Luna and I posing in snowy Printers Row Park., That’s me in the red coat, Luna in the black coat.

Every winter here in Chicago I find myself questioning why it is that when snow plows clear passage for cars, the snow mounds they leave on curb cuts and crosswalks go unshoveled. What about the pedestrians? This article in Forbes says it well:

Plowing equipment exists that can clear sidewalks at least as efficiently as streets are cleared by conventional plows. College campuses and companies with large and complex facilities use them. But very few cities take full responsibility for clearing sidewalks the way they all do for clearing streets. And by and large, either taxpayers don’t want to fund it, or politicians don’t want to risk asking. So while some winter weather cities and towns are better than others for winter accessibility, very few do a genuinely good job of it.

Temperatures are hitting record lows (and are staying there) in many parts of the country this week. With so many people working or attending school classes from home due to COVID-19 regulations this winter, many Americans are spending less time in their cars and more time walking or bicycling outside. In our neighborhood, the city has plowed bike paths, but walking on snowy icy sidewalks to take short breaks from work, run errands, help neighbors, or just get exercise has been difficult. For friends who use wheelchairs, it’s been impossible.

We appreciate city services plowing the streets, but if they don’t clear the crosswalks, curb cuts and sidewalks , how can pedestrians get safely across to the other side? In addition to people with certain disabilities, other parts of the U.S. population do not drive, including:

• Children
• Many people age 65 or better
• Those who cannot afford a personal vehicle
• A growing number of people who simply choose not to drive.

Sidewalks and crosswalks are necessary for all of us who don’t drive. More from that Forbes article:

If this was purely a weather problem, then disabled people would have no choice but to endure, or somehow find a way to move to warmer climates. But winter weather accessibility barriers are also a policy and practice problem. Winter weather would be substantially less of a problem if cities and towns made it a higher priority.

Maybe we pedestrians all need to band together?? In the meantime, hang in there — it’s all gotta melt sometime.

A longer version of this post appeared on the Easterseals National blog earlier this week.

He should be featured in Goop.

Super bowl over

Brady male Gwyneth Paltrow

True sport baseball soon

I am pleased to feature Gabriela Freese as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Her parents immigrated from Germany to South America; she and her twin sister were born and raised in Paraguay, and Gabriela immigrated to Chicago in 1959, where she met her husband, a German immigrant.

Gabriela received a degree in dentistry from Loyola University in Chicago and had a practice in suburban Oak Park. After retiring, she moved to Admiral at the Lake in Chicago and has been in the memoir class I lead there ever since the class started. We meet via Zoom now, and when I assigned “Free at Last” as a writing prompt to honor Martin Luther King’s birthday last month, she came back with this beautiful essay.

by Gabriela Freese

It was the first time in my life that I got to watch someone draw their last breath. it was more like a sigh. Nine days in a deep coma were the last chapter in my husband’s life. It got very quiet in the room, no more rattling anxious breaths. We sat in wonder as we watched peace enter the room…and stay. Yes, he was now free, free at last. It was such a relief to witness this torture end.

I had been next to my husband for the nine days he was in a coma, spoke to him, and tried to comfort him. It is said that hearing is the last thing to go, although a reaction was no longer possible.

This was in 2010, and the passing of time has softened many of the sharp corners of those days. I cannot tell you how relieved I was when his torture was over.

Yes, he was free at last.

But was I free also? The toll that years of caregiving takes on the carer is huge. We chalk it up to having the energy to do more and more like we did when we were “young,” creating a deep emotional exhaustion that some people will never overcome and others, like me, had the strength to focus on other aspects of life that were totally out of reach before.

Still, going to the Symphony alone? A trip? Actually, quite wonderful. Nonetheless, it took me four years to settle back into my own person — thanks to support groups, friends and especially, my children that had to deal with the ups and downs of their own lives.

Susan Lane, a friend I had met in a support group, lived here at the Admiral and invited me to those great Sunday brunches where everyone enjoys the food and has a good time. That made my decision to move to the Admiral quite easy.

None of us expected a pandemic, of course, but friends of mine who still live on their own sometimes marvel at my stories. “Oh, the Admiral plans this for you?” they ask. “They do that for you?”

Hmmm.

When thinking of my own freedom from household chores and all that, I’m grateful, of course. But am even more grateful for what lies behind me.

Live and Learn? When I find myself in need of assurance, I look to friends and family around me. What lies ahead of me goes on forever.

Once upon a time, this was cutting edge technology.

At my first job after college, in the early 1980s, I used a typewriter. I worked at a fledgling non-profit magazine, so we didn’t have the Cadillac of typewriters—the IBM Selectric. Instead, we had salvaged, second hand stuff.

A few years later, working at the University of Illinois Office of Publications, I got an IBM PC with two floppy drives. One ran WordPerfect, the other was for the document files. Graphic designers gave us strict word counts based on the space afforded on their page dummies. We’d send the floppy with the WordPerfect files to a service bureau, who would then follow instructions from our designers regarding type face, size, column width, and son.

The designers would get back shiny typeset paper that they’d then paste onto their pages. If it didn’t fit, we writers would be told to cut X number of words. If there were problems due to our error, we fixed the WordPerfect file and sent it back for new typeset copy.

It was painstaking and laborious but…it enforced a discipline. Do overs literally cost money. We always strove to get everything just right the first time.

Enter Aldus Pagemaker and desktop publishing. Designers could set their own type, and fiddle with page design.

But.

The discipline that old process enforced vanished. The knowledge that it was easy to change a word or a photo at any time tempted some to constantly fiddle. Each fiddle introduced the possibility of creating new problems.

It also created a monster of sorts—the ability to use fonts, colors, and graphics—without any actual design ability. Really bad fliers and signs started popping up everywhere. At one restaurant in Urbana there were so many different desktop published placards and so many different colors and fonts that it would kill my appetite.

All that gave way to the Internet, where no document or article seems to be set in stone, to be final, and where it’s commonplace to find typos and other errors on the websites of major publications and organizations.

Of course, it’s all kind of wondrous. I mean everyone can have a web site, anyone (hey, look at me) can post a blog. And anyone can do a video or a podcast.

But probably not everyone should. Now get off my lawn!

I am pleased to feature Howard Marks as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. After graduating from the University of Illinois-Chicago (and serving as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper) he worked at the Chicago Today and the Chicago Tribune and received a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Northwestern University. Semi-retired in Washington, D.C. now, Howard participates in our memoir-writing classes via Zoom. How fortunate to have him in class to share this first-person account on life in D.C. this past month.

by Howard S. Marks

This would have been my twelfth Presidential Inauguration since I moved to Washington, DC in 1975. My first was the swearing-in of former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter as the 39th President of the United States. President Carter’s inauguration would be the last one on the east front of the Capitol Building.

A checkpoint.

President Reagan changed all that four years later. Now new and re-elected Presidents are sworn-in on the west front of the Capitol facing towards the American frontier. The swearing-in of Illinois Senator Barack Obama in 2009 as the first president of color was the most exciting, with an estimated 1.8 million people attending.

We already knew the 2021 inauguration of former Vice President Joe Biden would be different. Washington, DC was racked by civil unrest during the summer, the nation was in the midst of pandemic, and President Trump wanted to overturn the results of the November election.

And then, with the inauguration just weeks away, the unthinkable occurred. The U.S. Capitol Building, the hallowed icon of American democracy, was attacked by a mob resulting in at least two deaths and numerous injuries.

Living midway between the U.S. Capitol and the White House, my wife Sandy and I found ourselves in the newly declared “Green Zone.” Set up by the U.S. Secret Service, the Green Zone was the outer layer of security – the “Red Zone” was two blocks closer to the National Mall.

An eight-foot-high temporary fence was erected, and hundreds of Jersey concrete barriers were set up to block all traffic. The National Mall became off-limits with no visitors allowed.

Life in the Green Zone was out of a stage set. Pedestrians and cyclists were allowed to roam freely, but streets were devoid of cars (drivers were required to prove they were on official business or were residents in order to enter). The usually bustling Metrorail station below our condo building was closed, as were all other downtown stations.

Pennsylvania National Guardsmen with M-4 rifles at the ready were there to staff nearby checkpoints. Twenty-five thousand guardsmen were here from all 50 states and three U.S. territories. Metropolitan Police were on 12-hour shifts. None were allowed to take leaves.

Bridges to the Virginia suburbs were closed, too, blocking access to airports. Downtown garages inside the red zone were closed.

Back in the Green Zone, our garage remained open, but only for monthly parkers like us. Most stores were closed. Restaurants were open for take-out, and food stores were open as well.

The day before the inauguration, reporters from French National Radio interviewed me while I was out walking the dog. I had to escort the late-night concierge for our building out of the green zone so he could get a shared-ride service home. On inauguration day I distributed Nature Bakery raspberry and blueberry fig bars to members of the Pennsylvania National Guard (young men from Central and Northwest Pennsylvania). They were very grateful.

The barriers came down two days after the inauguration, but the memory of a capital city and a nation under siege will endure forever in the annals of American history.