New Urbanism: I will continue to beat this drum

This picture reminds one of Roseland, Cassopolis Street (Elkhart), McKinley and parts of Grape Road and countless other bland, souless commercial strips in countless other bland, souless American cities. Isn't it lovely? The sad thing is that people get so used to it that they don't even realize how ugly it is until you draw their attention to it. These sorts of developments promote isolation from neighbors. There is NO compelling reason for designing cities this way. They are designed this way through laziness or ignorance.

Fortunately, more and more municipalities are realizing that it is possible to organize development in orderly, people friendly ways.

Left: New commercial developments that respect both cars and pedestrians. Some parking can be found on the street. Extra parking is available in the rear.

Here's a drawing of a declining mall which is being transformed into a vibrant pedestrian friendly neighborhood.

This building is in Chicago at the corner of Lincoln and Altgeld I believe. Its a new building. But it couldn't be built in many American cities because towns like Elkhart have adopted suburban style setback and height allowances for new construction. If old buildings are torn down, they are replaced with little chunks of suburbia. Think of the intersection of Main Street and Jackson Blvd in Elkhart. The surban styled bank (not the old post office) and the one story white brick jewelry store are the results of suburban buildings being plopped down arbitrarily in urban contexts. If this is done often enough, it kills downtown areas and they become nothing more than additional sprawl, but probably not as convenient as the strip malls.

Now that you have read this, you might be looking for a reason for hope. If so, click on the headline and "take the tour" of New Urbanism. It will show you possibilities for how cities may be designed. This movement is gaining momentum all over the place. I hope more of it comes to South Bend soon.

BK's Cancer Corner: Here's what's been going on

Well, this is a little graphic, but here's an update about all that has transpired over the past week. From Monday April 24 to Friday April 28, I was living at Mom and Dad's house to avoid infection while I was neutropenic. Pictured is me with my medical paraphernalia preparing for my 45 minute daily visit from my home care nurse.

On Friday evening, I ended up in the emergency room with a 103 degree fever. Though the situation became serious, Mary (who took me to the hospital from Mom and Dad's house) and I thought it would be good to take some pictures. Because I was neutropenic, the doctors were extremely concerned - to the point where we summoned RevKev at 1:00 a.m. to anoint me. In fact, Mary and I agreed that we had never seen a doctor and a nurse act so concerned. The frustrating thing was that our brand new digital thermometer from the drug store had been wrong by two degrees. We tested it against the E.R. thermometer and realized I should have gone to the E.R. much sooner. Moral of the story: buy expensive thermometers only.

On Saturday I was transferred to the University of Chicago Hospital where they worked hard to make me well enough to harvest my stem cells on Monday morning. As seen at left, all started well. I was happy and ready to go. By the way, check out the kind of equipment they used. The machine pictured would suck out my blood, spin it in a centrifuge to separate the stem cells and then put it back into my body.

Everything was going smoothly until I began to experience some pain from the growth factor drugs I had been given. It was the most severe prolonged pain I have ever experienced, lasting about six to seven hours. They gave me some morphine that did not help at all. Then I got another stronger drug that barely made a dent in it. That drug did, however, make me nauseous, dizzy and sick to my stomach. Don't I look happy!

Mercifully, on Tuesday, my doctor granted my appeal to skip the growth factor drugs. I made my case and he made his judgment based on the blood count numbers, but my motivation was solely to avoid that kind of pain again.

Tuesday's collection went much better. Smiles all around. My nurse-technician is a South Bend native and was happy to see me doing better on Tuesday. Hopefully, I'll be released on Wednesday and will be given about twelve days to recover before returning to U of C Hospital for the culmination of this whole process. More later...

Happy Birthday Scott Swick!

Random thoughts from a hospital bed...

Is there such a thing as a half nother?

How on earth has Starbucks convinced the American public that a cup of their coffee is worth $4.00? Seriously, ten years ago if you had told me that people would be regularly shelling out $4 for a cup of coffee every day, I would have told you that you were delusional.

And now we routinely pay for water. Evian water was one of the first brands in the bottled water business. To see what the company thought of the people in its target market, read the word Evian backwards.

What is next?

This is not a sunshine post: beware!

Here is an excerpt of a column run two years ago in the New York Times. Its a good juxtaposition to the life of Mom and Cheryl on the day after their birthdays. How does anyone become so hopelessly self-absorbed? No comments on this one. Just something to consider...

When One Is Enough
By AMY RICHARDS as told to AMY BARRETT

"I found out I was having triplets when I went to my obstetrician. The doctor had just finished telling me I was going to have a low-risk pregnancy. She turned on the sonogram machine. There was a long pause, then she said, ''Are you sure you didn't take fertility drugs?'' I said, ''I'm positive.'' Peter and I were very shocked when she said there were three. ''You know, this changes everything,'' she said. ''You'll have to see a specialist.''

My immediate response was, I cannot have triplets. I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, Do I want to?

I looked at Peter and asked the doctor: ''Is it possible to get rid of one of them? Or two of them?'' The obstetrician wasn't an expert in selective reduction, but she knew that with a shot of potassium chloride you could eliminate one or more.

Having felt physically fine up to this point, I got on the subway afterward, and all of a sudden, I felt ill. I didn't want to eat anything. What I was going through seemed like a very unnatural experience. On the subway, Peter asked, ''Shouldn't we consider having triplets?'' And I had this adverse reaction: ''This is why they say it's the woman's choice, because you think I could just carry triplets. That's easy for you to say, but I'd have to give up my life.'' Not only would I have to be on bed rest at 20 weeks, I wouldn't be able to fly after 15. I was already at eight weeks. When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It's not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I'm going to have to move to Staten Island. I'll never leave my house because I'll have to care for these children. I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise. Even in my moments of thinking about having three, I don't think that deep down I was ever considering it.

The specialist called me back at 10 p.m.... He told me that he does a detailed sonogram before doing a selective reduction to see if one fetus appears to be struggling. The procedure involves a shot of potassium chloride to the heart of the fetus. There are a lot more complications when a woman carries multiples. And so, from the doctor's perspective, it's a matter of trying to save the woman this trauma. After I talked to the specialist, I told Peter, ''That's what I'm going to do.'' He replied, ''What we're going to do.'' He respected what I was going through, but at a certain point, he felt that this was a decision we were making. I agreed.

When we saw the specialist, we found out that I was carrying identical twins and a stand alone. My doctors thought the stand alone was three days older. There was something psychologically comforting about that, since I wanted to have just one. Before the procedure, I was focused on relaxing. But Peter was staring at the sonogram screen thinking: Oh, my gosh, there are three heartbeats. I can't believe we're about to make two disappear. The doctor came in, and then Peter was asked to leave. I said, ''Can Peter stay?'' The doctor said no. I know Peter was offended by that."

Published July 18, 2004. You can read the full column on-line at the website linked to the headline. It is free, but requires registration. Be sure to read the editor's note at the end.

Happy Birthday Mom and Cheryl

Forever bonded by a common birthday. Hope you have a great day.

Grandma Kloska would be happy

As a young man growing up, I always had to stretch a bit to find things to talk about with Grandma and Grandpa Kloska. There was the usual generation gap coupled with the fact that they had many grandchildren. So I latched on to Grandma's love for the Detroit Tigers since they were also my favorite team. I knew that in the absence of anything else to talk about, I could always bring up the Tigers. In the 1980s, this was wonderful, because the Tigers were dominant. But for the past fifteen years or so the Tigers have been one of the worst teams in baseball. Now, all that is changing.

Last night the Tigers defeated the Twins 18-1. They are off to a great start at 15-9. We have good offense, adequate defense, and good pitching. Could this year be the year?

Happy 70th Uncle Norb Kloska!

Mom and Dad enjoyed your big surprise party Friday night. Here is a picture courtesy of Aunt Marie via Patti.
Here they are, the children of Frank and Catherine Kloska of Grand Rapids, Michigan: Ron, Norb, Marie (Wisinski), Frank, and Irv.

BK's Cancer Corner: Please excuse all the updates

Together, Margy and have a very large number of people to keep informed of my condition. Posting basic information here reduces Margy's need to repeat herself over and over again and make and field calls etc. So although I realize everyone doesn't need to know all the details, I'm going to make some of them available for those who want them.

In the middle of the night last night, we found out from the people at St. Joe Med Center that my blood culture turned out positive for some sort of bacterial infection. The key word I heard was "gram positive" which means its much easier to contain than "gram negative." I can't remember much else since it was like three in the morning and I had been sleeping. So I'm now on almost constant antibiotics by I.V. They are going to run further tests this morning to see if it came from my catheter which is a likely suspect. My white blood cell count is now at 14.00 (4.00-11.00 is normal) so that's great. My doctor just told me that it looks promising for us to hold a great Harvest Festival on Monday and Tuesday. I'm thinking that something along these lines would be fun. This is all good news but some things still have to fall into place.

I got my favorite nurse today so life is good. I'm waiting for the chaplain to come and give me communion.

My room looks out to the heli-pad and I just got done watching another trauma victim being transported to the hospital. For some reason, this one really got me choked up because it looked like a family member was present. So I'm crying like a little girl right now and praying for whomever that was. Maybe God put me here just to pray for that person. Everybody hug your kids.

Somebody told me he was surprised that I would be blogging from the hospital. Well, when you are in pain, its hard to read or grade papers. I don't like t.v. So posting updates is a useful way to spend my time, especially since it helps Margy with her communication responsibilities.

Da Vinci Code Website

Some of you may be interested in a new web-site opened recently by the United States Catholic Conference (specifically the "Catholic Communications Campaign") in response to questions raised by Dan Brown's popular book, The DaVinci Code. This web-site actually contains some excellent information on a number of different topics regarding the Catholic faith. They have links to articles on Opus Dei, the real Leonardo daVinci and his art, and so on. They also mention a TV special they produced that may be aired by NBC stations the week of May 20 or thereabouts. The website is called "Jesus Decoded" at www.jesusdecoded.com. Click the headline to link