Berlin: A Green Archipelago

Before I review this book, I must first mention a short film about Berlin that I saw at the TimesUp movie night. The Invisible Frame, it is called, where Tilda Swinton cycles around the perimeter of West Berlin, a year before the wall came down. I got the feeling that West Berlin, despite fixed boundaries and being landlocked, was doing quite well for itself. I saw closely-packed homes, parks, gardens, and none of the pinched crowding I expected to see. It was nothing like the old city of Kowloon in Hong Kong.

This unusual book, Berlin: A Green Archipelago, was written as a pamphlet in 1977, and printed in Ithaca by a German professor working in the USA. It is a manifesto for turning Berlin into a planned community that would accommodate residential, commercial, and open spaces. There would even be areas where Gypsies would be allowed to camp. In the first chapter it says that Berlin has fixed boundaries that can’t expand, so the architects would have to take into account the issue of overcrowding.

Rather than call for demolition and (what Americans call) urban renewal, the manifesto suggests creating a grid that would include existing buildings and make room for new ones. This makes sense because it allows streets large enough for buses to get through, and avoids the creation of enclaves that are badly served by public transit.

Though I love the ideas in the manifesto, a lot of them eventually became unnecessary. The unification of Germany in 1989 eliminated the need for a lot of the space mentioned in here, because the population would shift to where there was employment. After the Berlin Wall came down, the “no man’s land” on the East German side became available, as did previously undesired areas. On the opposite side of the argument are huge apartment blocks that are being demolished because there’s nobody to rent them to; people have abandoned communities where there is no employment.

I would encourage the reading of this book to anybody studying urban planning or architecture. It definitely has some important points about urban living.

Lanahan Cases in Developmental Psychopathology

One of the real-life cases in this book was a six year old boy who liked girl stuff; dolls, girls’ clothes, playing with the girls at school and not the boys. It drove his mother crazy, infuriated his father, and left them tearing their hair out trying to get him to do gender appropriate things. He loved going to the home of a cousin of the same age, so he could play dress-up in her clothes. If you’re wondering, the answer is yes, his aunt and uncle were seriously creeped out!

I don’t know when this was written, but transgender kids are all over the news nowadays, being interviewed by Barbara Walters. Twenty years ago, however, the parents would not have been encouraged to allow their son to wear a dress to school. The chapter, as with all others, comes with questions to ponder, such as how you’d feel in the clothes of the other gender, and having to do gender stereotyped activities. Would you feel bored? Out of place? Generally uncomfortable?

There are more cases in this book, equally important, mostly involving children. Some involve anxiety that keeps kids out of school, or teenagers with PTSD. All of them are worth reading, because they’re all the kind of things that a therapist will deal with. No theories here like in the usual psychology textbook, no going on and on about Vygotsky, Freud, and Piaget. These are the real things that a therapist will deal with.

But the case of the transgender kid was probably the most interesting. The next volume could be a whole book about families coping with this.

Rainwater Harvesting For Drylands and Beyond

Rainwater is seen both as a useful resource and a waste product. On one hand it keeps the plants fresh, but on the other hand is can wash polluted road runoff into the rivers. This book is about how to find a balance through conservation, and a lot of hard work. It’s meant for arid lands, where everything is dry and you have cactuses, but when it rains in arid lands, the soil can be washed away. The rain will eat away the soil, flush it downhill, and your backyard can disappear in days. As for lost soil, it ends up downstream and silts up the waterways.

Lancaster begins with simple rock dams, easily built with no cement or tools, to slow the downhill flow of water. The book progresses to another problem with drainage in the USA, and that is the pavement. When huge swaths of land are paved, water doesn’t soak into the soil, but into storm drains, which drain into the waterways. Not only does this flush all the chemicals from autos into the rivers, but since the water doesn’t drain into the aquifer, it goes dry. You’ll end up having to pump water up, and that requires energy. Lancaster recommends starting the dams at the top of the hill, and building more as you move downward. As for road runoff, he gives step-by-step plans for “rain gardens” which soak up road runoff and allow the water to drain directly into the aquifers.

The author rails against culverts, arguing that huge pipes running under roads are “shotguns”  that create higher pressure and more erosion. I have to wonder what effect the LA River has, because it’s been culverted for decades. If the banks weren’t paved, would the vegetation absorb the pollution? If so, what about the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn?

One basic tenet of this book, with regards to landscaping, is to go native. Lawns don’t exist in nature in the Southwest, and not only do they guzzle water (pumped from the aquifers) but when they dry out you get fires. Gold courses are notorious water wasters in Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, leaving less water for drinking and firefighting. Lancaster stresses native trees, shrubs, and grasses that grow with limited water. Most important, he provides ways to do these things on your own, with no need for expensive landscaping, just a shovel and a strong back. No capital needed!

Focused Observations

Greenwood and James know how important it is to observe a child before you try to teach them anything. More important than what you record is what you choose to leave out, because reports can become repetitive. Take for instance a report on a 3 year old and an 11 year old. The 3 year old isn’t going to read, write, or do math, but the older child will. Since they are different, focus the observation differently; if the three year old is doing a puzzle, how long does it take and which one do they choose? Does the 3 year old play well with others? For the 11 year old, you can report on the math and writing abilities.

Next come the portfolio collections. Have criteria for goals ready, and you can gather more information. Sharing information with families is discussed as well, and the authors recommend that everything be kept positive, never complain, always be specific, and do everything according to the parents’ convenience.

The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary

I’ve heard Hungarian Holocaust survivors talk with nostalgia about life before the war. They spoke of the beautiful cities, the cafes, how civilized it all was. The Jews of Hungary were stereotyped as urbane, well-educated, multilingual, and cultured. But this book doesn’t restrict itself to the upper classes of Hungarian Jews; it collects the stories of the small town Jewish populations, and how they were wiped out.

Hungary was one of the last nations conquered by the Nazis, at a time when they were losing the war. Though Hungary’s government was pro-Nazi (probably out of fear of the Soviets) they refused to hand over the Jewish inhabitants until later in the war. While a sizeable number of Hungarian Jews survived the Holocaust, few returned afterward.

As a well-researched text, it’s a valuable tool for anyone studying the Holocaust and its effects on Europe’s Jews. It’s also important for historians on a personal level. If your ancestors came from a particular town in Hungary, this three-volume text will let you learn all about that community.

The Sustainable Urban Development Reader

During one of my rough days as a substitute teacher, I got the idea of having the class look up their favorite city on Google-Earth, hoping to kill time until the bell rang. One of them picked Los Angeles, and inquired about the “gray thing” running through the city. “That’s the Los Angeles river” I told him. More questions followed about why it was that color, and I explained that he was looking at concrete. The river runs through a man-made concrete bank, designed to conserve the water and prevent flooding. The next questions was “how come there’s no water in it?” and I replied “LA is arid, so the river’s usually dry.” More questions, this time on how they can fill all those swimming pools.

   The fact of the matter is, throughout the USA, we have cities that are not naturally sustainable. LA was nothing until the dams and aqueducts came in, and even today you’d think they’d have a water shortage. Same thing with Las Vegas, Phoenix, El Paso, and just about every other city in the Southwest. So many of our cities grew up from unnatural beginnings, with no plan for how they’d get food, water, or building materials, nor any plan for bringing them in.

   One of the first essays is Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic, written in the 1940’s. The conservationist discusses communities setting rules for land use, agreeing on the best way to save water, dispose of waste, and take care of all the environmental issues that will effect the people. Unfortunately, his essay stresses “community” which doesn’t always suffice. If an industrialist wants to put a factory in a community, he can bypass their laws by applying to the state for eminent domain. The same holds true for water use; it is usually up to the state, not the community. Take for instance the recent controversy with the village of Kiryas Joel in upstate New York. The village wants to drill wells into the aqueduct, and the surrounding residents claim this will deplete the aquifer which all of them are using. One community’s needs may trump the other’s.

   Fast forward to 1993 with Peter Calthorpe’s The Next American Metropolis. He argues that car use has increased, leading to greater sprawl (or vice versa.) His argument is that while Americans were car-dependent back in the 70’s (OPEC embargo as proof) we were driving a lot less than we are now. Commutes were shorter, and houses were smaller, but as Americans desired bigger homes, the builders took their blueprints out into the sticks. He cites “traditional” neighborhoods, with tightly packed townhouses, where everyone gets along and you can walk to the store, school, and library, but this did not work in post WWII USA. According to him, Americans liked the feeling of privacy, so a private backyard made sense. A swimming pool in the backyard would definitely ice the cake of suburbia, along with a nice big private driveway, and a front yard to seclude the house from the street. But when you add those things together, you get increased auto traffic, water use, and lack of sociability. In New Jersey there’s a beautiful town of wooden homes called Ocean Grove, and it’s definitely a sociable community. But it would not work everywhere. A lot of people still want private houses.

    The Sustainable Urban Development Reader is a collection of writings on this topic. One of the greatest things about it is that it doesn’t draw any conclusions, that’s left to the scholar. There’s no sense in arguing that the desert is infertile or that New Orleans has poor drainage, those are facts. What the book does is it collects articles on sustainability going back decades, all the way to the days when some of our greatest cities barely existed.

The Addiction Casebook

The first sentence in the book’s preface really sums up the problem with addiction, and that problem is the stigma. Even impotence and erectile dysfunction aren’t anywhere near as shameful, attested by the fact that Senator Bob Dole was a spokesman for Viagra. But drug addiction, now that’s something nobody wants to admit. Perhaps it makes the addict look like a failure? Is it because it makes the patient look weak? Or is it because addictions are preventable, unlike cancer, acne, or tuberculosis?

The Addiction Casebook reads much like a guide for educators. It has tables and rubrics that can be filled in to assess the problem. We have issues like the amount of alcohol, the frequency of use, the time and place it is consumed. These factors are listed in order, then used in the assessment of the addict. As the title says, this book has case histories of addicts and their paths to addiction, many of which don’t involve the actual drugs or alcohol themselves. One of the cases involves a 34 year old alcoholic whose addiction cost her a job, relationship, ability to pay bills etc. Through regular sessions with a psychologist, she was found to have had chronic anxiety from her early years. The alcohol had been a way to help her cope with it, along with other stressful things like bills, rent, and deadlines.

A second interesting case involves not alcohol, pills, or cocaine, but nitrous oxide. The addict was a 20 year old with ADHD, a history of school and family troubles, and a hostile attitude towards his parents. Was his addiction to inhaling nitrous oxide canisters  a way of “dulling the pain” and gaining instant relief, or was he paranoid about the other medications he’d been using, like Aderal? Just because the gas was legally bought does not mean it was harmless. On the contrary, he’d had difficulty graduating high school, failed at college, and the massive number of cans cost $80 a week. It seems that as it was in the previous case, the underlying problem involved a preexisting disorder.

The Addiction Casebook goes on to discuss things like tobacco use, hallucinogens, and crystal meth abuse in the gay community in New York City. As with earlier cases, there are always underlying factors, be they anxiety, paranoia, feelings of inadequacy, or the shame of being a gay man in a conservative all-male environment.

I remember hearing something about addiction from the great Rabbi and Psychiatrist Abraham Twersky, that resonates with this book. He admits seeing in himself the traits of an addict. “I’m a procrastinator,” he says, “I often crave instant relief.” It is that dread of responsibility that can lead to addiction, not only drugs or alcohol, but video games and gambling. Supposedly healthy activities like mountain biking and watching movies can be addictive too.

One drink doesn’t make you an addict. Playing video games doesn’t make you an addict either. But when these things get in the way of work, nutrition, and your life, then you need to wonder who’s in control, you or the activity?