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Illinois Times, P.O. Box 5256, Springfield, IL 62705; fax 217-753-3958;
e-mail editor@illinoistimes.com.
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
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2007.
