a few weeks, Keith asked him why. Bill explained that he had hurt his back and could not stand for two hours to greet people. Keith assured him that he could still greet people sitting down, and he resumed his duties. Little things like that mattered. Keith did several jobs in his life, including driving trucks and selling jewelry and books. His daughter told reporters he had “tons of books,” among which he particularly liked black history and science fiction. In retirement, he was driving a Lyft car to earn extra money. Keith knew from personal experience that there are many people struggling to survive in our community, and he sought to help where he could.

It is noteworthy that more than 100 people gathered at Kimbark Plaza on Friday evening, July 16, two days after Keith died, to honor his life and offer prayers, holding candles while West African drums were played.

“Talking drums” performing at the visitation for Keith Cooper, July 24, 2021.

Those “talking drums” were also present a week later, on Saturday, July 24, for a visitation in the Augustana fellowship hall, at which members of the U.S. Marine Corps also presented a flag to honor his service. Dozens of participants in the event responded to Keinika by offering one-word descriptions of Keith such as “kindness” and “commitment.” Two days later, following a moving funeral service, his ashes were interred in the memorial garden outside the fellowship hall, where he joined other saints who preceded him.

Augustana’s memorial garden

The city of Chicago and Hyde Park lost a valuable, generous, and committed citizen because, once again and too often, some people, too often too young, chose a path in which they failed to consider who their victim might be, what he meant to those around him, and what they took from their community as a result. It was all very sad, and I kept thinking during the funeral, all very unnecessary.

Jim Schwab

Acting in Good Faith

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How does one portray the life of a man whose ultimate fate was a hanging at the hands of the Gestapo, with just four weeks left until the German surrender in World War II? Even an experienced professional actor might find that role daunting. I played that role last Friday evening in what amounted to my amateur acting debut, complicated by a Zoom platform in what we all hope are the latter stages of a pandemic. I’m certainly accustomed to being on a stage in front of an audience as a public speaker, but in those situations, I am speaking for myself. Portraying a historical figure of the magnitude of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a very different matter.

The collective performance of volunteers mostly from Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park in Chicago occurred on the anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s execution in 1945, at the Flossenburg concentration camp near the German border with Czechosolvakia. One suspects the SS, whose Judge Otto Thorbeck condemned him to die the day before the hanging, must have been in a hurry. Just two weeks later, American troops liberated the camp.

Script cover for “The Beams Are Creaking”

My intent in discussing this in a blog post is not to review the play, The Beams Are Creaking, by Douglas Anderson, but to reflect on what I learned from taking on this role in the first place. It is also the case that several rehearsals—and rereading the script a few times—occupied enough of my time to explain my hiatus from blog writing in recent weeks. It was only as we practiced our parts that I began to realize what I was trying to accomplish, but I was hooked. The play begins in 1933, with Bonhoeffer returning from the United States to Germany at the dawn of the Nazi rise to power. There are several biographies of Bonhoeffer, the most notable probably being that written by his close associate, Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, originally published in Germany in 1967, and later translated into English.

The necessary brevity of a play, if done well (and this is), condenses essential points and makes them more visible not only to the audience, but to the actors as well. I quickly realized from the full scope of the script that Bonhoeffer was not entirely the same man in 1945 that he was at the outset of the drama, when a streak of naivete about the German future still shaped his outlook. Born in 1906 in what is now Poland, Bonhoeffer returned from America with decided impressions about the injustice perpetrated on the American Negro, but not disposed to compare their situation with the plight of Jews in Germany, in part because he simply did not believe that Germany could succumb to the appeal of Adolf Hitler. Confronted early in the first act by Hans von Dohnanyi with the possibility of the Nazis gaining power, Bonhoeffer simply replies, “It couldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen in Germany.” By now, of course, the most observant among us are aware of a few too many historical developments that “could not happen” but did.

Photo of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reproduced from Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer was soon disabused of his initial perspective, particularly when he dares to give a radio speech implicitly criticizing the Fuhrer. The Nazis silenced the radio station before he could finish. And that is the first of many steps that lead him steadily, inexorably, into a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler—a conspiracy that failed with dire consequences for those involved. When the play ends, he is sitting in Tegel prison, but Gestapo agents have come to transfer him to Flossenburg, which all around him know to be a death sentence.

The challenge for me in playing Bonhoeffer was to transfer to a Zoom screen that sense of the gradual but inevitable shift from a 27-year-old idealist, steeped in faith as a trained theologian and pastor, to a 39-year-old man who has come to terms with the deepest meaning of faith at the darkest moments in anyone’s life.

This struggle for almost anyone involves a powerful mixture of personal circumstances and challenges and some sort of deep faith that undergirds the transition that his life undergoes. One key turning point, midway through the play, involves the planned emigration of his sister, Sabine, and her Jewish husband Gerhard, to escape the coming Holocaust. In the play, this is the point when, having been approached by others who are involved in the plot against Hitler, he decides, “I will be a conspirator.” This is not a line that I shouted from the rooftop; it was one that I delivered with a heavy heart, realizing what will likely be demanded of Bonhoeffer in the coming years.

The second and final act opens later with Bonhoeffer in prison, chatting with a friendly guard, musing over his role as a thorn in the side of the Gestapo. The middle of the act consists of a monologue, Bonhoeffer with a mop talking to the floor, articulating his frustration with the official church in Germany, its betrayal of principles and purpose, ultimately concluding that it has driven the thinking man from the church because, “It honesty doesn’t know what to say to him.” One might call it a sense of despair, but it is also a lonely note of defiance.

One cannot gainsay the role of faith in Bonhoeffer’s life and how it affected his decisions. For a 39-year-old man facing death, he left behind some of the most meaningful spiritual writings of the 20th century, including his letters from prison, but also the classic The Cost of Discipleship, which begins with the theologically famous line, “Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.” Bonhoeffer was not about to lie to anyone about the high cost of confronting evil power.

That is the background. What did I learn from this volunteer dramatic effort? First, there was the challenge of presenting this on Zoom, as pandemic restrictions made a live stage presentation problematic. We practiced on Zoom, which was never designed for presenting plays, and learned to work with its limitations. These included the need for all of us to wait at strategic points to deliver our lines until Nancy Goede, pastor of Augustana, who conceived of this operation in the first place, secured the licensing rights to present it, and acquired the scripts for all of us, could produce sound effects (such as knocking on a door or a phone ringing) at points where that otherwise would have been a background stage noise. On Zoom, however, our talking would have filtered out such sounds, so we had to master the timing to allow those sounds to occur. There are scenes where the historical context emerges from radio announcements, and certain people had to provide those, speaking into makeshift microphones of the era, and so forth. In many ways, despite the visual presence on Zoom, our production resembled an old theater of the radio, and with a story set in the 1930s and 1940s, perhaps that aided the dramatic impact. But taking all the emotional impact of the story I mention above, and framing it within Zoom, was an interesting challenge and ate up a significant amount of time in rehearsals.

Given that almost no one had the spare time to learn every line by heart, this was “Readers Theater,” in which people used the script during the performance. However, to increase the impact of Bonhoeffer’s presence, I mastered the art of essentially hiding the script below the screen, that is, out of sight of the webcam, while also anticipating lines that I could deliver without even looking at it. On stage, all of this would have been impossible, but then Zoom made other things impossible, such as Bonhoeffer hugging or kissing his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer, when she visits him in prison. Live theater online involves its own fair share of compromises.

I would love to provide some photos here of the performance, but licensing rights prohibited recording. I have chosen to make do with other approaches to make this more visually interesting.

Me, as Bonhoeffer, in “studio” in clerical garb for scene with Hermann Goering and Bishop Ludwig Muller

In addition to the invisible but important influence of people like the pastor, I must mention that no performance like this operates without serious teamwork. Much of what I did gained from the adroit counterplay of other actors. Dan Friedrich, who played multiple roles, was a remarkably cynical Hermann Goering, making very effective use of Goering’s perverse sense of humor, as in a meeting between himself, Bonhoeffer, and Bishop Muller of the German national church. When Bonhoeffer offers to show that his opposition movement has some 6,000 pastors objecting to some new Nazi policy declarations, Goering laughs it off by noting ominously that “we already know who they are.” Both my role and Dan’s demanded an effective foil on the other side. I learned how to use such foils to the benefit of the portrayal of my own character. On

Theresa Fuchs in downtown Chicago

the other hand, Theresa Fuchs, a visitor from Germany working at the Goethe-Institut, played a very convincing and sincere Maria. Her soft German-accented English lent an air of linguistic reality to the play, but more importantly, she also schooled the rest of the cast on the proper pronunciation of German names (though it didn’t always take, as one might expect).

Andrea Holliday

Dan Friedrich played both sides: General Hermann Goering and the anti-Nazi conspirator Schlabrendorff. That is, when not also playing an American correspondent at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

As for Dan, a software developer who has a serious sideline hobby in comedy improv, he can take credit for introducing us to Andrea Holliday, who provided the narration where Zoom made certain stage effects either difficult or impossible.

In the end, this experience taught me a deeper respect than I already had for what professional and even community theater actors attempt to do all the time. It involves investing some of your own emotional energy in the portrayal of the character, and in the case of a character like Bonhoeffer, some significant willingness to try to achieve an understanding of that person’s world view and faith. Frankly, after this 2 ½-hour online presentation was over, I felt a significant need to unwind and recover from what I had just done. Acting is a unique artistic enterprise in the way it demands that you embrace another person’s perspective, especially when that person is a historic figure, rather than the product of a creative author’s mind. It stretches one’s mind and heart in special ways.

Jim Schwab

P.S.: For a blog perspective on the presentation by Pastor Nancy Goede’s husband, Jim Vondracek, click here.

Climate Solutions, Off the Shelf

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About six weeks ago, as the Biden administration was first asserting its priorities regarding climate change and the environment, I reviewed a book about the positive actions already being taken by cities around the world in addressing the climate crisis. The important takeaway was that, while climate policy languished or moved backwards under the Trump administration, cities and their mayors had not waited for national governments to act. They had instead taken the initiative.

But city governments are not alone. Architects, planners, engineers, and even developers have innovated in their own ways. In late 2019, Chicago architect Douglas Farr provided me with a copy of his book, Sustainable Nation: Urban Design Patterns for the Future, and I promised to review it. It is a sizeable, oversize, 400-page tome, but don’t let that intimidate you, even if I got sidetracked for numerous reasons and only a year later decided to devour the book from cover to cover. That is not necessary for everyone. The book functions much like an encyclopedia, reference work, or anthology. Farr solicited specialized contributions from numerous practitioners and experts. Pick a chapter, pick your favorite subtopic, or dive in randomly. You won’t fail to learn something, as I did, despite my general familiarity with Farr’s subject matter.

My timing in finally reviewing the book has proven fortuitous, in a way. It allows me to expand the message of the review of David Miller’s Solved, a much shorter book by a single author. Miller essentially is a success storyteller; Farr is a documenter. Both serve a purpose.

For 650,000 years, global carbon dioxide emissions have never been above the read line. They are now. All graphics courtesy of Farr Associates

Farr starts his book with a “Where We Are” section that includes color-coded maps documenting the huge disparities around the world in longevity (50-59 years in much of Africa, 70-79 in the U.S., above 80 in Japan, Australia, Canada, and Europe, in poverty, gender inequality, and so forth. A simple chart of global CO2 levels demonstrates that, within our lifetimes, we have nearly doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to levels not seen in the last 650,000 years. A parade of such graphics makes clear that ours is a planet on a collision course with natural reality.

The Bullitt Center. Copyright Nic Lenoux for the Bullitt Center.

But such searing images also clarify the importance of examples of what can be done. Farr leads us to the specific example in Seattle of the Bullitt Center, which he terms the “most sustainable office building in the world.” Composting toilets use an average of two tablespoons of water per use. There are no parking spaces, but there is 243 square meters of rooftop green space. The Bullitt Center earned designation as one of the first eight buildings to achieve full certification under the Living Building Challenge, and the first office building.

But no one in Seattle wants it to retain such titles. They would rather see new buildings and new developments claim new titles and surpass the Bullitt Center’s achievements as we move toward an entire new sustainable society. Farr takes us from “our default world” to “our preferred future,” with a procession of examples of how this can be done, then leads readers to a theory of change that discusses how we make change happen, over what timelines, and how we can step on the gas with “acceleration strategies” to make practical impacts on climate change happen more quickly.

But it is in the final section, “The Practice of Change,” which dominates more than half the book, where Farr enlists a variety of expert contributors to share the methods and designs that will carry us forward to reduce climate impacts and ultimately create a more livable society. This is not just about innovative building design but about human relationships. Mary Nelson, president and CEO emeritus of Chicago’s Bethel New Life Inc., and one of the pioneers of Chicago neighborhood change whom I most admire, discusses how we build strong relationships between people and place (spoiler alert: it involves hard work). Others describe the value of participatory art in communities or the need to transform public spaces into welcoming places (Fred Kent, president, Project for Public Spaces). Get the point? Architectural or planning solutions that have no human connection of involvement beyond an elite are dead letters in promoting real social change that will have any impact on our climate crisis. It’s all about us, whether the subject is local food culture, local planning checkups, ore re-envisioning underutilized space to promote equitable prosperity. Every single example has its champion in this book, someone who has worked on solutions and involved people in finding answers.

For a moment, I’d like to focus on contributions by two colleagues with whom I have worked, David Fields and Tom Price, to make the point. Fields is a veteran transportation planner now working in Houston as the city’s chief transportation planner, who discusses how elements of the urban setting such as residential density and mixed land uses that put homes within walking distance of retail, or put homes above ground-floor retail, can reduce vehicle trips by up to 90 percent, thus helping to reverse the tremendous negative impact of the automobile on the world’s climate, to say nothing of air quality. Price, on the other hand, is a civil engineer, instructs us on how to use “every project as an opportunity to process rainwater and stormwater,” while demanding beauty through improved design. His articles remind me of a lesson I learned years ago, after Hurricane Katrina, through a project in New Orleans called the Dutch Dialogues, in which the American Planning Association and others engaged with Dutch planners and engineers to promulgate the idea of seeing water not as the enemy but as a resource for enhancing urban quality of life. We need to find ways to help move water elegantly through the city instead of constantly finding ways to bury it, hide it, or divert it.

Whether the subject is community theater, transportation, or architectural styles that build housing affordability and reduced heating and cooling demands to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the overall point is not only repetitive but cumulative: For many of the challenges that climate change poses to our communities, we already know the answers if we are willing to explore the most innovative, effective, and creative approaches that others have already used. Yes, we have a new administration willing to rejoin the Paris climate accord and invest in solutions to climate change. That is important, as we need to push envelopes constantly and with urgency. But we dare not ignore the answers that are all around us in the innovations that are already helping our communities adapt to a carbon-neutral, democratic, more equitable future. They embody the lessons that, through replication, will accelerate our shift to a green future that eases the existential climate crisis of our planet.

The sweet-spot scale in action in Oslo, Norway. Copyright Jason F. McLennan.

Perhaps two points in Farr’s book, side by side, will help illuminate the point. One is a segment by Jason F. McLennan, founder of the Living Building Challenge. He defines something he calls the “sweet spot” in the sustainable urban fabric, buildings between four and eight stories high. These are buildings not so high as to isolate people on upper floors from fellow human beings at ground level. The building is also not so tall that reliance on energy-consuming elevators drives high energy demand for the building merely to function. There is a place for taller buildings, but the combination of density and manageable energy demand with the potential to minimize demands on the environment exists in that “sweet spot.” Subsequent examples in the same section

The sweet spot defined. Modified by Farr with permission from Jason F. McLennan.

proceed to elaborate on ways we already know to produce affordable, carbon-neutral housing. At the end of the book, in contrast, Farr makes his plea, in large part to fellow architects, to “end the race to build the world’s tallest building,” detailing the negative effects of such edifices on public health, safety, and welfare, and ending with a quote from Sherrilyn Kenyon, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Indeed. That is the fundamental point of stranded carbon, that is, leaving fossil fuels unburned, in the ground, and shifting to a renewable energy economy.

Much of the secret of achieving this goal lies in knowing when to stop doing the wrong things and how to enable our society to do more of the green things. This being merely a blog post, I cannot attempt to share all the specific points Farr and his contributors make concerning street design, building envelopes, solar power, social equity, and commitment to environmental health. But I can urge you to seek out his book, in a library, online, or in a bookstore, to find the examples you need for the situation your own community faces in crafting a more sustainable future. This is the activist’s and practitioner’s manual to help get you started. Let’s all engage in some creative thinking and problem solving.

Jim Schwab

Well Done, Faithful Servant

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Poster for a presentation at which John Fuller discussed his experiences at La Universidad de los Andes in Venezuela in the 1980s.

Starting this summer, John Fuller will find something new to do with his time. He is retiring after 41 years on the faculty of the University of Iowa, where he has been a professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning (SURP) since 1979. But he has been much more. He had cross-postings in the Departments of Economics and Geography. He was the resident expert on transportation planning. At times, he chaired the planning school, and from 1979-1995, he was executive director of the Legislative Extended Assistance Group (LEAG) of the Iowa Legislature, which initiated policy research on issues of legislative importance. He also directed the Institute of Urban and Regional Research from 1979-1983. That is where I began working for him.

I have known John for nearly half his life. When I entered the planning program at Iowa in January 1982, he immediately hired me as a graduate research assistant, probably recognizing talents I did not yet know I had, and trusting that high GRE scores portended success. By the time I left in the spring of 1985, just before marrying my wife in Omaha that June, I had completed one of those LEAG studies, possibly one of its most consequential ones, The Farm Credit Crisis in Iowa, examining a financial meltdown in the farm sector and its consequences to communities in rural Iowa. John was aware that I already was undertaking a Master’s Project in Journalism on the subject, which I would ultimately turn into a published book (Raising Less Corn and More Hell, University of Illinois Press, 1988), and convinced legislative leaders to engage me on a policy study. It was a highly formative experience that allowed me to exhibit writing skills that became a cornerstone of my career as it evolved.

John was big on creating opportunities like that for people in whom he had confidence. I am proud to this day that he had such confidence in me. I know that other such expressions of confidence made a similar difference for many others over the decades that followed.

John had already had a meaningful career before he ever arrived at the University of Iowa. He completed a bachelor’s degree in economics at San Diego State University in 1962. He went on to earn a Ph.D. at Washington State University before undertaking a winding path through the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, initially as chief of economic analysis, until he was secretary of the Wisconsin Highway Commission in 1976-1977, just before becoming deputy executive director of the National Transportation Policy Study Commission during the Carter administration in Washington. From there, he moved to Iowa City, where he has remained. He has, however, become a long-time fixture at the federal Transportation Research Board, where he has served on many committees and in many capacities. Often, if I came to Iowa City and John was not there, it was because he was at a TRB meeting in Washington, D.C.

John escorts youngest daughter Elizabeth (Libby) in 2016 wedding.

By the time I met him, John was married to Kathy Fait. They have four children who are today scattered across the landscape in places like California, Houston, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Retirement may afford them both the chance to visit children and grandchildren more often than they already do. That will surely be appreciated. Meanwhile, they can enjoy their large home on a hill in West Branch, whose primary claim to fame is that it serves as the home of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, just a short bicycle ride away. Not surprisingly, John is the chair of the West Branch Planning & Zoning Commission.

At the University of Iowa, he found his lasting home, but he may also have found himself. In fact, he and Kathy may have carved out a joint mission that made them unique. Increasingly over time, John found ways to connect with students, and Kathy assisted by making their home a place where foreign students particularly felt welcome. Charles (Chuck) Connerly, who became the SURP director in 2008, states:

John spent his career dedicating himself–through his teaching and his kindness–to his students. In the classroom, John was always staying abreast of the latest trends and issues in transportation so that his students were always well aware of the key issues in this important field. He dedicated his career to transportation, and his students greatly benefited from his commitment.

John was also committed to the welfare of our students in planning, especially our foreign students. As a Fulbright scholar himself, John worked very hard to bring Fulbright students to our planning program. Every year there would be at least one Fulbright scholar and often two or three. These scholars, from all over the world, contributed greatly to the quality of our student body and to the overall quality of the educational experience for all our students.

But John, along with his wife Kathy Fait, also made sure that foreign students felt welcomed at Iowa. They would pick students up at the airport, help them negotiate the first few days of their time in Iowa City, and would provide them with stuff that these students, often from warmer climates, would need–such as winter coats and luggage. As an advisor and Director of Graduate Studies, John worked hard to make certain that each of our foreign students was able to complete their studies here, even when some of these students got off to a rocky start. Because of this good care, Fulbright has always looked to us as a good program and university at which scholars can be placed.

John Fuller with me at his daughter’s wedding.

I can attest to much of what Chuck says. He arrived amid the infamous 2008 floods that forced the evacuation of more than 10 percent of nearby Cedar Rapids and wrought damage to the Iowa City campus totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. The school contemplated how it could play a bigger role in assisting Iowa communities with hazard-related problems and considered adding material to its Master’s degree curriculum. Long after most professors would have lost touch with their students, John was very much aware of my work on the subject for the American Planning Association. “Why not bring back Jim Schwab?” he asked, and urged hiring me to teach such a course. I hurriedly designed the course that summer for the fall semester. I have been teaching variations of it ever since.

Of course, I needed to drive out from Chicago to do so. John and Kathy offered their home as a place to stay while I was in town, usually the spare bedroom in the basement. Often, in breakfast conversations, I learned from Kathy of the latest delegation of foreign visitors they had been entertaining. I also learned during that first fall course of a flood refugee named Fred from nearby Coralville, to whom they provided emergency housing for several weeks. The door seemed always open if they could find a way to help.

Badminton, anyone? John found ways to stay fit, including playing in a badminton club.

The Fullers also have an abundant garden in their ample backyard, and I am sure I was not the only one who sometimes drove away after a visit with bags of apples and vegetables they had deliberately picked for me in order to share their cornucopia. It is just part of who they are.

As a result, even classmates of mine, like Kirk Bishop, now a planning consultant in Chicago with Duncan & Associates, who never took a class with Fuller, can say, “I remember him well. Even in our occasional passing in the hallways he was always quick with a smile, a nod, or a hello. A good soul. Fond memories indeed.” It is a rare occurrence when someone can distinctly remember, more than 35 years later, a professor who never taught them. It is a level of personal impact that is exceedingly hard to achieve.

In ordinary times, under ordinary circumstances, a long and distinguished career would likely be celebrated with a farewell gathering of students and faculty and staff, perhaps in a restaurant or some party setting, perhaps at some university facility adequate for the purpose. People would mingle, share stories, and salute the honoree with best wishes for a healthy, happy retirement. Unfortunately, these are not normal times, and no such gathering would have been safe or appropriate.

Chuck Connerly and others did the next best thing, at least for the time being: They hosted an online happy hour via Zoom, which I mentioned in my last blog post. That too was unfortunate, because, while I am told that at least 40 colleagues and SURP alumni joined the discussion, I was not only unable to do so because of my sudden hospitalization, but unable as well to even tell anyone why I was not there. I still regret that, even though I could do nothing about it.

But we are assured that, when the day comes that such a gathering can be done safely, the School will honor John with an in-person gathering for those able to attend. When that day comes, I will drive four hours to Iowa City to attend. After all these years, and all the kindnesses he and Kathy extended, it will be the least I can do. It is especially important to recognize when someone has turned a career into a mission to serve.

Jim Schwab

Make America Mature Again

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What follows is an adapted, re-edited version of a Facebook post from today that seems to have struck a nerve, attracting dozens of likes, comments, and shares. As a result, I concluded that perhaps I should add it to this blog.

 

No pictures here, just observations:

We as a nation come from ancestors who nearly starved to death at Valley Forge but stuck it out to ensure the success of a revolution that created a new nation built on liberty, imperfectly at first, but expanding its range over centuries.

Some of the toughest Americans come from ancestors who endured slavery over centuries to help build upon that legacy of liberty when they finally won their freedom.

We come from ancestors who endured four grueling years of civil war to ensure that liberty and equality retained a fighting chance to become this nation’s hallmark.

We come from ancestors who endured long passages across sometimes rough seas to reach a land that promised them a better life, and when they arrived, many endured hard work and, often, discrimination to assert their role in building our democracy.

We come from ancestors who, toward the end of World War I, endured endless months of influenza pandemic, with shutdowns and deaths and illness comparable to those we are experiencing now, until the danger passed and lives could be rebuilt.

We come from ancestors who, just a decade later, underwent the grueling agony of the Great Depression. We elected a president who, riddled with polio, understood the virtues of patience and perseverance in solving problems that seemed daunting by any measure, then entered World War II to help save the world from some of its most vicious tyrannies in modern times.

I could go on. But . . . .

Someone forgot to teach these lessons to a narcissistic president with the attention span of a fruit fly, a spoiled upper-class brat who has never faced serious challenges in life until now, a man who never learned much history, judging from the evidence of his comments.

Someone forgot to teach those lessons to protesters who, after a single month of one of the greatest public health challenges in anyone’s lifetime, refuse to learn that life never promised them that everything would turn up roses at the flick of a finger, and who never learned to analyze and understand a problem to find out whether the reopening they say they want might produce more harm than good, that a temper tantrum never solved anything.

Millions of Americans, probably most, of course, despite everything, understand that sacrifice will be part of the solution. But others have never, apparently, been steeled by a personal Valley Forge and just want what they want. Isn’t it time for a little maturity to settle in? Thank God for some governors and mayors out there with common sense and fortitude.

This is America. We’re supposed to be tougher than just throwing temper tantrums. Let’s prove it, people.

 

Jim Schwab

 

Isolated Adjustments

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I miss my gym already, closed just two weeks ago. There was a profusion of equipment to keep anyone in shape, whether you were working on legs, biceps, core, cardio, some combination, whatever. Here at home, I have small barbells, some ankle weights, and perhaps most importantly, a newly tuned 26-inch bicycle. There are other bicycles in our garage, mostly to accommodate grandchildren but also one my wife uses. We were out briefly yesterday for a ride in the neighborhood before the blustery spring winds brought more rain.

Closed entrance to the 606 Trail at California Ave.

A friend joked a few days ago that, after closing the Lakefront trail, adjacent parks, and beaches, and the 606 Trail plus park district field houses and playgrounds, Mayor Lori Lightfoot may have been praying for rain to enforce the stay-at-home, social distancing restrictions in effect throughout Illinois. If so, she got her wish over the weekend, but the weather is changing already, and Chicagoans are likely to take advantage of it. That’s okay, as long as we use those big park spaces that are still open to maintain social distance and help slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Alex at a closed entrance to the 606 Trail.

Quite frankly, just one week ago, after picking up my bike from a nearby shop that performed the tuning, I used it to ride a portion of the 606 Trail, feeling the liberation that comes with such a small adventure. That was Monday afternoon, and the closures came on Thursday. I was not surprised. The 606, which is a great community-building amenity in normal times, seemed far too narrow and crowded for public safety in these times. I have not returned. Future rides will be on winding paths in the 700-acre Humboldt Park, where one can move past other human beings without encroaching on personal space. And I can still invigorate my body and spirit with some healthy exercise.

Humboldt Park is open, but the playgrounds are closed.

So, what is this blog post about, exactly? It is about adjustments in the time of COVID-19. But let me be clear. I am sharing the adjustments being made in our three-member household, and everyone else is making their own. Each set of adjustments is unique, yet many of us can learn from one another. I am also painfully aware that we are safer and in a better position financially than many people who have lost jobs or are suffering lost income, or have a sick family member. I can empathize, while knowing their experience will unquestionably be very different. And I wish such people the very best. Our nation is in for one tough slog against a ghastly microbial enemy.

My wife and I are both in our early seventies, but our three-member household includes an 11-year-old grandson, for whom we assumed guardianship two years ago. His mother has long faced mental health challenges. Two weeks ago, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) closed, and as of now, they will remain so until April 20. After that? Who knows? At first, the closure was for two weeks, but that would have ended today. Officials at all levels of government have underestimated the scope and duration of this problem, but the important thing is that they are learning daily and adjusting strategies, as we all are. Universities have suspended semesters and moved classes online. A friend of mine who teaches at an area community college admits to being “dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century” as he learns online teaching skills. I, on the other hand, have already been teaching online for the University of Iowa. My one class each year occurs in the fall, so the question is whether we enroll enough students to move forward by August. The odds seem good, but so much changes so quickly. Again, who knows? I will have to wait for the answer.

I practice what I call “alleged retirement,” which involves a part-time mix of teaching, consulting, public speaking, and writing. At worst, my wife, Jean, a retired teacher, and I can live off our pensions and Social Security. We would have to retrench if I had no outside income, some provided by the university, but we could survive. That makes us feel far more secure than I know is the case for gig workers, restaurant and hospitality workers, travel and tourism workers, and many others affected by shutdowns and restrictions aimed at containing contagion.

Jean in front of Moos School, now closed because of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, precisely because she is a teacher, my wife works with Alex on reading and math, so that lost school days do not translate entirely into lost learning. But that has involved its own learning curve. In the first week, we both noticed Alex’s ability to refocus his time on television and video games. We were busy figuring things out in that week of canceled St. Patrick’s Day events and the Illinois primary, in which Jean was an election judge. But we discussed the situation, and Jean quickly began to insist on specific hours for learning exercises. I am grateful, and hope Alex is, for her knowledge of teaching methods to keep him fresh on everything from multiplication to vocabulary expansion. I can only imagine what single mothers with four children no longer attending school must be doing to cope with the situation. Many in Chicago or rural Illinois or throughout America do not have Internet, or lack personal computers, and lack daily connection with the schools that kept their children busy until just recently. We have a 16-year-old grandson who is a high school sophomore. He is staying with his father, who works long hours in a warehouse to pay the bills. While we provided Angel with a small laptop at Christmas, I have noticed that CPS is not updating information on Aspen, its grade- and assignment-tracking online program, so we have no idea what, if anything, he should be doing in his classes. I used to help him with courses like Spanish, but now I have not a clue what he should be doing. It is as if CPS just vanished into thin air. The only solution from a learning perspective may be to extend the school year in June—but only if we have coronavirus under control by then. Otherwise, you could take his lost opportunities and multiply them by the tens of thousands across the city.

Jean works with Alex on spelling.

Then there is the drumbeat of coronavirus news to which people can subject themselves if they sit in front of the television all day long. I choose not to do that because I find that one hour of news tells me 90 percent of what I need to know, barring some breaking announcement, and the rest is repetition. I read the Chicago Tribune thoroughly each morning. My wife knows counselors and others who suggest limiting exposure to such news to reduce anxiety. She has taken to using some online meditation one of them has provided, and it works for her. I don’t share the anxiety because I am a different sort of person. My professional experience in the urban planning field is heavy on planning for disasters and disaster recovery. I read the news with an analytical eye, looking for clues to what we, as a society or region or city, can do better, and often turning that into commentary on this blog, but also applying it in various planning tasks. Since I retired from the American Planning Association (APA), many of those tasks have been pro bono activities, such as serving on policy guide task forces and chairing APA’s Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. There is no shortage of opportunities, and I am grateful every day for the chance to contribute something through all those channels. It’s not all about earning money. Just helping makes our lives richer; how we do it depends on our skill set and interests.

But clearly, the precautions we are all observing can be frustrating and lead to adjustments. Travel, in most cases, is a non-starter for the near future. Little more than a month ago, I was in Rockport, Texas, assisting the APA Texas chapter with a Hurricane Harvey recovery event that allowed Texas planners to interact with planners from New York and New Jersey who could share perspectives from Sandy recovery. Two weeks later, after a quick recovery from a mild case of the flu, I was in Kearney, Nebraska, speaking at the annual conference of the Nebraska Planning & Zoning Association, sharing knowledge and ideas with colleagues there. The first hints of a truly serious public health catastrophe were becoming clear, and that became my last trip so far this year. By March 18, APA had canceled its annual National Planning Conference in Houston, an event that has typically drawn about 5,000 people. Not this year. As a division leader, I am involved in many of the leadership discussions about what comes next in taking many meetings and sessions and other events online, and moving forward. This is happening across the board to numerous organizations of widely varying sizes, with huge impacts on the hotel, airline, and convention industries not only nationwide but across the world. Caught in the maws of this economic and public health earthquake are millions of workers.

Yet, as obvious as this seems to me, with my laser focus on news that matters, I have learned that not everyone is fully aware of its consequences. Alex’s mother invited us to visit her apartment, and Jean declined because we have no way of judging how safe it is. Then, two other people visiting her apartment suggested coming to our house to visit Alex. Again, Jean said that would have to wait, but they seemed only marginally aware of developments like restaurant closures and social distancing. Meanwhile, my mother, whose resilience at an advanced age has been stunning, was released last week from a hospital in suburban Cleveland after a brief non-COVID illness to a rehab facility, where she is confined to her room for 14 days because she had been in a hospital. Visitors are not permitted, as they also will not be when she finally returns to her retirement home. In short, although I have two siblings who live near her, I could not visit even if I chose to drive there.

But that brings me to a closing note. I can stay home not only because I am “allegedly retired,” but because I am not a health care worker. Their adjustments have been the reverse of those of most of us, involving thorough engagement, exposure to life-threatening infection, and long hours of treating growing numbers of patients. And not just in urban areas. As of today, for example, Illinois has 4,596 reported cases, resulting in 65 deaths, spread across 40 of 102 counties. Small towns and rural areas will not be immune. I just heard New York Gov. Cuomo note that COVID-19 has spread to all but one county in his state.

Amidst all our concerns, the ducks in the lagoon at Humboldt Park are blissfully oblivious to human problems with the novel coronavirus.

We’re all making adjustments, most of us in our homes, but our public health workers, doctors, and nurses are making theirs at the front lines. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude and everything we can do to support them, especially those who have voluntarily returned to work from retirement, or serve in the National Guard, and didn’t have to take those risks. God bless them all, every last courageous one of them.

Jim Schwab