Let’s hear it for rotting organic matter! “Fertilizers are best when they come from the yard itself,” according to Ken Dunn of the Resource Center, who has been known to give away compost bins for yard waste at North Park Village Recycling Center on North Pulaski. “The yard then becomes like the rain forest whose lush vegetation is supported in rather poor soil, but feeds on ample nutrients from the decaying plant matter of previous seasons.”
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Is this a vicious circle? Maureen Hellwig of Erie Neighborhood House on the neighborhood cycle as it often plays out in Chicago (The Network Builder, Fall): “During periods of neighborhood disinvestment, grassroots organizing keeps the neighborhood afloat and fosters the creation of alternative, community controlled institutions to fill the void caused by the flight of private capital.” But then, “if the neighborhood organizing and alternative institutions are successful, private capital returns and the people who fought to make it happen get pushed out.”
The two members of the 1993-’94 Illinois congressional delegation with the worst pay-equity records, according to lllinois Politics (November), are downstate Democrat (and possible 1996 U.S. Senate candidate) Dick Durbin, whose female staffers get 56 cents for every $1 paid to males, and downstate Republican Thomas Ewing (53 cents). Best of the bunch was now-retired Democrat George Sangmeister ($1.34).
