By Harold Henderson
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“The unprecedented media focus on America’s epidemic of domestic violence is having a dramatic impact on public attitudes and behavior,” the San Francisco-based Family Violence Prevention Fund reports in a recent newsletter–but it may not be the impact the group wants. Polls commissioned by FVPF show that, in November 1995, “nearly one in three female respondents (30 percent) say they have been physically abused by a husband or boyfriend sometime in their lives; in July of 1994, that number was just 24 percent.”
Traffic congestion? I’ll give you traffic congestion. Writing in the newsletter of the Chicago Maritime Society (Summer), Phillip Elmes describes one effect the thriving port of Chicago had on the Loop in the 1880s: “Being ‘bridged’ was a common daily experience as wagons, ‘horse cars’ and pedestrians alike waited for blocks in every direction for bridges raised to accommodate the continuous river traffic to be lowered once again. As late as 1890, [businessman F.E.] Coyne was to report, ‘There were lumber, coal and steel barges being towed, and quite frequently large steamships under their own power passing at all hours. It was a common occurrence for a large steamer to get stuck in the draw and hold up traffic for hours at a time.’”
The isolation wave. According to Dr. Cynthia Whitney, who contributed to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of the 1995 Chicago heat wave, mortality among persons living alone remained exceptionally high even after controlling for socioeconomic factors.
