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Big and Blue in the City @ http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/curmudgeon/index_curmudgeon.html Contemporary American Life
Must Change: James Howard Kunstler evaluates how the sociology of American
communities leads to obesity and depression
Housing remains out of reach for millions of Americans @ http://www.nlihc.org/oor2003/pressrelease.htm As
housing costs increase faster than wages, decent, modest housing is
increasingly out of reach for millions of Americans, a report released today by
the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) shows. According to Out of
Reach: 2003, the least affordable states and their Housing Wages
are: 1.
Massachusetts $22.40 Living Clean in Santa Fe While St. Louis Has Blues
According to a survey
conducted by the magazine Organic Style, Santa Fe has the best scores of any
city in the United States for being free of toxins in the environment, while
St. Louis, Missouri, was at the bottom of the list, at slot number 125. The survey, released in this month's
issue of the magazine looked at factors such as exposure to agricultural
pollutants and general toxins, as well as overall air quality. About 5,500
pieces of data were crunched to produce the results. The top five cities in
the survey were Santa Fe; Rapid City, South Dakota; Grand Junction, Colorado;
Olympia, Washington; and Fort Myers, Florida. At the bottom of the list were
Cleveland, New York, Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis. "The environment
does affect you and it can trigger or exacerbate a whole raft of
diseases," said Helen Rogan, the executive editor of the magazine, who
cautioned that exposure to unhealthy elements in the environment is not an
overwhelming factor in determining health. "People should not panic immediately because environment
accounts for about 10 to 20 percent of a person's health," she said. Honolulu, Hawaii was
ranked as having the healthiest environment among big cities while the gambling
centers of Atlantic City, New Jersey and Las Vegas, Nevada also scored high for
their environmental quality. But
having a healthy environment does not necessarily mean having a healthy life. The article cites the
case of Robert Weinhold, the author of a book on healthy metropolitan areas. He
moved to Santa Fe only to discover that he became ill in the city with the
healthiest environment in the United States because he was allergic to the
plants and dust of the high desert. |
- [Futurework] Gleanings Karen Watters Cole
- [Futurework] Gleanings Karen Watters Cole
