Monday, July 03, 2017

Here’s Something Important That Factors Into Our Interest In Cool-Headed Rational Communities.

Posted by Peter Quennell

Simple walking is rather startlingly proving to have health benefits beyond the obvious, and also major community benefits.

The main new finding for important health benefits is that the balancing required in walking adds neuron capacity to the hippocampus - a hybrid brain gland which also handles key components of memory, diminishment of which is behind memory loss and dementia.

Now there is also a new finding for the positive effects on community building and by extension better environmental and economic-growth prospects, as for both teamwork is vital.

The anti-twitter… !!

Cruising the US one can see in large areas decaying towns and failing communities. In places stark poverty. Often little mingling, and other than the local Walmart, no very enticing walking, either for locals or to entice any visitors.

Get walks going, guys? 

Already there’s begun a big push in the US to open up many more trails for walking. New York city, one of the world’s most walkable, is still adding or enhancing walks like the elevated Highline Park and the paths around the edge of Manhattan.

Trails hundreds even thousands of miles long are being created - by way of the Hudson River and the Erie Canal one can already walk or bicycle from NYC to Toronto or vice versa (think about it Ergon!).

The economic effect all along the way of these trails is becoming obvious.

Italy probably remains a very smart and creative country not least because places like Rome and Florence and Perugia become more walkable even as they become less drivable.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/03/17 at 03:38 PM in

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Here’s another surprising new way in which value is being initiated in remoter areas and maybe helping economic and psychological pressures there to come down.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/nyregion/uber-lyft-via-ride-sharing-new-york.html

Uber has been getting a very bad rap and it would have meant nothing to me if it was suddenly all gone. But folks I know who use Uber and the other services have been pleased at how efficiently it worked.

The Uber concept is a somewhat hightech way to create new value but there seems nothing very hightech about creating new areas for bicycling and walks. Big learning plus right there.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/04/17 at 03:46 PM | #

Get walking, thanks for good encouragement. Stretch a leg, it creates endorphins. I’m blessed to have an air conditioned indoor option: I can walk in the campus coliseum. Five or six laps equals a mile, complete with water fountains everywhere and a dozen clean restrooms for the crowds that attend basketball games or women’s gymnastics. When the place is empty in the early hours or during summer mini-mester, it’s a walkers paradise.

In March, April, May 2017 I would grab the cool of morning to walk outdoors.  I used the campus old athletic track with its 9 red asphalt lanes (they’ve built a fancy new one) or strode the campus in breeze; but no way now, our summer heat is blasting, humidity stifling. Outdoor walks almost unbearable. The pool isn’t always an option.

I get plenty of exercise cutting grass then rushing inside to splash ice water on face and sit by the fan while gulping gallons of ice water. I throw ice cubes in my baseball cap, slap it on head, put sunglasses on then back outside to grass, drenched from sweat but not a care in the world. I actually enjoy it, I’m pretty tough.

It’s fun to watch the birds and be in the sun near the holly tree, the blue berries on the big cedar, and run mower over pinecones and antbeds, smelling the mint in brick planter. Seeing new hideouts where the old gray cat sleeps in the ivy.

An instant reward: seeing the grass clipped before this semi-tropical heat morphs it into the size of sugarcane. Been a rainy summer to boot.

Some locals walk inside the local mall before stores open.  I’ve never gotten into that, but have walked a few laps on sidewalk that surrounds the mall in early hours before traffic starts.

Unfortunately the mall holds temptation of a nearby Krispy Kreme with outdoor tables—a double whammy. Ha ha, back to coliseum.

Summer slump here, fitness efforts very inconsistent, appreciate the encouragement. Walking does wonders.

Posted by Hopeful on 07/18/17 at 11:04 PM | #

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