RECONSIDER CITY CROSSWALKS
I read with interest James Krohe Jr.’s “Why did the pedestrian not cross the road” in Illinois Times (Dec. 4). The state has marked and posted at least three crosswalks across multi-lane streets without stop signs or traffic signals, which is not considered safe practice.
The lanes across Madison Avenue at Rutledge Street and Kline Street are particularly dangerous because of the speed and volume of traffic on Madison. There is a mid-block crossing marking and signing pattern in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices which stops traffic well in advance of the crosswalk but that would still not be appropriate on Madison. A better solution might be to put the traffic signal at Madison and Logan Avenue on recall during the AM and PM heavy pedestrian crossing times.
The other crosswalk marked by the state across a multi-lane street is at Walnut and Reynolds. Here the alternate marking and signing is not appropriate because it is too close to the Walnut/Mason streets traffic signals.
The city has also marked and signed a crosswalk with flashing yellow lights across MacArthur Boulevard on the south side of the south pavement of Williams Boulevard. I have yet to see a pedestrian in that crosswalk and I travel that portion of MacArthur at least twice a day. The crossings I have noted were at the north pavement of Williams Boulevard. A better option may have been to install advance pedestrian crossing signs with the flashing lights north and south of Williams Boulevard rather than direct attention to a crosswalk that appears to get little or no use.
Tyre W. Rees
Springfield
CHORAL COMPETITION
Esther Duncan was the ilk of three of the best choir directors in District 186, the other two being Georgia Gehr (later Luttrell) of Feitshans High and Dan Sprecklemeyer of Springfield High. (Julianne Glatz, “Messiah,” Nov. 27.) There was almost sports-like competition between the choirs.
One year in the early ’60s at the All-City Music Festival, the Lanphier choir was being extremely cold to those of us at Feitshans. Word was that when Miss Duncan had been having trouble getting her choir through a rehearsal point a few days before, she slammed her hand on the piano and said, “Miss Gehr wouldn’t allow that in her choir!”
Victoria Nichols Johnson
Springfield
LESS HATRED, MORE EMPHATHY
I was told to send this in. It’s been on my mind since I had lunch with a friend and Ferguson came up – and so now I have two friends who are black who have related to me times when they were afraid for good reason. Because profiling does occur, that split-second decision relies on instinct, and if you think someone is less than you, you will treat their life as less.
Weirdly, these two friends expressed feelings of being targeted even in casual settings like restaurants or church… how people looked at them, being followed from a restaurant by a police officer to the interstate and being pulled over for absolutely no reason at all. These are professional, intelligent, very together people.
I never really got it until my friend was driving in town one day; I was a passenger. We were coming out of a bank when a man across the way driving a truck, clearly in his 70s, at least, gave us this smile of pure hatred. I didn’t say anything to her because I had hoped she did not see it. But minutes after, she said, “I wonder what his problem was.”
Can you imagine living everyday facing that? I can’t. Women face fear of men walking/biking/driving down the street alone at night in town, so we have a little bit of that experience. Gay people know some of it when they must rephrase all their shared experiences based on who they are talking to and avoid holding hands in public. But simply being out and about anywhere, all the time? That is hard.
What we don’t need is more hatred or accusation. We need awareness and empathy and a change of training of how police respond.
Anne Logue
Springfield
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2014.
