La Casa Grande Colectiva

Tag: Community Links

  • OPEN FORUM ON BROADBAND IN C-U

    There was a very inspiring event this weekend where a group of community members got together to talk about getting broadband to the entire C-U community. YES!  I believe internet access is an important factor for inclusion in the emerging 21st century culture, especially a sustainable culture.  The forum was built off of a project already underway by CITES (the campus technology department) to apply for stimulus money (read: Obama money).  The stimulus package included 9 billion for getting broadband to rural and low-income communities and CITES is writing a proposal that will ask for $25-30 million.  Here’s the current draft of the map that was passed around by Mike, the project lead and panel member for the forum.
    Urbana Champaign Big Broadband version 7

    The yellow, blue, and pink areas north of campus are the low-income neighborhoods that the plan is specifically targeting. Although much of the talk during the forum focused on creating access models that include some sort of FREE access (as in beer) Mike was very clear that the proposal that he is writing won’t be FREE because the stimulus money stipulates that the plan must be “sustainable”. This is where the meaning of sustainable means different things to different people. It is still unclear what the final proposal will look like. A lot of the community members, church leaders, teachers, etc, were very clear that the digital divide is stopping many sectors from fully embracing online resources. For example, a teacher couldn’t assign online homework if they couldn’t be sure all students could get online. The librarian from Urbana Free also got up and lamented that her public access stations were constantly backed up; a sign of the times…

    Open Access Forum
    From left: Danielle (from UCIMC), Mike, (CITES), Anne Bishop, (GSLIS community informatics), Abdul (GSLIS), and a church organizer (can't remember her name, sry)

    I can envision a compromise being a network of free wireless nodes that reach every home. The wireless would have some bandwidth limit if needed. If you want your own wired connection, you’d have to pay a certain amount. This would enable everyone to have some sort of access, and also allow people to have the super-sexy-mega-bandwidth. The mega-access really makes the whole project enticing to a lot of the more affluent parts of town already getting screwed by Comcast, but don’t realize it.  Mike was saying he wanted 100 MBPS… damn.

    There is a website up to coordinate the whole effort.  (Champaign Urbana Open Access Coalition) Anyone interested in OpenAccess for Urbana-Champaign should think about signing up.

  • Recycling House Mates

    Hi, my name is Don Thorsen and I’ve recently moved into La Casa, here in Urbana Illinois.  Maria put up on our wall a poster of C-U from around circa 1972(?).
    Urbana-Champaign poster
    And I was able to pull from my just moved belongings a drawing from 1974 of “Earthworks”  the co-op grocery store also shown on Maria’s historic poster.
    Don's drawing of Earthworks (1974)

    The ideas and ideals of community, versus say commodity, have been around longer than any of us, but I’m pleased to once again be a part of a household of active, interesting folks!   Be seeing you around.

  • Urbana Chicken Effort – 5 Year Update

    extreme-chicken1Lately we’ve had several revelations about chicken keeping in Urbana, IL.  It started when Ronna dug up this 2004 article from the New York Times while doing research on Urbana city ordinances.  The article begins, “A movement is underfoot in Urbana.”  Well, this is an update on Urbana chickens 5 years later.

    The article titled “From City-Reared Chickens, Farm-Fresh Eggs” (10/4/2004) quotes city attorney Steve Holz (*arrested development chuckle) “There is no restriction on livestock or poultry in the city [of Urbana].”  It goes on to say that “the city can take action against owners if they keep the animals in a way that hurts the health or safety of the neighborhood.”  So thats it. Keeping chickens in town is %100 legit, until they become a problem.

    I joined the yahoo group Urbana Chicken Effort awhile back, which I presume was the original communication tool for the “movement” that the article mentions.  With 32 members signed up, the list is still used to coordinate feed and chick buying.

    The other revelation occured when Heather ran into Danielle Chynoweth at the IMC.  According to Danielle, our oldest chicken, Ginger, was originally owned by Molly Stentz and is estimated to be 8 years old!  The 2004 NYTimes article quotes Stentz as saying, “There are so many people in my neighborhood who are doing it.  It’s low-maintenance and fun.”  This means that our elderly Ginger is one of the original Urbana Chicken Effort chickens, and she’s still ticking!

    So, La Casa is curious to know more about the history of Urbana Chickens.  How many people are keeping chickens in town these days?  Do they take as many photos as us?  How can we help each other and encourage more chicken cooperation?  Please comment and let us know how your ladies are doing.