For more details, check out the course preview page here!
Please share this poster/link far and wide (pdf).
Category: Chicago
Introducing “Rooftop: Second Nature” — Remarks at the Opening Reception, 9 Feb. 2017
Nature within the urban landscape is simultaneously close at hand and hidden from view — a paradox of proximal obscurity. Yet its myriad forms are as diverse in kind as their human denizens. City parks, urban farms, back yards, forest preserves, vacant lots, and green rooftops — all these and more comprise the spaces of urban nature.
Despite the ubiquity and diversity of urban nature, it remains largely invisible to and thus unappreciated by many city dwellers. We are much more likely to assume nature exists “out there,” away from our cities and suburbs — especially in remote places characterized by few people and sublime landforms. An implicit corollary to that is that the city is unnatural.
Yet the recent coinage of the seemingly oxymoronic phrase urban wilderness signals that we have begun to re-envision the role of nature within metropolitan landscapes. This nature is almost always hybrid in character, a product of human design and action even when appearing “natural” in outward form. Consider our location right here, along the southwestern rim of Lake Michigan — where the surveyor’s grid was laid down upon the marshy prairie, a river’s current audaciously reversed, and lakefront parkland perched atop thousands of tons of landfill.
The intersections of the made and the natural can be apprehended in such settings . . . if one observes carefully, knows where to look, and possesses a spirit of exploration. The dramatic roofscapes by Brad Temkin in Rooftop: Second Nature are striking visual compositions that reveal the city from a different and unfamiliar angle, as well as information-rich object lessons in how green infrastructure enhances urban sustainability.
More broadly, though, this exhibit speaks to the vital role played by the environmental arts and humanities in envisioning a more sustainable future for humanity as well as for the millions of fellow species on our beautiful yet vulnerable planet. Thought-provoking ideas, artwork, architecture, poetry, stories, historical accounts, theater, music, and film are necessary complements to painstaking ecological analysis and pragmatic environmental policy.
Why? Because ideas and vision matter. Compelling narratives, whether literary or visual, can animate science, challenge our use of technology, inspire policy, and change hearts and minds. Such narratives must guide our thinking to ensure that social equity and environmental justice are not trampled in the relentless pursuit of short-term profits from, say, building oil pipelines across sources of drinking water in the Great Plains; or dumping the “overburden” of mountaintops into the creeks and rivers of Appalachian coal country; or selling more Pepsi or iPhones.
Skeptics of climate change cannot be persuaded by scientific data and evidence-based policy alone — certainly not when science itself is under unprecedented attack in our society; not when environmental laws are in imminent danger of being dismantled; not when the very status of an observed and documented fact is undermined by the brazen contempt for reason and unsettling embrace of doublespeak that now constitutes the discourse of the new administration.
In such fraught and perilous times, a sustainable future can only be achieved, let alone properly envisioned, with the full participation and engagement of the environmental arts and humanities.
By showing us the “second nature” of the urban landscape in these images of green rooftops, Brad Temkin’s art not only delights and inspires with unexpected manifestations of beauty, but also implicitly challenges us to consider what “first nature” is, and what sort of relationship we want with it — one which in we are conquerors . . . or stewards.
This is a slightly edited version of a short speech I gave at the opening reception for Rooftop: Second Nature on 9 Feb 2017 at Roosevelt University’s Gage Gallery, 18 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL. The Gallery is open 9am-5pm weekdays and 10am-4pm Saturdays.
INSS Conference in Uptown, Chicago IL, June 8-10
Next week I’ll be attending and presenting at the Integrated Network for Social Sustainability Conference, a national multi-site conference that is hosted locally by the Institute of Cultural Affairs in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. I’ll be presenting on Thursday 6/9 at 2:45pm in the Education & Culture session along with my colleague, friend, and co-author Mr. Michael Howard, executive director and co-founder of Eden Place Nature Center on Chicago’s South Side.
To see an interactive agenda, register, and attend the conference, check out this link. Hope to see you there! An overview is also available here (pdf).
Conservation Corps Leader Position with Friends of the Forest Preserves (Summer 2016)
The Friends of the Forest Preserves have conservation crew leader positions that are available this summer. See this link for details!
Earth Month at Roosevelt
This image is also available as a pdf. Also see RU’s Green Campus Blog for detailed info on the week’s many events and activities!
City Creatures: Wildlife in the City
Tomorrow afternoon my SUST 340 Policy, Law, & Ethics class at Roosevelt University’s Chicago Campus proudly hosts a special presentation entitled “City Creatures: Urban Biodiversity in Chicago” at 3:30 p.m. in Roosevelt’s LEED-Gold Wabash Building, Room 1214. Dr. Gavin Van Horn of the Center for Humans and Nature will discuss his recent book, City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness (University of Chicago Press), published in November 2015; and then engage in dialogue with my students and the RU community about urban biodiversity from the perspective of the environmental humanities.
Dr. Van Horn is the co-editor of City Creatures and is the Director of Cultures of Conservation at the Center for Humans and Nature, as well as editor of the widely-read City Creatures blog. His work focuses particularly on how place-based values are developed and strengthened in dialogue with local landscapes. He continues to explore cultural perceptions of wildlife; place-based ethics; endangered species recovery, ethics, and policy; and the values involved in ecological restoration projects, community gardening, and wildlife management.
This special event is free and open to the public, and is hosted by students in SUST 340 Policy, Law, & Ethics. A limited number of signed copies will be available for purchase ($30 cash) and discount order forms will be available.
Videoconference Option: For those who cannot attend in person, the City Creatures event will be video- and teleconferenced live via Zoom as well as recorded, so that you may watch and/or listen from anywhere in the world. Login information is here:
Topic: City Creatures at RU Presentation 11 Apr 2016
Time: Apr 12, 2016 3:30 PM (GMT-5:00) Central Time (US and Canada)
- Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://roosevelt.zoom.us/j/111170694
- Or iPhone one-tap: 16465588656,111170694# or 14086380968,111170694#
- Or Telephone:
+1 877 369 0926 (US Toll Free)
+1 888 974 9888 (US Toll Free)
Meeting ID: 111 170 694
International numbers available: https://roosevelt.zoom.us/zoomconference?m=sRfRPmWGZFFr0xGI6lrJk6t13V5cLneM
More on City Creatures from The University of Chicago Press website:
We usually think of cities as the domain of humans—but we are just one of thousands of species that call the urban landscape home. Chicago residents knowingly move among familiar creatures like squirrels, pigeons, and dogs, but might be surprised to learn about all the leafhoppers and water bears, black-crowned night herons and bison, beavers and massasauga rattlesnakes that are living alongside them. City Creatures introduces readers to an astonishing diversity of urban wildlife with a unique and accessible mix of essays, poetry, paintings, and photographs.
The contributors bring a story-based approach to this urban safari, taking readers on birding expeditions to the Magic Hedge at Montrose Harbor on the North Side, canoe trips down the South Fork of the Chicago River (better known as Bubbly Creek), and insect-collecting forays or restoration work days in the suburban forest preserves.
The book is organized into six sections, each highlighting one type of place in which people might encounter animals in the city and suburbs. For example, schoolyard chickens and warrior wasps populate “Backyard Diversity,” live giraffes loom at the zoo and taxidermy-in-progress pheasants fascinate museum-goers in “Animals on Display,” and a chorus of deep-freeze frogs awaits in “Water Worlds.”
Although the book is rooted in Chicago’s landscape, nature lovers from cities around the globe will find a wealth of urban animal encounters that will open their senses to a new world that has been there all along. Its powerful combination of insightful narratives, numinous poetry, and full-color art throughout will help readers see the city—and the creatures who share it with us—in an entirely new light.
Bernie Sanders Rally in Auditorium Theatre Tonight, March 14
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will be holding a rally this evening, March 14, in the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University, 50 E. Congress Parkway. Doors open at 8:30 p.m. and Senator Sanders is expected to begin speaking at 10:30.
According to the Sanders’ website, the event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required, but RSVPs are strongly encouraged. Admission is first come, first served. For security reasons, people should not bring bags and limit what they bring to small, personal items like keys and cell phones. Weapons, sharp objects, chairs, and signs or banners on sticks will not be allowed through security.
The Chicago Police Department will determine traffic closures as situations warrant.
Tom Karow, Assistant Vice President of Public Relations, Roosevelt University
Address replies to: tkarow@roosevelt.edu
STARS on the Chicago Skyline
Pauline Dubkin Yearwood, 1942-2015
I was very saddened to learn a few weeks ago of the passing of Pauline Dubkin Yearwood, whom I befriended several years ago while doing research on the life and work of her father and Chicago nature writer, Leonard Dubkin. Pauline graciously allowed me to interview her twice in 2007 and lent me a trove of her father’s papers and letters to assist my research, which she encouraged and supported with enthusiasm and generosity. She will be dearly missed by her family, colleagues, and many friends.
This is a reprint of the obituary, “Pauline Dubkin Yearwood, Journalist with Chicago Jewish News, Dies at 73” (Graydon Megan, Chicago Tribune, 6 Jan 2016).
Pauline Dubkin Yearwood, the longtime managing editor of the Skokie-based Chicago Jewish News, was a prolific and award-winning journalist who covered topics from arts to health care to personal profiles.
“She was an excellent reporter and beyond that a very graceful writer,” said Joseph Aaron, editor and publisher of Chicago Jewish News. “She could handle any subject. For us she wrote a 2,500-word cover story almost every week — something like 900 cover stories.”
Aaron said Yearwood always took an unbiased approach to her work. “Everybody felt she’d given them a fair shake, covered the story fairly,” he said.
Yearwood 73, died of complications of pancreatic cancer on Dec. 22, 2015, according to her daughter Lagusta. She moved to her daughter’s home in New Paltz, N.Y., about a year ago after being diagnosed with the disease.
After high school at Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, she got a bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania before returning to the Chicago area to get a master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University.
By the mid-1970s, she was married and living in Phoenix. She later divorced but remained in Phoenix, where she raised her children and began writing for newspapers including the Phoenix New Times and the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix.
“She reviewed plays and was a theater critic,” her daughter said.
Yearwood moved back to the Chicago area in the late 1990s and was soon writing for the Chicago Jewish News, work she continued until early December.
“Her writing and reporting were both very impressive,” Aaron said. “I would give her an assignment, and she would know exactly who to call, how to pursue it and how to do the research.”
Yearwood won a Chicago Headline Club Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism in the category of Best in-depth Reporting in a Community Newspaper for her October 2008 story, “Obama and the Jews,” examining the relationship between the then soon-to-be president and the Jewish community.
She also won a 2014 American Jewish Press Association award for a 2013 profile of Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis.
“I found her to be kind, probing and thought-provoking,” Lewis said in an email about the profile, which focused on Lewis’ conversion to the Jewish faith. “It is the essence of Jewish life she was interested in.”
“She was devoted to her children and her writing,” said former Tribune writer Harriet Choice, who met Yearwood when both were in high school.
Yearwood “also had a passion for animals, very into animal rights,” Choice said. That interest grew out of childhood adventures with her father, who took her to what he called his “secret places” to see natural places around the city.
“She did a lot of work for animal causes” and was a vegan for 22 years, her daughter said.
Judy Voigt, another longtime friend, called Yearwood a brilliant and prolific writer whose work didn’t stop at journalism. “She was an incredible writer — she wrote a couple of plays,” Voigt said.
Yearwood’s play, “The Natural History of Mozart Street,” was based on her father’s efforts to become an expert on nature in the city and was presented in 2010 as a staged reading by Chicago’s Genesis Theatrical Productions.
Aaron said he regularly heard compliments from people covered in Yearwood’s stories. “She really was able to grasp a topic and convey it in a both accurate and colorful way.”
She is also survived by her son, Leonard.
A tribute will be from 1 to 3 p.m. Jan. 24, in the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, 610 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.
Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter. A version of this article appeared in print on January 07, 2016, in the Business section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline “Reporter, editor with Chicago Jewish News.”
Bikes, Tweets, and Symposia on Earth Day
Happy Earth Day! Here at Roosevelt, we’ve got some great events to mark the day, which I will start with a humble but well-intentioned two-mile bike ride to my train station in Joliet for my morning commute to Chicago, in honor of #RUEarthWeek2015 (pdf). Then, after dutifully putting in a few morning hours in my office, I shall repair to the Wabash Building (425 S. Wabash Ave, downtown Chicago) for these activities:
1-2pm (WB 1317) — Join me on Twitter (@MikeBryson22) for an #RUjusticechat on the relations between campus sustainability efforts and social/environmental justice. You can chat from wherever you are in the world . . . but if you’re in my neck of the woods, stop by WB 1317 for some F2F interaction and home-made cookies!
3-5:30pm (WB 616) — Attend the 2015 SUST Student Symposium, the signature Sustainability Studies event of the semester. Learn about the research and internship projects undertaken by four of our Sustainability Studies majors this year, and enjoy great conversation as well as free refreshments aplenty, courtesy of RU’s Physical Resources Dept. Hosted by the students of my SUST 390 Sustainable Campus class, who are undertaking RU’s first-ever STARS sustainability assessment this spring.
