Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Glass Fairies
Emerge on Erie Trail
BY BOB MATTER
HAMMOND -- Inspired by Miami's
Parking Meter Fairy, a man who rollerblades
around in a pink tutu feeding about-to-expire parking meters to save car owners the hassle and
expense of getting a parking
ticket, and Johnny Applesign,
the anonymous Calumet Region citizen who
erected trail signs on and
around the Oak Savannah Trail to keep
unfamiliar trail users from
getting lost, two anonymous Calumet Region
citizens have emerged to
voluntarily sweep broken glass from the Hammond
segment of the Erie Trail.
Dubbed the "Glass Fairies", these two
citizens traveled the entire
length of the Hammond segment
of the Erie Trail Monday, stopping to sweep up large scattershots of broken
glass and to pick up or sweep
aside the occasional
glittering solo shard.
Fed up with the Hammond Park
Department's failure to sweep the trail on
a regular basis citing a lack
of manpower, the Glass Fairies
decided to pick up the glass
gauntlet and do it themselves.
"Look at how clean and beautiful the
Crown Point, Schererville,
Griffith, and Highland segments of the Erie Trail are," said one Glass Fairy.
"Rather than being a valuable
recreational and carfree transportation corridor for people to cycle and walk on
which would put more eyeballs
on the trail and have an overall
crime reducing effect in the neighborhoods
the trail passes through, the broken glass and litter on the Hammond segment discourages usage,
giving the trail a neglected and
deserted look, which draws
criminal activity," he added.
Studies have shown that half of a
typical multi-use trail's users are bicyclists, making broken glass a
particularly high concern to them because of the increased threat of
puncturing their tires it poses.
While stopping to sweep, the Glass
Fairies spoke with curious trail users passing by and distributed
literature for C4 -- Calumet Citizens for Connecting Communities -- a
grassroots citizens group in NW Indiana that promotes building and
connecting trails and bike and pedestrian friendly streets.
Other than their long, laid-back
recumbent bicycles parked on the side of the trail and their bright
orange broom and dust pan, the Glass Fairies were inconspicuous. "We're
thinking about getting bright pink shirts with ruffles and puffy
sleeves if we decide to do this on a regular basis though," according
to one the Glass Fairies.
Visit Calumet Citizens for Connecting
Communities on the internet at http://www.geocities.com/calumetcitizens/ or contact Rodney Graves, the Lake County
Coordinator, at (219) 757-3487 for more info. The next C4 meeting is
September 22 at NIRPC headquarters in Portage, IN.
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Copyleft (c) 2004 by Bob Matter
This article may be freely copied and
distributed for non-profit purposes.