Urban Expansion: Glow sticks on a high ropes course

As I was eating lunch at Yats with my in-town-from-Chicago friend Ann last weekend, I saw a group of fit young people in green shirts that said something about a challenge course.

Being chatty and curious, I had to ask about it.  They all were grabbing a bite to eat after a morning working a high ropes course on Butler University's campus (10 minutes from my apartment.)  Since I kept asking questions, one mentioned that they were hosting a free community day on the course with glow sticks for a night climb on Friday.

I've finally been in town long enough to know a couple people who would be as excited about high ropes courses at night as I am, so I've just gotten back and have several glowing accessories to show for it.

Growing up in a summer camp-y community and an outdoorsy family, it wasn't my first ropes course, but it was the first time since early during undergrad and definitely the first time 25 feet up at  night.

Feels good to do something that made me nervous (other than parking) for the first time in a while.

http://www.butler.edu/hrc/challenge-education/high-ropes/

After three years cutting my own hair...

Today I had a proper hair appointment and chopped it all off.  It's been a long, long time coming....

At last, spring has sprung -- a walk around the neighborhood.

Went for a perfect walk down the Monon today. Inspired by Ann Ferguson and her visit, I bought out half the inventory of a fair trade shop near my house.

While there, signed up to volunteer at a couple events this season with the Peace Learning Center in Indy. Got invited to an event at the fair trade shop this Saturday and asked a random girl if she wanted to come salsa dance sometime. 

Then, walking home, I met two new neighbors who were out on their porch with guitars and assorted hand drums. #bunkhouseporchnostalgia

After forgetting their names a few too many times, they said I could refer to them as the "stoop guys" to make it easier. I returned the favor and told them I sometimes go by Laser.

"Laser, drop by the stoop with your uke anytime you like."

Might have to bring them one of the houseplants I've been propagating in the windowsill later this week.....

Carlos B was right. You do just have to walk out your door for things to happen and friends to appear.

Especially when it's April in Indianapolis.

#317

How to change health without a high cost

"Making individuals aware of health risks and how to cope with them has come to be widely recognized as an essential feature of reducing mortality from lung cancer, heart disease, and other maladies associated with diet and lifestyle.  What this chapter shows is that fecal disease and tuberculosis, and to a lesser degree malaria, were all combated by a similar mode, which informed ordinary people in accessible terms about how these diseases operated and how people could protect themselves from them.  Those things--self-awareness and self-help--were the central feature of disease protection in the low-income countries in the early decades of their health transitions."

p 159-160 Low Income, Social Growth, and Good Health: A History of Twelve Countries by Riley


After a morning of reading and finishing up this book, I'm feeling very good about my current job as a health coach!


A few other striking clips from later in the book:

"In important ways social growth that did not lead a country to high-income status may in the long run prove to be a more useful mode of development for other low-income countries.  It is markedly less abusive in its exploitation of scare resources, and it avoids the agonies associated with the early stages of industrial modernization.  The low-income countries' model of social growth also sets a different goal.  Where as economic growth measures success by adding to income, improving material life, and meeting people's expectations for a continually rising standard of living, social growth sets the goal of self- and community improvement.  It concentrates on what is absolutely the fundamental prize, which is good health and survival.  A global strategy of social growth would also produce less inequality among nations in income and wealth, hence lead to a more ethically defensible and morally acceptable distribution of material goods.  And it would make middle-income rather than high-income status the goal.  Imagine a world in which the most valued skills and ideas lead not to the possession of ever more consumer goods but to improvement of the quality of life for individuals and the community."

p 163-164

"For some decades now medicine has had the upper hand in the minds of policy makers, in a manner analogous to the preference for economic over social development in the same group.  Many students of human survival believe that public health and its potential contributions to disease prevention should be given more importance.  The research that has produced this book lends support to the public health side of this debate, but with an important qualification.  The important thing in public health is not the technical knowledge and skill of the experts who give advice about disease prevention.  It is instead the participation of ordinary people in the effort....

The third element in the plan for development is thus for people to discover that they can be engaged in controlling health risks.  This is the essential point: people can be counted on to become allies and participants in social growth and improving health."

p172-173