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SHE LIKES BIKES Lynn Miller and Bill Donels make an excellent point in citing the chicken-and-the-egg dilemma as they examine Springfield’s current pathways for bikes (or, rather, their lack of them) [“Letters,” Sept. 13]. I am one of those who was waiting on a decent bike path to use my bike as transportation, knowing how easy it is to get clipped off by a motorist not trained to watch out for a bike traveler, but, after talking to other bikers and deeply fed up with the gas prices, I now take my bike on the sidewalk through downtown and stick to low-traffic side streets. I save about $100 a month on gas, and, thanks to global warming, I think I will be able to do this well into November.
It is a great feeling, not pouring my money into oil companies that continue to make huge profits off people just struggling to pay for food and rent. Not only do I save money, I get my workout done for the day. Efficient, I get to fight global warming in a real way, and it’s fun. It would be really nice to have safe routes for bikes through downtown. The more bike paths, the more bikers. You can bet on it.
Anne Logue Springfield
SHOULDER, PLEASE While we watch another Wal-Mart form and imagine the infrastructure issues our community must address for this addition along the two-lane roads of Hazel Dell, we feel it is time to voice an important health-and-safety concern. We live near Lake Springfield and, along with many other bikers, runners, and walkers, attempt to get our exercise in these beautiful surroundings. However, the condition of the roads and lack of shoulders is presenting a huge safety risk for drivers and exercisers alike. There is an excellent 5.2-mile loop along West Lake Shore Drive and by Lincoln Land Community College and the University of Illinois at Springfield that is scenic, largely shaded, and a perfect distance. Unfortunately, on that course only a small portion at UIS has any shoulder at all. Along West Lake Shore Drive there are chunks of asphalt out of the edges and drop-offs that present a risk to the exercisers (and cars). Long Bay Drive, traveling over Lindsay Bridge to Henson Robinson Zoo’s edge, is so uneven and mangled, it is dangerous to all manner of travel, but, as you see when you drive the area, there are people that love this area, are not deterred, and take that risk.
While visitors and locals alike are aghast that our fine city doesn’t sport a biking/running/walking trail around the lake area, would it not be possible to at least give us a shoulder to exercise on? We also drive these roads, and we so appreciate the vast majority of drivers who appear to be alert to exercisers, but we can all tell stories of panicked swerves or jumps off the road to avoid a horrible accident. The mere display of signs that have been hit, tire tracks off the edges, and roadkill, including fawns, speaks to the lack of room to negotiate these roads. To the drivers along the lake, please know that we who are exercising sincerely appreciate your patience with our existence, and we realize that a couple of “share the road” signs do nothing to make this beautiful, curvy drive a safer route. Many of us are very busy, and this is our only means of getting our physical activity accomplished. We’d love to not have to pack up bikes and drive our children away to another community to ride when the lake area is so beautiful, and we would love to have a road shoulder befitting everyone visiting and living in this community to bike and exercise this beautiful local area and make driving the route safer as well. We already have two Wal-Marts. Can our community please address adding shoulders to our lake roads before an untold sum is spent on road expansion for an addition to our community, near the lake area, that has not been proven at all beneficial to our health?
Dr. Stephen and Becky Jennison
Springfield
WHAT’S IN YOUR HEART? Recently the pope was criticized for saying the Roman Catholic Church was the first church. The Catholic Church goes back 2,000 years ago, with St. Peter being the first pope. The Protestant church dates back 500 years and was started by Martin Luther, who was a priest and broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. If you are of another faith and sincerely believe in it, you have as much chance of going to heaven as anyone. It’s what’s in your heart that counts.
Danny Faulkner Springfield
PULL OUR TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ My sincerest thanks to U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., for his courageous call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the sovereign country of Iraq. Though a symbolic gesture, Warner, siding with a majority of Democratic senators, used his political power as a leader of the Republican Party to state the inevitable, that the U.S. has to pull our troops out of Iraq. Waiting for George W. Bush, the supreme commander, to do so is foolish, wicked, and nonrewarding. For years, some of the American people have taken up stands against the Bush administration and its war-hungry brokers. Though the people demand an end to the occupation of Iraq, their efforts have not made any difference to the criminals in power now inhabiting the White House, and Americans soldiers continue to die. Praise to Warner. May he hold his ground in favor of mercy. Jane Johnson Gilson
TOY RECALL POINTS TO BIG TROUBLE These days, few would fault parents for eyeing their children’s toys with some misgiving. The fact that lead paint is not only undetectable to the eye but has been found in just about every type of children’s product imaginable, from bib to toy train, has placed even the most laid-back parent in a perpetual state of panic. Although the likelihood of lead paint on these products continuing to poison children was indisputably lessened by the recall, it is an incomplete victory, and parents who remain suspicious are not overreacting. While the focus has been on the lax Chinese export and nonexistent American import regulations that allowed the toys into the country, the fact that they were made in the first place is the real problem. In fact, the media’s focus on the sensationalist “foreign” nature of the scare may prove disastrously distracting from the very real and very healthy threat of injuries and even deaths caused by children’s products. In fact, only the actual production of the toys occurred in China. The design, marketing, and distribution were American. Furthermore, toys were sold under established American brand names. Most consumers don’t realize that few children’s products in America besides car seats must meet federal standards of safety. While there is a federal requirement that children’s products not contain lead paint, there is no certification process to assure the public that that standard or others have been met. The publicity generated by the scale of the recent recalls certainly gives children’s product safety a little more of the attention it needs. However, the focus on Chinese production as the source of the problem is a short-term solution and a long-term disaster. Children’s products recalled for hazards are on the rise overall; those recalled for risk of fire and burn-related injuries alone nearly doubled in 2002-2007 in comparison with the preceding decade. Even more alarming is that the number of injuries caused by these products more than tripled. The present lead-paint crisis only underlines how a threat as widespread as children’s product hazards can be dealt with neither one hazard at a time nor without extensive collaboration. Although the increasing globalization of the market means that international regulation is a must, the groundwork for this collaboration must be laid at home first.
The seriously beleaguered U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has essentially been set adrift by the current administration and needs not only increased Congressional support but also improve communication with manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. With children’s safety at stake, pointing our fingers at a culprit far from our borders may be reassuring but is inevitably ineffective. Self-improvement is the necessary first step toward most effectively protecting our children.
Emma Rosenberg
Program Associate
Kids in Danger Chicago
SHE LIKES BIKES Lynn Miller and Bill Donels make an excellent point in citing the chicken-and-the-egg dilemma as they examine Springfield’s current pathways for bikes (or, rather, their lack of them) [“Letters,” Sept. 13]. I am one of those who was waiting on a decent bike path to use my bike as transportation, knowing how easy it is to get clipped off by a motorist not trained to watch out for a bike traveler, but, after talking to other bikers and deeply fed up with the gas prices, I now take my bike on the sidewalk through downtown and stick to low-traffic side streets. I save about $100 a month on gas, and, thanks to global warming, I think I will be able to do this well into November.
It is a great feeling, not pouring my money into oil companies that continue to make huge profits off people just struggling to pay for food and rent. Not only do I save money, I get my workout done for the day. Efficient, I get to fight global warming in a real way, and it’s fun. It would be really nice to have safe routes for bikes through downtown. The more bike paths, the more bikers. You can bet on it.
Anne Logue Springfield
SHOULDER, PLEASE While we watch another Wal-Mart form and imagine the infrastructure issues our community must address for this addition along the two-lane roads of Hazel Dell, we feel it is time to voice an important health-and-safety concern. We live near Lake Springfield and, along with many other bikers, runners, and walkers, attempt to get our exercise in these beautiful surroundings. However, the condition of the roads and lack of shoulders is presenting a huge safety risk for drivers and exercisers alike. There is an excellent 5.2-mile loop along West Lake Shore Drive and by Lincoln Land Community College and the University of Illinois at Springfield that is scenic, largely shaded, and a perfect distance. Unfortunately, on that course only a small portion at UIS has any shoulder at all. Along West Lake Shore Drive there are chunks of asphalt out of the edges and drop-offs that present a risk to the exercisers (and cars). Long Bay Drive, traveling over Lindsay Bridge to Henson Robinson Zoo’s edge, is so uneven and mangled, it is dangerous to all manner of travel, but, as you see when you drive the area, there are people that love this area, are not deterred, and take that risk.
While visitors and locals alike are aghast that our fine city doesn’t sport a biking/running/walking trail around the lake area, would it not be possible to at least give us a shoulder to exercise on? We also drive these roads, and we so appreciate the vast majority of drivers who appear to be alert to exercisers, but we can all tell stories of panicked swerves or jumps off the road to avoid a horrible accident. The mere display of signs that have been hit, tire tracks off the edges, and roadkill, including fawns, speaks to the lack of room to negotiate these roads. To the drivers along the lake, please know that we who are exercising sincerely appreciate your patience with our existence, and we realize that a couple of “share the road” signs do nothing to make this beautiful, curvy drive a safer route. Many of us are very busy, and this is our only means of getting our physical activity accomplished. We’d love to not have to pack up bikes and drive our children away to another community to ride when the lake area is so beautiful, and we would love to have a road shoulder befitting everyone visiting and living in this community to bike and exercise this beautiful local area and make driving the route safer as well. We already have two Wal-Marts. Can our community please address adding shoulders to our lake roads before an untold sum is spent on road expansion for an addition to our community, near the lake area, that has not been proven at all beneficial to our health?
Dr. Stephen and Becky Jennison
Springfield
WHAT’S IN YOUR HEART? Recently the pope was criticized for saying the Roman Catholic Church was the first church. The Catholic Church goes back 2,000 years ago, with St. Peter being the first pope. The Protestant church dates back 500 years and was started by Martin Luther, who was a priest and broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. If you are of another faith and sincerely believe in it, you have as much chance of going to heaven as anyone. It’s what’s in your heart that counts.
Danny Faulkner Springfield
PULL OUR TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ My sincerest thanks to U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., for his courageous call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the sovereign country of Iraq. Though a symbolic gesture, Warner, siding with a majority of Democratic senators, used his political power as a leader of the Republican Party to state the inevitable, that the U.S. has to pull our troops out of Iraq. Waiting for George W. Bush, the supreme commander, to do so is foolish, wicked, and nonrewarding. For years, some of the American people have taken up stands against the Bush administration and its war-hungry brokers. Though the people demand an end to the occupation of Iraq, their efforts have not made any difference to the criminals in power now inhabiting the White House, and Americans soldiers continue to die. Praise to Warner. May he hold his ground in favor of mercy. Jane Johnson Gilson
TOY RECALL POINTS TO BIG TROUBLE These days, few would fault parents for eyeing their children’s toys with some misgiving. The fact that lead paint is not only undetectable to the eye but has been found in just about every type of children’s product imaginable, from bib to toy train, has placed even the most laid-back parent in a perpetual state of panic. Although the likelihood of lead paint on these products continuing to poison children was indisputably lessened by the recall, it is an incomplete victory, and parents who remain suspicious are not overreacting. While the focus has been on the lax Chinese export and nonexistent American import regulations that allowed the toys into the country, the fact that they were made in the first place is the real problem. In fact, the media’s focus on the sensationalist “foreign” nature of the scare may prove disastrously distracting from the very real and very healthy threat of injuries and even deaths caused by children’s products. In fact, only the actual production of the toys occurred in China. The design, marketing, and distribution were American. Furthermore, toys were sold under established American brand names. Most consumers don’t realize that few children’s products in America besides car seats must meet federal standards of safety. While there is a federal requirement that children’s products not contain lead paint, there is no certification process to assure the public that that standard or others have been met. The publicity generated by the scale of the recent recalls certainly gives children’s product safety a little more of the attention it needs. However, the focus on Chinese production as the source of the problem is a short-term solution and a long-term disaster. Children’s products recalled for hazards are on the rise overall; those recalled for risk of fire and burn-related injuries alone nearly doubled in 2002-2007 in comparison with the preceding decade. Even more alarming is that the number of injuries caused by these products more than tripled. The present lead-paint crisis only underlines how a threat as widespread as children’s product hazards can be dealt with neither one hazard at a time nor without extensive collaboration. Although the increasing globalization of the market means that international regulation is a must, the groundwork for this collaboration must be laid at home first.
The seriously beleaguered U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has essentially been set adrift by the current administration and needs not only increased Congressional support but also improve communication with manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. With children’s safety at stake, pointing our fingers at a culprit far from our borders may be reassuring but is inevitably ineffective. Self-improvement is the necessary first step toward most effectively protecting our children.
Emma Rosenberg
Program Associate
Kids in Danger Chicago
