Wired on Boston’s shorter red light initiative. “The results, released last week, show that shorter red lights will help Boston’s drivers regain 135,000 hours each year that would normally be wasted waiting for a light to turn. Traffic delays during the 60-intersection trial decreased 29 percent, while vehicle emissions decreased almost ten percent.”
By now everyone knows Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews were fired as political co-anchors, and Rachel Maddow now hosts her own show. But a number of people can’t tune in to watch. In July, Comcast deleted MSNBC from basic cable service in markets in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and possibly other states. The same thing happened last year in Oregon. Comcast is offering subscribers a free digital cable box for the next 12 months. But how many people really call to complain? I watched the channel on the treadmill at my gym (which obviously cannot upgrade) and really miss getting angry enough to run that extra mile. I imagine most people shrugged and turned to CNN or FOX during the conventions.
“Though he was born there, Poe wrote disdainfully of the city’s literary elite, and his birthplace does not appear among the 1,000-plus attractions on the city’s tourism Web site.” - NYT on Boston’s lack of claim to Poe, while Baltimore and Philadelphia fight over his remains. (via.)
Harvard University Press lists their favorite books at the moment published elsewhere.
Here’s a rendering of the UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico. (via.)
Two guys “went around the country this year removing typographical errors from public signs.” They are now banned from national parks after “vandalizing” a historic marker at the Grand Canyon, part of their year’s probation. (via.) (Previously.)
Lisa Selin Davis has a story in Salon about the couple who lived in the Providence Mall (It was covered extensively on the blogs last year. See Ballardian and the artists’ website here.) The couple Michael Townsend and Adriana Yoto crafted a secret apartment inside the massive Rt 95 eyesore. “The mall adventure was to last a week; it went on for four years. If Townsend hadn’t been nabbed by security and charged with criminal trespassing last October, they’d still be camping out there today.” Davis smartly compares their experience to the $1m+ Natick Mall luxury condos just a few miles north in suburban Boston (I’ve been meaning to write a post about the hilarious pseudo-poshness of the “Natick Collection” — its ant farm like freeway chaos and American-travels-the-Continent decor. Eventually.) Of course JG Ballard and Romero allusions can be made, but what I think is interesting is that most science fiction visions of futuristic architecture tend to imagine a massive space — a city or multiple cities — enclosed. (Usually for the purpose of some nuclear disaster or space colony.) Is this a subconscious projection of the shopping mall of the future by the authors? A claustrophobic vision or one of a comforting incubator?
When Humanity Only Survives Within Driving Distance of a Shopping Mall
The city can become an addiction. Live in it too long, and your body will reject the outdoors. Over the weekend, I got up early-ish to catch La Strada at the Brattle (part of the free Elements Of Cinema series.) It seemed like a good Saturday morning thing: get coffee, watch a smart film, maybe browse the dress shops and get coffee again.
But as soon as I opened my eyes, they started to burn. I left the window open that night and the airborne pollens — ragweed or whatever it is that Zyrtec normally takes care of — drifted into my room and into my eyes like evil pixie dust. I shut my window, got dressed, and did what I normally don’t do trying to get to Harvard Square: I drove.
The whole “pahk the cah in hahvahd yahd” thing is a joke not just on the Boston accent. Driving in Harvard Square is kind of like pushing marbles through straws. Saturday morning isn’t much of a problem. Well, any Saturday other than yesterday.
Due to construction, the two and three hour parking spots within eight blocks were unavailable. The open spots were limited to one hour. Hardly enough time to attend a movie and a lecture. No going around it: the meter maids in this city are busybodies. After circling around several times, wishing I were on my bike, I ended up parking much farther than I intended and came smack in contact with exactly what I’d been avoiding all morning: the outside air.
It was a beautiful day. Low 80s, clear skies, perfect for biking, running, reading under a tree, anything outside. But rather than delighting in the weather, I was cursing it. Lightheaded, my eyes feeling like sandpaper lined the rims, sneezing, I was just a mess. I thought wearing glasses would make it better but it was just the opposite: contact lenses shield against these allergens. The sunshine was bouncing off the lenses, only making the situation worse.
This is urban New England, I’m hardly Lawrence of Arabia in a sandstorm, but it bothered me so much, and realizing I was already twenty minutes late, I returned to my car thinking, “how far to the Cambridgeside Galleria?”
I was looking for refuge from the outside world in the form of a shopping mall. My body was rejecting nature in favor of the sanitized, always-68 degrees shopping center down the street. So I watched the sky from the Whole Foods cafe, waiting until I could blink again without discomfort.
Just as domesticated pets can’t make it in the wilderness, city people, according to the “hygiene hypothesis,” live in such clean conditions their immune systems weaken. Preschool peanut bans are so prevalent and contentious, I wouldn’t be surprised if the DEA gets involved eventually.
In addition to increased sensitivity, cities produce more ragweed due to CO2 levels — increasing with climate change. There are additional ripple effects on tree pollen, fungal spores, and other allergens. And warmer climate means the allergy season is much longer than it ever was before.
Years ago, people with severe allergies found relief in the mountains. But “increased human activity such as building and other disturbances of the soil, irrigation, and gardening, have encouraged ragweed to spread to these areas as well.” We’re building our way unhealthy.
Damien Atkins’s play “Lucy” (Kurt Anderson interview here) is about an anthropologist with a 13 year old autistic daughter. She comes to the conclusion her daughter “is perfect. She’s the future,” making a stunning hypothesis that autism is evolution. Mankind is protecting itself from the devastating environmental consequences of modern living. (A little Kumbaya, but quite a lot smarter than whatever M Night Shyamalan was going on.)
Wall-E so radically tackled devolution with the future human race portrayed as gelatinous blobs. More accurately they would have sneezed uncontrollably at contact with the plant.
Todd Haynes’s 1995 film [Safe] was a great comment/parody/prophesy of the modern age fraught with yuppie ailments:
“Safe” has been described as a horror movie of the soul, a description that director Todd Haynes relishes. California housewife Carol White seems to have it all in life: a wealthy husband and a beautiful house. The only thing she lacks is a strong personality: Carol seems timid and empty during all of her interactions with the world around her. At the beginning of the film, one would consider her to be more safe in life than just about anyone. That doesn’t turn out to be the case. Starting with headaches and leading to a grand-mal seizure, Carol becomes more and more sick, claiming that she’s become sensitive to the common toxins in today’s world: exhaust, fumes, aerosol spray, etc. She pulls back from the sexual advances of her husband and spends her nights alone by the TV or wandering around the outside of her well-protected home like an animal in a cage. Her physician examines her and can find nothing wrong. An allergist finds that she has an allergic reaction to milk but explains that there is no treatment for that sort of allergy. She sees a psychiatrist who does nothing but make her nervous. In the hospital, Carol sees an infomercial for Wrenwood, a new-age retreat for those who are “environmentally ill,” and leaves her husband and stepson to try and find salvation at this retreat: headed by a phony, grandstanding, “sensitive” individual named Peter Dunning.
I remember watching it in high school, thinking “just get over it!” Likely someone is thinking the same thing reading my opening paragraph. It’s embarrassing, but I’m not alone:
Ragweed pollen and mold thrive in the opposite conditions. So when it’s dry and windy, you get ragweed; when it’s damp and rainy, you get mold.
Here’s the other cheerful news, you might want to prepare for a worse ragweed season next year. Dr. Mark Dykewicz, chief of the Section of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, at St. Louis University School of Medicine says that next year’s ragweed crop will be from this years rainy, fertile conditions.
In Europe, they are putting up “Wild West ‘wanted’ posters” advocating burning the ragwood (”ambrosia”) plants, which climbing north to Germany, and even Scandinavia.
‘Some gardeners naively think it is an attractive plant and give it water and fertilizer in their front gardens,’ says Susanne Schwarz of Berlin’s Health Department.
‘They should be eradicating this menace instead,’ she adds. ‘Best thing to do is pull it out by the roots and burn it, since the seeds can remain fertile for up to 40 years.’
In case you’re wondering, yeah, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment this week. In the meantime, a friend advised me to take local honey because the pollen in the honey acclimates you to the pollen in the air. Sounds unlikely, but I appreciate the concept as a narrative. Maybe if The Happening hadn’t resigned itself as a joke, Mark Walberg would have hunted the wilderness for an antidote. A lab set up in the fields somewhere. The twist ending M Night Shymalan forgot to write, like a riff on Dorothy’s discovery: the answer is “no further than our own backyard”
Until then, closing my eyes is as heavenly as a dive in a pool full of feathers. And I’m thinking allergies are nature’s way of reminding us to pay attention.
Photography by Julia Fullerton-Batten.
Previously:
Who Needs Sleep?
An Apology for Idlers
Related links:
- Hygiene Hypothesis on PBS, Evolution: “The Evolutionary Arms Race”
- Architects take Beijing’s smog into account, LA Times (via.)
- Ragweed Allergy Heats Up With Climate Change, Medical News Today
- Take Me Out To The (Peanut-Free) Ballgame, Channel3000
Now online: The Afterlife of American Clothes, my article on Secondhand (Pepe) and the Haitian used clothing trade in the new issue of Reason magazine. Here’s my interview with the filmmakers discussing this incredible business. And there’s more on Jezebel.
Boston.com is home to the Braniniac blog, the Big Picture, and is usually pretty great. So why are they buying hastily written content from a third-rate travel blog rating the “world’s sexiest people”? (”While Londoners are often perceived as cocky, stuffy and just plain unromantic, lads from London prove the stereotypes wrong with their witty jokes”). It’s not just trashy, it’s racist — not a single African city is listed for men or women and the sexy women’s list is written by a white guy with a degree in “East Asian Studies” so you know where most of his picks live. Boston.com even illustrates it with a photo set, hilariously, not a single person in the stock photos might even generously be described as “sexy. This might seem like a minor deadline crunching mistake, but I’m just shocked how dumb this list is — just look at the “sexy man” they chose to represent Manila. Of all the stuff on the web Boston.com could chose to reprint — this? Really? This?
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