Conscious Choice: Backyard Endangered Species Make Calendar Pin Ups

January 2005 | Choice News

Backyard Endangered Species Make Calendar Pin Ups

“If mankind were to disappear, the world would return to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” — Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson

Carol Freeman, a nature photographer, graphic designer and preservationist, agrees. The Glenview resident hopes to share Wilson’s message through a 2005 calendar that features endangered plant and animal species from Illinois, many in the Chicago area.

“We cannot afford to lose even one plant or animal species,” said Freeman, who included in her calendar a close-up shot of the Somme Prairie Grove jumping spider.

“I don’t know if people realize how many species, right here in our own backyards, are threatened and endangered,” Freeman said.

Illinois is home to more than 500 threatened or endangered species of plants and animals, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

The In Beauty I Walk 2005 calendar ($17.95) marks the seventh year Freeman has produced a nature calendar highlighting some of the state’s few remaining prairies, wetlands and forests and the creatures that once thrived there.

The experience has transformed her into an avid preservationist, and caught the attention of groups such as The Nature Conservancy and the Chicago Botanic Garden, which are among those who have commissioned her work.

Freeman hopes to funnel her calendar proceeds and profits into a non-profit project to create a computer database that will include images of threatened species in Illinois.To purchase a calendar, visit www.carolfreemanphotography.com, or call 847-404-8508. To view Freeman’s photos for the Chicago Botanic Garden, visit: www.eplants.org. — Erin Meyer

Managing Pain in Pets

AS UNBELIEVABLE as it is to anyone with a companion animal, it took a study for some other people to understand that animals feel pain. In early 2003, researchers at the Royal Society in England determined that even rainbow trout feel pain.

Pain management for our companion animals has not always received top priority among veterinarians, either. In fact, many people didn’t acknowledge that animals felt pain until the publication of Australian philosopher Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation (1975). Apparently one of the issues is that they can’t tell us they’re in pain in our language. A few of the parameters that scientists look to determine pain in animals are activity, appearance, temperament, vocalization, feeding behavior, physiological changes, and reactions to the incision site (if it is swelling, or if the animal is chewing, for instance.)

In 1999, Brakke Consulting, a Dallas-based animal health and nutrition consulting firm, surveyed 146 veterinarians in the United States and discovered that fewer than 50 percent of practitioners considered pain management following routine elective procedures such as spays and castrations. Not all veterinary schools address pain management, and only a few vets have received formal training in this area, said Dr. Charles Short, D.V.M., professor emeritus of anesthesiology and pain management at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. But the situation is finally improving.

Management of Animal Pain, Course Syllabus on the Basic Concepts and Clinical Applications is now in its third edition. It was edited by Short and prepared by a task force of U.S. and Canadian colleges, and funded by Pfizer Animal Health. Currently, all veterinary colleges in the U.S. and Canada have copies of this syllabus, and Short said he believes all are using it, at least in part. He has lectured on pain management in more than 30 countries and has received a welcome response. “The movement since 1990 is encouraging and during the last four years, remarkable,” Short said.

Also in early 2004, the Companion Animal Pain Management Consortium, supported by Pfizer Animal Health, produced a comprehensive piece, The Essential Tools for Pain Management. This toolkit consists of information about signs and symptoms, effective drugs, surgical protocols and veterinary staff strategies. According to J. Michael McFarland, D.V.M., of Pfizer Animal Health, U.S. Veterinary Operations, this is the first such toolkit produced.

One veterinarian who has long studied pain management in animals is Dr. William Tranquilli, D.V.M., professor of clinical medicine at the University of Illinois, College of Veterinarian Medicine, and director of the school’s Veterinary Interdisciplinary Pain Service. While Tranquilli believes his profession is dealing with the issue much more comprehensively than it has in the past, it still has a ways to go. “I’m hoping, in the long run, the veterinarian community can get this right. We’re making inroads with lab animals — we’ve made huge steps there, but maybe we can become better in treating personal pets in this regard.” — Deborah Straw

Blue Bags Help You Go Green

FOR THOSE in Chicago’s Whole Foods Markets, the question is now paper, plastic or Blue Bag? Recently, local grocers teamed up with Chicago’s Blue Bag recycling program to offer environmentally-friendly bagging alternatives to consumers.

“We feel it’s important to our customers to at least offer the Blue Bags to give them the option to recycle,” said Jeff Turnas, the Midwest’s regional vice president for Whole Foods Market.

The city’s recycling program annually processes nearly 80,000 tons of material, including plastics and metals, more than eight times as much as it did when it began in 1995, according to Sadhu Johnston, assistant to Mayor Richard M. Daley for green initiatives.

“The program is currently at about 26 percent recycling rate for the city, for the households that we collect, and we really want to boost that number,” Johnston said. “One of the biggest complaints that we’ve heard over the years is that it can be hard to find Blue Bags ... so, with [grocery stores], we figured, you’re going to get a bag, and half the time that bag is going to go into the garbage, so let’s find a way to use it for a good cause.

To recycle grocery store Blue Bags, Johnston recommends double bagging, securing, and depositing them in your waste bin separate from the standard garbage. They will be separated for recycling at one of several sorting centers.

Additionally, the city is also giving away a year’s supply of Blue Bags to folks who bring their holiday tree to one of the city’s 22 tree-recycling spots from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Jan. 8.

For locations, maps and more information on the city’s tree recycling, visit: www.cityofchicago.org, click on ‘Recycle My Christmas Tree,’ or call 311. — Chris Magnus

Developer Envisions New Holistic Center

THE CONGRESS Theater on Milwaukee Avenue in the Bucktown neighborhood isn’t much to look at from the outside, but step into the lobby and you find a 40-foot domed ceiling and gigantic red-carpeted stairways that can take you back in time. Originally opened in 1926, the Congress Theater building included stores and apartments as well as the theater itself. It was a main stop on the premier vaudeville circuit of the time, and played host to special events like “bathing beauty” contests and, of course, movies. Rumors of The Three Stooges performing there could not be verified.

And while the theater survived the 20th century intact, its fate was not always assured. Enter Preservation Chicago, a group devoted to preserving the architectural gems that make Chicago the great city that it is. By 2002, the Congress Theater, at 2135 N. Milwaukee Ave., had been granted landmark status, and the only question remaining was what to do with it. The answer came in the form of real estate developer Eddie Carranza.

“Look at this place,” he said. “Can you believe it? Can you imagine what it must have been like? We want to bring it back to that.”

Carranza, who founded Congress Court, LLC to purchase the theater, saw more than just a theater. With the building’s 40-some apartments and storefronts, Carranza saw an opportunity to realize a dream of his own, to open an alternative health and wellness center in his neighborhood.

“I’m a huge believer in alternative medicine,” Carranza said. “I try to follow it as best as I can.” His vision includes office space for acupuncturists; massage therapists, nutritionists, and other alternative health care practitioners. And in a way, the Congress Theater is perfect for such a concept. The near North West side neighborhood in which the Congress is located is fast becoming one of Chicago’s “hot” neighborhoods.

But the Congress itself is in need of some care.

The theater had fallen into such extreme disrepair that by the 1980’s, with squatters calling it home and rain falling through holes in the ceiling, for a while it seemed that the Congress would go the way of the silent films that once filled its plush seats to capacity.

“This place also needs wellness,” said Carranza, “This place needs to be revived. It needs to be well again, and restoring the building equals restoring the self.”

Preservation Chicago president Jonathan Fine agreed. “There are people here who used to come here in the ’60s to watch movies,” he said. “Every single person appreciates the architecture in this building.” — Geoffrey Wallin

Erecting Roadblocks to Investing in ‘Destruction’

THE CHASE is on. Rainforest Action Network (RAN), fresh from recent campaigns such as rerouting the unnecessary destruction of trees at Boise Cascade and convincing Citigroup to switch to recycled paper, is at it again.

This time RAN is targeting JP-Morgan Chase, the largest U.S.-based bank still operating without a comprehensive environmental policy.

RAN created an outdoor ad campaign that launched in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. in November. It is a first response to what is considered JPMorgan Chase backtracking on its commitment to provide a policy to the environmental community by early October.

In an April 21, 2004 letter to Michael Brune, executive director of RAN, William B. Harrison, Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, committed “to build a broad policy framework by the beginning of October, which will include targets and timelines on initiatives.” An 11th hour letter dated Sept. 30 from David A. Coulter, vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase, disappointed the environmental community by postponing the release of its planned policy until April 2005 at the earliest.

Beneath a bold red headline reading “Stop IMDs,” or investments of mass destruction, the new ad depicts a larger-than-life version of Chase’s logo framing the seldom-seen environmental devastation caused by destructive investments. The ad calls on customers to “go to DirtyMoney.org and tell CEO Bill Harrison to stop profiting from environmental destruction.” — Bob Condor

Nature and the City

Utne magazine’s founder Eric Utne, one of the most innovative figures in publishing, helped build this digest of visionary ideas and trends from a modest 16-page original into a successful bi-monthly with a paid circulation of nearly a quarter million. In 1999, after 15 years at the helm, Utne wanted a life change. He became a teacher at the City of Lakes Waldorf School in Minneapolis. And there, while introducing Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography to inner-city eighth-graders, Utne found inspiration in Poor Richard’s Almanack, Franklin’s annual compendium of folk wisdom, planting tables, wit, and weather predictions. Next to the Bible, it was colonial America’s most widely read book. And that 18th century bestseller has inspired Utne’s newest publishing venture, a 21st century update he calls, Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac: Celebrating Nature and Her Rhythms in the City.

Urban Almanac? Is Utne indulging some metro-retro game of nostalgia here? Ninety percent of Franklin’s readers and fellow colonials were farmers, but today fewer than three percent of Americans work on farms and more than half of humanity lives in cities, where nature is buried under asphalt and our consciousness of it alienated in concrete. Utne admits that like most of his fellow urbanites, he is clueless about nature; or, at least, he was, until a few years ago when he went on a vision quest in California’s Inyo Mountains, fasting for four days and wandering “high above Death Valley with nothing but water.” There, he “watched the constellations come alive and their mythic figures move gracefully across the starry heavens.” He conversed with an ancient bristlecone pine, a desert jaybird, and, on his final night, “experienced the full moon...as a living being.” A month later, he found himself on a New York City sidewalk, where a gentle breeze caused him to look up and catch a glimpse of the full moon rising above the Chrysler building. Standing in midtown Manhattan, he realized “that we are always in nature, wherever we are.”

An image of that lunar epiphany adorns the cover of Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac, a book that aims to re-establish connections between cities and nature. Utne does so with delightful essays on urban gardening, developing a weather eye, the alchemy of time, and the art and science of phenology — the study of recurring natural phenomena (included datable charts for recording the cyclical flights of geese and ducks, the return of hurricane season, when leaves turn, and finches flock to feeders).

The almanac’s Calendar is replete with recipes (try the rhubarb custard and maple-glazed baked apples), urban life strategies (”Surviving the Office Picnic”), a distilled version of Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul, seasonal poems and songs, and, yes, an ephemeris. The weeks go by with disquisitions on shooting stars, community gardens, the language of flowers, and how to get the best seats with bleecher tickets. It has all the requisite lists (current dietary theories, prison statistics, federal spending, literary taunts, etc.); and inspiring profiles of urban treasures like Watts’ peacemaker Aqeela Sherrills and Berkeley’s Alice Waters. Utne has even got a new mantra for urban naturalists: Look Up, Look Out, and Look In. So look no further for a stocking stuffer. If you can’t find this self-published wonder at Whole Foods, go to www.cosmosurbanalmanac.com — Carl Nagin

Remembering Charles

WHILE VOLUNTEERING for Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign, Charles Helzer picked up the Februrary 2004 issue of Conscious Choice and read the cover story about then-Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama’s U.S. senatorial ambitions. Charles immediately called to volunteer in the magazine’s office.

“Charles was an angel,” said Richard McGinnis, Conscious Choice business manager. “I have no idea of what we’re going to do without him.”

Charles Carnes Helzer died Dec. 13, 2004, after going into cardiac arrest at the Hyde Park residence he shared with his mother. He was 45.

Charles handled all of the magazine’s archiving and helped redesign the distribution system, eventually going on the part-time payroll.

“Charles was an activist,” said his brother, Philip Hart Helzer. “His biggest desire was to work for social change.”

A musician, voracious reader and jazz lover, Charles was born in St. Louis. He moved to Madison, Wis., and then Chicago, at age 11. He attended the University of Chicago Lab School, Kenwood High School and the Chicago High School for Metropolitan Studies. In high school he made $27 a week as an organizer for United Farm Workers and even convinced his parents to join a picket line on Lake Shore Drive for the United Farm Workers.

He attended Antioch College in Ohio, but graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. where he had moved because it was Emily Dickinson’s hometown and he thought it would be progressive. He later convinced his brother, a cellist, to move to Massachusetts with his wife and two children. After graduating college Charles worked a variety of jobs including more than nine years at the Mifflin Street Co-op in Madison, Wis.

At the age of 35, Charles enrolled in Hamline Law School in St. Paul, Minneapolis, but in his final year of study decided against becoming a lawyer because he felt the field was more focused on corporations, his brother said.

Besides his brother Philip and his family, Charles is survived by his mother, Lela Jeanne Helzer; grandmother, Viola Helzer; and his Conscious Choice family, where he will be dearly missed. Services will be at 2:30 p.m., Jan. 8, First Unitarian Church, 5650 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago. — Conscious Choice Staff

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