support

I got an email from a friend who was starting a MySpace group to try to make an informal network of people to help support each other through more serious physical/psychological illness.  A few days ago, the Icarus Project, a grassroots mental health support network, came up in a conversation, and a few months ago, I did a training with the Community Justice and Mediation Center which provides resources for people in Bloomington to navigate through conflicts that they can’t work out by themselves.  Lately, it seems like people around me have been struggling with their health in a lot of ways, and connected with this, conflict between each other.  It’s the thing that everybody’s talking about, but nobody’s talking about.  I think formal support structures (counseling, therapy, psychiatry, mediation) can be intimidating or may seem inaccessible or can be really disconnected with one’s experience, but at the same time they can create a space to start dealing in a way that one can’t create for themselves, or their peers.  Is there some kind of middle ground, between being on one’s own and these more formal institutions?  Also, is there a structured way to support folks who are dealing with things that sit in a grey area between mental health, relationship health, physical health, and more?

(Relatively) recent show video

I’ve been slacking on uploading video I’ve taken of recent shows.
John Anderson playing a show with Disaster on 2007.01.07


Hannah , Darren, and Nick’s new band playing a show at House Gone Wylie some time in January. I thought they were terrific. I’m really excited about all the new bands starting in Bloomington, and they’re one of my favorites.


The Grade Grubbers, from Buffalo, also played that show.


Bitter Homes and Gardens is another new Bloomington band. We played with them at Punk Night at Uncle Festers.


We played with Delay, Taigaa! and Ghost Mice in Columbus recently.


Here is a song fron Taigaa!’s set.

public comment on downtown parking

This is my comment for the city’s request for public comment about parking:

I was unable to attend the public meeting asking for comments but would like to submit my thoughts on the future of parking in Bloomington.Parking is an important issue in our community because, as we can see in the present, it has huge implications for how the downtown is used, how the downtown will grow, and whether Bloomington moves in a direction towards a more sustainable, ecologically conscious community, or in a more consumptive, less beautiful and liveable direction.

Since moving to Bloomington 3 years ago, I have already seen a number of parking garages and other parking facilities created. I am disappointed at the trend towards building these structures as it not only changes the visual character of the downtown, but it also encourages irresponsible automobile use in a city which has its small size and the easy pedestrian access that such smallness affords as one of its greatest assets. What is the point of making the downtown more accessible if the result is the more beautiful and historic buildings being overshadowed by new construction, or the enjoyment of walking around downtown Bloomington, dining at outdoor restaurants, or enjoying the many downtown public spaces is tarnished by increased automobile traffic. I think that new parking construction should be seen as a failure in the imagination of our community to seek solutions to an accessible downtown, especially when many alternative visions exist.

First, I think it is important to understand whether parking scarcity is a physical reality, or a perception. If it is largely an issue of public perception, then even if more spaces are created, the public may not actually feel an improvement in their downtown parking experience.

So, regardless of the final parking solutions developed by the city, education of people using our downtown must be a primary component.  I recently attended a workshop in downtown Bloomington at the city center building on 7th St. Parking was a concern for many of the attendents as nearly all of them drove, and most of them were somewhat unfamiliar with parking in the downtown area. All were able to find parking eventually, but the stressfulness and confusion of finding parking was mostly due to lack of knowledge as to the location of parking (garages, metered street parking, parking lots) being unclear and the regulations regarding parking (for instance, time limits, street sweeping days). Many of the perceptions about parking in downtown could be addressed through really simply measures like making less ambiguous signage designating no-parking zones and regulations on street parking.

Also, parking maps locating and describing downtown parking options, their restrictions, and pricing, could be erected in downtown Bloomington, especially at high-usage areas such as the Monroe County Public Library. Such signs would help users of the downtown more easily find parking options. This knowledge would easily be spread through word of mouth, making a fast and dramatic change in how people perceive the difficulty in finding parking downtown.

Growth in the city of Bloomington is happening, inevitable, and, as some would argue, desireable. This growth, however, demands solutions that are scaleable and sustainable with future growth. Considering car-centered solutions to downtown use puts the city in a dangerous cycle. As it becomes possible to have more cars in the downtown, it becomes more difficult, less pleasent, and less desireable for people to use non-automobile transportation in the downtown. More car traffic undeniably effects the experience that cyclists, walkers, and public-transportation riders have in their travel. If these transportation options become less desireable, or possible, these transportation users will have to resort to driving, thereby increasing any parking crunch that is felt by the city. The city must seriously pursue efforts which will reduce the number of cars in the downtown.

Bicycle parking is not a huge issue, but the accessibility of downtown streets to bicycles remains a challenge, and a deterrent for many who would otherwise consider it as an alternative to driving downtown.  More bicycle lanes and other efforts to make cyclists more visible, safe, and comfortable riding downtown would be one way to reduce the load on existing parking infrastructure. BT ridership is at an all-time high, but still restricted to certain segments of the population. Keeping parking space limited, but expanding bus services would be a good way of directing transportation users towards more sustainable transportation options. Forcing and enabling Bloomingtonians to challenge their perceptions and prejudices about public transporation is important for building a community-wide, diverse transportation infrastructure. Finally, the city could encourage car-sharing businesses to start operation in Bloomington. This would allow an increasing number of downtown residents to have access to cars, but in proportion to their actual usage needs. Alleviating parking issues has been one of the documented effects of car-sharing availability with one study showing that each shared car eliminated 14.9 privately owned cars! As downtown residence becomes more prevalent in Bloomington, this becomes a neccessary factor to address.

With so many options for improving access to downtown Bloomington available beyond new parking construction, it would be irresponsible for the city to choose to implement only construction-based solutions.

These solutions would be less costly, have environmental benefits or lessened environmental impact, and preserve the character of our downtown. Pursuing such options should be our transportation priority.

PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE “COLLEGE-DRIVEN METROPOLITAN AREA”

I was talking with Chiara last night about feeling like Bloomington was centered around changing to meet the needs of people like me (20-something, ostensibly middle-class, “creative class” types), and she was saying how she felt like any kind of city policy, even the support of social services had an underlying capitalist motivation (making the city more “livable” for a certain class of potential residents).  Strangely, I randomly came across this report at work, presented by city councilperson Steve Volan, titled PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE “COLLEGE-DRIVEN METROPOLITAN AREA” that seems to speak to many of these motivations.

From the report:

Bloomington hasn’t really been a “college town” for at least a
quarter-century. It’s time for us all to retire that term. The
town you may remember from your childhood has broken away; it’s
now a metropolitan area, an enormous university the core of its
economic engine, an area complete with downtown apartments, 2
million bus riders a year, and enough bitchin’ restaurants to take
the Fort Wayne Convention & Visitors’ Bureau in a fight. This is a
core city now, with suburbs, even exurbs. The mayor now holds
state of the community addresses jointly with the county. We can’t
go back.

While I agree that looking at Bloomington’s growth relative only to the University is a simplistic analysis, the idea of economic growth as an underlying goal gives me the shivers.  I guess I just think that there is more to the idea of a community than the economy, and I think that an economy-focused understanding of community does not place all members of the community on equal footing in terms of power and decision making.

Link

recentently in bloomington

Jeremy Hogan has been taking photos of recent happenings in Bloomington, like the Pretty Hot/Jerk Alert/Japanther show and the Sweet Hickory Anniversary Opening.

Link

Fernandez leaving Finelight

Chris Colvard pointed me to this HT article. The last sentence is pretty ominous for the future of development in Bloomington.

Prior to joining Finelight, he served as mayor of Bloomington from 1996 to 2003. During his two terms, he worked to bring millions of dollars in new investments downtown — most notably redevelopment of several apartment buildings.

First Capital Group’s president and founder Tim J. Mitchell and the other partners hope to take advantage of that experience.

“As a company, we plan to leverage his expertise in governmental relations as well as his vast knowledge of local, state and national economic incentives to expand First Capital nationally,” Mitchell said in a statement.

Link

Update:

I was just looking through old posts, and I came to this one.  I think another thing that I find really disturbing about this is just the total lack of accountability or responsibility by decision makers and the huge seperation between those who make decisions and those who are affected by them.  Fernandez can be instrumental in a pretty destructive project and then just leave that business and move on to other things, whereas the implications of the process that he initiated will have a long-lasting impact on life in Bloomington.

Incident considered a hate crime

Sara(h) was interviewing me for her thesis about Bloomington punk and asked a question about skinheads when I remembered this incident in the past year of Bloomington. I had written some lyrics for a new Defiance, Ohio song about it, but had never researched the details. I quickly found this information from the HT:

Police and city officials are still investigating the beating of a 25-year-old man Tuesday morning as a hate crime, even though the victim was not black, as had previously been reported.

The man was attacked after a group of white men with what appeared to be shaved heads yelled anti-black racial slurs at him.

A little after 4 a.m., the victim and his wife were leaving a downtown tavern when they began hearing racial slurs from across the street.

The group of white men, all dressed in dark-colored clothing, then crossed the street in the 500 block of East Kirkwood Avenue and began attacking the victim.

One of the assailants used a skateboard to strike the victim, causing several lacerations to the man’s head.

He was taken to the hospital after his wife ran to get their car. The victim told police he had suffered a concussion and two dislocated bones in his arms.

Police officials said there was no new information regarding the case on Wednesday, and encouraged anyone with knowledge of the attack to contact them.

City spokeswoman Maria Heslin said the incident would still be pursued as a hate crime, even though a police report made no indication of the victim’s race.

Link

new free healthcare clinic to open in bton

So this was off the radar for me and a bunch of people that I know, but it’s pretty exciting. The existing CHAPS clinic is being supplanted by a new free clinic operated by Volunteers in Medicine of Monroe County which is slated to open in April. According to Nathan Ringham, the clinic “will serve as a primary and urgent care clinic for uninsured residents of Monroe and Owen County, whose household incomes are less than 200% of the federal poverty level. Nearly all services will be free and provided almost entirely by volunteer medical practitioners. ”

There is an informational video that describes the clinic’s mission. I thought some of the imagery used in the video perpetuated the stereotype of the uninsured as unhealthy, unhappy, and dependent, which was unfortunate. The clinic sounds like a really good thing, however.

Link to VIM Monroe County website

Update:

I was surprised at what 200% of the federal poverty level means.  For 2006, if your income falls within the following, you would qualify to receive healthcare services from the new clinic:

Persons in Household Household Income
1 $19,600
2 $26,400
3 $33,200
4 $40,000
5 $46,800
6 $53,600
7 $60,400
8 $67,200