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Risk, The Price of Being Truly Human... Neal Peirce, Richard Louv and Tony Hiss	DBur-@aol.com
	May 08, 2005 08:06 PDT

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Catherine and Friends ...
From one risk taker to many others. Tony Hiss (author of The Experience of
Place) sent me the following article by Neal Peirce. I cannot emphasize
strongly enough that Neal, Richard and Tony are right on track .... By 1990 we
had narrowed the free range of children to one-ninth of what it was when I was
a child.   Indeed, I suspect if I were to map my personal childhood range, it
eventually grew to 1:400 of current children. A worthy and easy bit of
science could collaborate this.
I think to this range we could measure time/duration/saturation (By age 15
my daily self-discovery time grew to 12-14 hours per day), as well as
distance, diversity and variety of experience. By age 20 I was describing the bicycle
as a "learning machine" since it often took me to distant places never seen
by car, foot or any other means.
By age 21 (still a child), despite living in the Midwest, I was walking,
free range, the neighbourhoods of Harlem and Bedford Stivenson (sp?) with a
growing hands-on interest and experience in sociology and geography. It is our
ability to be "free range children" that determines a big part of our ability
to learn, our humanity, civility, confidence, useful knowledge, wisdom,
maturity, ability to share and our ultimate achievements in life.
By age 23 I was writing letters, poetry and prose under trees no one had
ever sat under looking out over bays few people had ever seen. I was already
writing about situations and experiences in life most of my friends had not
lived.
Do these articles and books by Louv (please see below) imply that children's
strongest neural pathways now have more to do with the latest modern "Pac
Man", "Newspaper Boy", or "Bad Boy" electron adventure (something too new for
my media deprived brain) than being a real newspaper carrier?
In real life I recall jumping real curbs with a personally rebuilt Schwinn
cruiser that refused to collapse under my tall, lanky body weight and added
pressure of 80 pounds of papers. It was a bike I maintained by learning from my
dad and friends how to tear apart and rebuild every part of a bike,
including complex internal hub brakes. This brake got cleaned, polished and
reassembled, often several times before it worked.
Free range includes learning precision skills of well directed underhanded
tosses of fast-folded papers (while riding no handed) to exact center porch
landings ... learning to collect money from deadbeat or busy household
newspaper customers at the age of 12-13, how to accept semi-threatening but friendly
teasing of customers in a very different neighborhood than where I lived,
such as a beer drinking cop sitting on his front porch who called my dad
(firefighter) a "nozzle squeezer."   Free range is also learning the habitat and
habits of creek critters, how to track on crisp early morning snow and ice the
range and habits of mink and muskrats, ponder how a tree became bent the way
it did, recognize a snake species from its discarded skin, or where to find
the best patches of milkweed, pond lilies or bull rushes.
I guess today, sitting at 33,000 foot altitude, as I travel to Portland, my
94 consecutive day of travel for this segment of my work, is the result for
me of being a full, very lightly inhibited free range child, which nurtured
and induced my traveling nature and humanity. Today I have recall of walking,
talking and learning from dailiy experiences in more than 1900 North American
cities, neighborhoods, waterfronts, and more.
Maybe Willy Nelson's song, "Mothers don't let your children grow up to be
Cowboys ....should warn them to keep their children caged better than my mom
did.
Thanks, mom, for letting me range so, so freely .... on Mother's Day, 2005.
Richard Louv's newest book comes highly recommended. An earlier writing of
his, "The Future of Childhood" , which I encountered over fourteen years ago,
is now a prophetic writing of what we are doing and have done to our
children.
Get these below recommended books .... read them, and share your knowledge,
skills and talents widely. It is as important (more important?) to know
these things for our careers than the correct way to place an ADA ramp, set the
proper height of a pedestrian lamp, or determine the setback for thick
caliper trees.
NEAL PEIRCE COLUMN

   For Release Sunday, May 8, 2005

   © 2005 Washington Post Writers Group

    RECLAIMING CHILDHOOD’S FREEDOMS
   -- AND OUR REGIONS

   By Neal Peirce

     Can we reconnect?
          Can we give our children a way back -- past overdone fears and
exaggerated safety rules, around today’s electronic lures -- to the world
of simple, free, contact with the natural world that lightened the
childhood of all our past generations?
       And what of our great city regions? Can we look past the
skyscrapers and subdivisions, the ribbons of freeway and container ports
and gritty industries, to rediscover the enduring pattern of ancient
hills and rivers and harbors, the still functional natural regions?
         Two fine new books suggest reconnection is possible.
         For our youth, the formula’s spelled out in Richard Louv’s “Last
Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”
(Algonquin Books).
         Historically, Louv notes, kids learned the natural world on
farms, in families’ gardens, and exploring woods and creeks and ravines,
swamps and ponds where, where they could observe, capture minnows and
bugs, collect bird eggs or snake skins -- or even build elaborate tree

houses.

          There’s strong evidence, he reports, that such independent play
and exploration builds not just independence but broad mental, physical
and spiritual health.
         But today’s children, he asserts, are systematically cut off from
natural play.   “Well-meaning public-school systems, media and parents are
effectively scaring children straight out of the woods and fields.” The
stated reasons seem endless, from Lime’s Disease to multiplying park
rules to perceived perils of kid-snatching.
       With today’s superhighways, thick traffic, shopping malls and
rigid control by community associations, fewer children get a chance to
walk or bike to school. A study of three generations of nine-year-olds
found that by 1990, the radius around the home that children were allowed
to play had sunken to a ninth of what it had been in 1970.
         Increasingly, Louv laments, “nature is something to watch, to
consume, to wear--to ignore.”   He cites a television ad that depicts an
SUV racing along a breathtakingly beautiful mountain stream--while two
children in the back seat watch a movie on a flip-down video screen,
oblivious to the landscape and water beyond the windows.
          The irony is that much of parents’ hyperawareness of dangers, and
all the new restrictive rules, may make children less able to cope with
their world. Natural play awakens childrens’ self-confidence and
critical skill to judge and cope with perils on their own.
     And what better place to start than in the great natural regions
where we live? Tony Hiss and Christopher Meier are authors of the
recently-released “H2O -- Highlands to Ocean.” Published by the Geraldine
Dodge Foundation, “H2O” is both scientific and poetic in its celebration
of the landscapes and waterscapes of the New York-New Jersey metro area,
America’s most globally-famed and prominent citistate.
         Indeed, while this is North America’s most densely settled
corner, now 15-million people strong, a page or two of H2O dispels
anyone’s image of Greater New York as a skyscraper and asphalt
jungle. After 400 years of European settlement and 150 of intense
industrialization, the authors assure us, all the New York region’s
“great natural building blocks are still intact, still functioning, still
integrated with one another.”
       The story starts with the Highlands, an area of fast-growing
suburbs but also wilderness refuges for bald eagles, black bears and
coyotes; the great and historic Hudson River, its waters protected by
ferocious environmental advocacy; New York Harbor, the world’s largest
port, huge and calm, with 650 miles of shoreland; the Passaic River,
cradle of the American Revolution, with great 77-foot high falls; the
Meadowlands, where one can find 225 species of birds ... and much more.
         If children (not to mention adults) need a great natural region
to explore, what better place could there be than this “age-old,
region-wide, ongoing community of ecosystems and organisms, habitats and
processes that” -- as Hiss and Meier write -- “for almost 400 years have
had us for neighbors”?
         Not all of America’s metro areas offer quite as venerable a
history as New York. But exploring dozens of citistate regions across
the country, I’ve yet to find one that lacks a special ecology and its
own distinctive environmental features.
         The challenge everywhere is to find ways to recultivate
wandering, to tame roaring arterial roads so they’re more accessible to
pedestrians and bikers, and to improve public transportation so that kids
don’t have to wait until they’re drivers to access the full region around

them.

Tony Hiss is an exponent of place and its almost magical role in
our lives; an earlier book was actually entitled “Experience of
Place”. Richard Louv (a San Diego Union-Tribune columnist and also
author of “Childhood’s Future”) would give youth radically more freedom
to roam (maybe with a cell phone to check home). He’s suggesting there‘s
no total safety in a world where reasonable risk is a price of being
truly human.
Both messages are right on.

.

Dan Burden
Glatting Jackson, Senior Urban Designer
Walkable Communities, Executive Director
33 East Pine Street, Orlando, Florida 32801
407-843-6552 (w) 386-454-3304 (h) 614-595-0976 (c)
dbur-@glatting.com, dbur-@aol.com
_www.glatting.com_ (http://www.glatting.com/) or _www.walkable.org_
(http://www.walkable.org/)

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<DIV>
<DIV>
Catherine and Friends
...<o:p></o:p>
 <o:p></o:p>
From one risk taker to
many others. Tony Hiss (author of The Experience of Place) sent me
the following article by Neal Peirce. I cannot emphasize strongly enough
that Neal, Richard and Tony are right on track .... By 1990 we had narrowed
the free range of children to one-ninth of what it was when I was a child.
Indeed, I suspect if I were to map my personal childhood range,
it eventually grew to 1:400 of current children. A worthy and easy bit
of science could collaborate this. 
 
I think to this
range we could measure time/duration/saturation (By age 15
my daily self-discovery time grew to 12-14 hours per day), as well as distance,
diversity and variety of experience. By age 20 I was describing the bicycle as a
"learning machine" since it often took me to distant places never seen by car,
foot or any other means. <o:p></o:p>
 <o:p></o:p>
By age 21 (still a
child), despite living in the Midwest, I was walking, free
range, the neighbourhoods of Harlem and Bedford Stivenson (sp?) with a
growing hands-on interest and experience in sociology and geography.
It is our ability to be "free range children" that determines a big part of our
ability to learn, our humanity, civility, confidence, useful knowledge, wisdom,
maturity, ability to share and our ultimate achievements in life.
 
By age 23 I was
writing letters, poetry and prose under trees no one had ever sat
under looking out over bays few people had ever seen. I was already
writing about situations and experiences in life most of my friends had not
lived.
 <o:p></o:p>
Do these articles and
books by Louv (please see below) imply that children's
strongest neural pathways now have more to do with the latest
modern "Pac Man", "Newspaper Boy", or "Bad Boy" electron adventure
(something too new for my media deprived brain) than being a
real newspaper carrier? <o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
In real life I
recall jumping real curbs with a personally rebuilt Schwinn cruiser
that refused to collapse under my tall, lanky body weight and added pressure of
80 pounds of papers. It was a bike I maintained by learning from my dad and
friends how to tear apart and rebuild every part of a bike, including
complex internal hub brakes. This brake got cleaned, polished and
reassembled, often several times before it worked. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
Free range
includes learning precision skills of well directed underhanded tosses
of fast-folded papers (while riding no handed) to exact center porch landings
... learning to collect money from deadbeat or busy household newspaper
customers at the age of 12-13, how to accept semi-threatening but
friendly teasing of customers in a very different neighborhood than
where I lived, such as a beer drinking cop sitting on his front
porch who called my dad (firefighter) a "nozzle squeezer." Free
range is also learning the habitat and habits of creek critters, how
to track on crisp early morning snow and ice the range and
habits of mink and muskrats, ponder how a tree became bent the way it
did, recognize a snake species from its discarded skin, or where to find
the best patches of milkweed, pond lilies or bull rushes.
<o:p></o:p>
 <o:p></o:p>
I guess today, sitting
at 33,000 foot altitude, as I travel to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Portland</st1:place></st1:City>, my 94 consecutive day of travel for
this segment of my work, is the result for me of being a full, very lightly
inhibited free range child, which nurtured and induced my traveling
nature and humanity. Today I have recall of walking, talking and learning
from dailiy experiences in more than 1900 North American cities,
neighborhoods, waterfronts, and more. <o:p></o:p>
 <o:p></o:p>
Maybe Willy Nelson's
song, "Mothers don't let your children grow up to be Cowboys ....should warn
them to keep their children caged better than my mom did. 
 
Thanks, mom, for
letting me range so, so freely .... on Mother's Day,
2005.<o:p></o:p>
 <o:p></o:p>
Richard Louv's newest
book comes highly recommended. An earlier writing of his, "The Future of
Childhood" , which I encountered over fourteen years ago, is now a prophetic
writing of what we are doing and have done to our children.
<o:p></o:p>
 <o:p></o:p>
Get these below
recommended books .... read them, and share your knowledge, skills and
talents widely. It is as important (more important?) to know these things
for our careers than the correct way to place an ADA ramp, set the
proper height of a pedestrian lamp, or determine the setback for thick
caliper trees.<o:p></o:p>
 <o:p></o:p>
 <o:p></o:p>
NEAL PEIRCE
COLUMN > For Release Sunday, May 8, 2005 > >
© 2005 Washington Post Writers Group > >
RECLAIMING CHILDHOOD’S FREEDOMS > -- AND OUR
REGIONS > > By Neal Peirce > >
 Can we reconnect? >
Can we give our children a way back -- past overdone fears and >
exaggerated safety rules, around today’s electronic lures -- to the world
 > of simple, free, contact with the natural world that lightened the
 > childhood of all our past generations? >
 And what of our great city regions? Can we look past the
 > skyscrapers and subdivisions, the ribbons of freeway and container
ports > and gritty industries, to rediscover the enduring pattern of
ancient > hills and rivers and harbors, the still functional natural
regions? > Two fine new books suggest
reconnection is possible. > For our
youth, the formula’s spelled out in Richard Louv’s “Last > Child in the
Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” > (Algonquin
Books). > Historically, Louv notes, kids
learned the natural world on > farms, in families’ gardens, and exploring
woods and creeks and ravines, > swamps and ponds where, where they could
observe, capture minnows and > bugs, collect bird eggs or snake skins --
or even build elaborate tree houses. >
There’s strong evidence, he reports, that such independent play > and
exploration builds not just independence but broad mental, physical > and
spiritual health. > But today’s children,
he asserts, are systematically cut off from > natural play.
“Well-meaning public-school systems, media and parents are > effectively
scaring children straight out of the woods and fields.” The >
stated reasons seem endless, from Lime’s Disease to multiplying park >
rules to perceived perils of kid-snatching. >
 With today’s superhighways, thick traffic, shopping malls and
 > rigid control by community associations, fewer children get a chance to
 > walk or bike to school. A study of three generations of
nine-year-olds > found that by 1990, the radius around the home that
children were allowed > to play had sunken to a ninth of what it had been
in 1970. > Increasingly, Louv laments,
“nature is something to watch, to > consume, to wear--to ignore.”
He cites a television ad that depicts an > SUV racing along a
breathtakingly beautiful mountain stream--while two > children in the
back seat watch a movie on a flip-down video screen, > oblivious to the
landscape and water beyond the windows. >
The irony is that much of parents’ hyperawareness of dangers, and > all
the new restrictive rules, may make children less able to cope with >
their world. Natural play awakens childrens’ self-confidence and >
critical skill to judge and cope with perils on their own. >
 And what better place to start than in the great natural
regions > where we live? Tony Hiss and Christopher Meier are
authors of the > recently-released “H2O -- <st1:place
w:st="on">Highlands</st1:place> to Ocean.” Published by the Geraldine >
Dodge Foundation, “H2O” is both scientific and poetic in its celebration
 > of the landscapes and waterscapes of the New York-New Jersey metro
area, > <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s most globally-famed and
prominent citistate. > Indeed, while this
is <st1:place w:st="on">North America</st1:place>’s most densely settled
 > corner, now 15-million people strong, a page or two of H2O dispels
 > anyone’s image of Greater New York as a skyscraper and asphalt >
jungle. After 400 years of European settlement and 150 of intense >
industrialization, the authors assure us, all the <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:State> region’s
 > “great natural building blocks are still intact, still functioning,
still > integrated with one another.” >
 The story starts with the Highlands, an area of fast-growing
 > suburbs but also wilderness refuges for bald eagles, black bears and
 > coyotes; the great and historic Hudson River, its waters protected by
 > ferocious environmental advocacy; New York Harbor, the world’s largest
 > port, huge and calm, with 650 miles of shoreland; the Passaic River,
 > cradle of the American Revolution, with great 77-foot high falls; the
 > Meadowlands, where one can find 225 species of birds ... and much
more. > If children (not to mention
adults) need a great natural region > to explore, what better place could
there be than this “age-old, > region-wide, ongoing community of
ecosystems and organisms, habitats and > processes that” -- as Hiss and
Meier write -- “for almost 400 years have > had us for
neighbors”? > Not all of
<st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>’s metro areas offer
quite as venerable a > history as <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:State>. But exploring dozens of
citistate regions across > the country, I’ve yet to find one that lacks a
special ecology and its > own distinctive environmental
features. > The challenge everywhere is
to find ways to recultivate > wandering, to tame roaring arterial roads
so they’re more accessible to > pedestrians and bikers, and to improve
public transportation so that kids > don’t have to wait until they’re
drivers to access the full region around them. >
 Tony Hiss is an exponent of place and its almost magical role in
 > our lives; an earlier book was actually entitled “Experience of
 > Place”. Richard Louv (a San Diego Union-Tribune columnist and
also > author of “Childhood’s Future”) would give youth radically more
freedom > to roam (maybe with a cell phone to check home). He’s
suggesting there‘s > no total safety in a world where reasonable risk is
a price of being > truly human. >
Both messages are right
on.<o:p></o:p></DIV>.<o:p></o:p></DIV>
<DIV>Dan
Burden Glatting Jackson, Senior Urban Designer Walkable Communities,
Executive Director 33 East Pine Street, Orlando, Florida
32801 407-843-6552 (w) 386-454-3304 (h) 614-595-0976
(c) dbur-@glatting.com, dbur-@aol.com <A
href="http://www.glatting.com/">www.glatting.com</A> or <A
href="http://www.walkable.org/">www.walkable.org</A> </DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>

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