Weekly Roundup for July 24th through 30th, 2011

This past week maintained the pace set the week before, when I posted 12 entries, readers made five comments, and the blog received 783 page views. Last week, I again wrote 12 entries, readers left four comments, one of which was spam, and the blog had 753 page views, more than 100 a day. This past week also saw the first time the blog exceeded 4,000 page views in a month, which happened late Friday. The month ended with 4,181 hits, a record. The stats are already looking good for this week, as readers left six comments, none of which were spam, and the 114 hits for today are well above last Sunday's 65. If this is the new normal, then I'm happy.




This was the last full week of Swim posts and most of my posts fit this theme one way or another, beginning with the previous Weekly Roundup in which I summarized all the previous week's Swim posts. The real Swim posts began with the second post of last Sunday, when I began covering the story of Raquel Nelson in A petition against the criminalization of walking, the most popular post of the week with 128 views. I followed up with Update on petition to decriminalize walking and wrapped up Raquel's story, for this week at least, in Her day in court, in which I also covered the conclusion of Julie Bass's legal journey.

Swimming against the tide of politics was the theme of many of the rest of the week's postings as well, beginning with I haven't forgotten about Troy's library, in which I revisited the struggle to keep local libraries open. The election for the millage will be the day after tomorrow. Look for a post about it. The swim against ignorance continued in Why do Tea Partiers hate high-speed rail?--a post inspired by a reaction to a story covered in Silly Sustainability Saturday: Carmageddon, Tea Partiers against manatees, and Butterbeer from a few weeks ago. This same story made another cameo in Silly Sustainability Saturday: The Onion, more manatees, heat wave denial, and a poem in which a U.S. Representative from Florida actually took their conspiracy theory seriously. If it weren't for the fact that the Tea Partiers are the epitome of what Kunstler calls "corn-pone fascists" who are standing in the way of sustainable solutions, I'd just type "LOL Teabaggers" and be done with them.

I didn't only document other people's attempts to swim against the political and cultural currents. I got up on my virtual soapbox myself. In What motivates Americans to act, I expressed my cynicism about America's screwed up priorities. For further commentary on this subject, read the LiveJournal version of this entry in which I explained why the NFL lockout had been resolved but the debt ceiling hostage crisis so far hasn't. I became a more idealistic in Allow me this rant on an anti-tax meme. I despaired in We could have had the Moon, instead we get Afghanistan. By this morning I was getting a bit punchy, as you can see in Debt Ceiling Cat, which will be in the next weekly roundup.

Of course, I also had the linkspams. This week, I posted only two of them, Sustainability news from Michigan's research universities for the week ending July 23, 2011 and Sustainability news from midwestern research universities for the week ending July 23, 2011. There were articles left over, which I'll collect into another sustainablity in archeology post, probably along with another CoDominion post and a leftovers post. That's in addition to the two linkspams of material I already have saved in another file. Hey, I'm an environmentalist, I recycle.

If you noticed, the previous weekly roundup didn't include a back-catalog champion. That's not the case this week, as Portland is watching "The End of Suburbia" cracked the weekly top ten with 14 page views. It also ended up as one of the top ten posts for July with 47 hits.

By the way, next month's theme for Nablopomo is Fiction. I'm participating. Here's the badge.




More on this theme beginning tomorrow, which will be in a few minutes. See you then!

Her day in court

Yesterday, July 26th, was the key day in court for two women whose sustainability-related legal plights I've been following, Julie Bass and Raquel Nelson. Both of them received about the best legal outcomes that one could reasonably expect given how things looked the day before; all charges against Julie Bass were dismissed and Raquel Nelson will not serve any jail time and may get a new trial. All of us should consider these small victories for sustainability.

Each of these women deserve their own posts, which I promise to do later. Right now, I'll just salute both of these women for swimming against the stream of government using the criminal justice system to enforce anti-sustainability standards of behavior.

Update on petition to decriminalize walking

Grist has an update to When design kills: The criminalization of walking, which I linked to last night in A petition against the criminalization of walking:

Mother convicted in son’s street-crossing death speaks out on Today show [VIDEO].

Here's the video from MSNBC.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Finally, there is a petition: Cobb County GA: Release Grieving Mother of Hit-and-Run & Install a Crosswalk. Nearly 58,000 people have signed it, up from 37,660 last night.

A petition against the criminalization of walking

Last night, I read the headline When design kills: The criminalization of walking over at Grist. I thought that it looked interesting, but I had Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Shuttle era over and new moon for Pluto edition) to get ready to post about midnight, so I didn't get around to reading it last night. This morning, I read the following in my email from Change.org.

A.J. Nelson was just four years old when he was killed in a hit-and-run by an intoxicated driver in Atlanta. Now his own mother, Raquel Nelson -- who was also hit by the car while trying to save her son -- faces up to three years in prison for A.J.'s death.

Raquel and her three children got off a bus and -- with several other passengers -- attempted to cross a five-lane highway to get to her apartment across the street. Standing at the median, little A.J. reportedly saw someone else jaywalk and ran out into the street to follow. Raquel ran out after him to stop him. But it was too late. Both Raquel and A.J. were hit by a vehicle, and A.J. died in the hospital a few hours later.

The driver, who admitted having a few beers and pain medication that afternoon, spent just six months in jail. This Tuesday, a judge will sentence Raquel Nelson to serve up to 36 months in jail for the death of her own son.
...
Though the stop itself was directly across the street from Raquel's apartment where she got off the bus, the closest crosswalk was nearly a mile away. After a long day out in Atlanta, and a missed transfer, Raquel crossed the street with other passengers on the bus, taking the most direct route home.

Raquel was prosecuted for "vehicular homicide" and other charges because she and A.J. didn't use a crosswalk to walk home. Unfortunately, she is not the first grieving mother to be prosecuted for the hit-and-run death of her child in Atlanta. The same prosecutor who convicted Raquel for her son's death also convicted another Atlanta mother whose daughter was killed in a hit-and-run while attempting to cross the street.

I wondered if this email was related to the Grist article. It is.