Congested? Try Commonsense ™

New figures show frustrated drivers are forced to crawl at less than 40km/h for tens of kilometres during peak hours.

And the (newish) Monash Freeway, where motorists must pay more than $10 in tolls a day to use the city end of CityLink, is officially slowest of all.

Almost 15 years ago I was doing first-year urban planning at university, and one of the first lessons was: Building bigger roads only encourages more traffic, and only worsens congestion.

I assume the VicRoads officials amongst my colleagues must have missed that class…

Or maybe it’s just the need to meet the public’s expectations, not matter how counterproductive they might be…

 

This is an interesting stat too: HALF of all car trips in Melbourne are less than 2km.

To be fair, sometimes there’s a reason for this (lugging piles of shopping home from the supermarket etc) – but it’s encouraged me to dust off the ’shoppo bike’ (single-speed old clunker with a basket on the back!) to make sure I’m not guilty of this as well!

Investing in the environment.

With all the (quite reasonable) fuss around climate change and drought, it’s no surprise to see the huge line of (expensive!) water tanks for sale at your local Bunnings, and profiles of people using solar panels to save the earth.

So it was interesting to hear a commentator at a conference I was at a while back talk about how he considered the installation of solar panels to be grossly self-centred and counter-productive. His argument was that the main purpose for a solar panel (at least in the urban environment where we have ready access to grid-power) was to show your neighbours how ‘green’ you were, as it virtually made no sense economically, and green power could be readily purchased from the grid. And the same could be said of the current infatuation with water tanks – where most are not connected to the plumbing to run household uses, and are not big enough to sustain a garden in a serious period of drought anyway.

His solution? To take that $30,000 you would have spent on solar power, and instead invest in a company developing green energy technologies… You’ll most likely get more than your money back, and more importantly, you’re helping develop technologies or solutions which will benefit more than just you, and have far more environmental impact than the carbon emissions from your electricity use.

And of course, there’s still the ‘low-hanging fruit’ issue, where the first thing we should all be doing is scaling back our energy use in the first place. It seemed ridiculously hypocritical to hear someone refer to their ‘mud-brick McMansion’ where they used their solar power to run expensive, hungry appliances… Sure – maybe it isn’t creating emissions, but wouldn’t it be more sensible to feed that energy back into the grid and reduce somebody else’s? I guess we’re taking steps towards individual ‘green’ attitudes, but until we also instil some more ’selfless, community’ attitudes, it won’t be complete…

34…

…yes, it’s my birthday today – which I was feeling ok about until I got to work to read this as my calendar’s ‘quote of the day’

“One of the most obvious facts about grownups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.”

Oh dear…

Maybe I should toss the fancy dinner out tonight and organize some fairy bread and hot dogs instead?

Through the eyes of innocents

This article appeared in the Age newspaper today – I had to share it with you:

Barry Dickins

December 4, 2007

 

NOT long ago I was in the merry midst of very contented infants for whom I was the guest poet. Children know poetry is for them.

Sometimes I think that’s all they know; but of course their wisdom is endless because they swear allegiance to Joy.

Happiness they are good at. Grief they respect. Death they write about.

The children I was with were preps at Saint John’s Catholic Primary School, in Clifton Hill. How old are preps? How old is Joy?

I have no idea why they were so carefree that first morning when I started to write verses with them; it was a pretty nice day and two women teachers sat in with us.

The birds whistled to each other and I politely inquired of a pretty little girl of four or so, what she was up to?

It wasn’t quite nine in the morning, and we were all sitting on the floor.

“Well,” she replied casually, shielding her eyes from the sun in the bright window panes. “At 4½ you are not up to that much.”

Another child, so small I nearly trod on him, looked up innocently and said: “I had no idea you were this old.”

Well, I am.

We commenced to compose cartoons and draw eagles and cypress trees, that sort of thing.

One boy wept in a perfect fury because he couldn’t sharpen his grey lead pencil.

These emotions are understandable in a world filled with frustrations and anguishes.

He sobbed so much his drawing paper submerged beneath his sorrows.

Later we were talking, still on the floor, where it’s always best to talk because there are no levels of importance, about drugs and overdoses, for they know everything, children.

A particular North Melbourne AFL footballer had turned up drunk to train at Arden Street Oval, and the media had swooped on him — called him moronic, in fact.

“I think that his mummy should have hugged him a lot more,” smiled a young pupil, resting her chin on her fingertips in the most nonchalant way imaginable.

“If she had actually hugged him more he might have been late for training; but he wouldn’t have been able to do wrong.”

We drew an elephant.

Lately the commentators have been writing most hatefully about the footballer Ben Cousins, calling him everything, including a drug addict and drunkard. They won’t be happy until he is dead, I think; then they’ll say he is tragically misunderstood.

But kids see all things differently. A tree can look like flames to them.

I asked a child last week at a school what she thought of Ben Cousins. She said she didn’t think of him.

I know the reason I work so often in schools is to be taught by children.

They’re the future and they trust surrealism. They’re interesting. And exuberant.

Just for once it would be terrific if children called the shots, and not the experts, who aren’t funny.

Children’s molecular structure is comic and indestructible and they know it.

And they are not afraid to draw cancer or write about the end of the world either. Adults are often the end of it.

Each year I work at the Benalla Regional Art Gallery. They employ me to listen.

I listen to the local artists and that includes kids who draw and paint and write poems.

I then do some drawings myself and include snippets of conversations I’ve been involved in. It’s fun. It’s beautiful. So free.

Last year I met a tiny girl of three named Maeve. She was putting the final touches on an incredible sort of cabinet that was half-drawn with coloured crayons, yet some of the tiny drawers in it undid and pulled out; it was definitely magical.

I asked the child how she did it, and she grinned at me and said in a whisper, “It’s not that difficult to be magical. Do try to keep up!”

I’ve never forgotten she said that.

Children are a better world. That is all I understand of this bewildering phase of our battered old planet.

They redeem everything that is debauched.

They are rather like perpetual flowers, children, incapable of poison