Are the green spaces of Intown Bham an answer to ADHD and obesity?

Maybe. If we take advantage of what we have available to us. According to the December issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and reported in Birmingham News last week, the amount of open spaces in a neighborhood has a correlation to the amount of body fat, hyperactivity and cognitive ability. So move to Norwood, Bush Hills or around Highland Avenue or near one of the many parks of Intown and your children will all grow up to be hot-bodied, well adjusted, 1600-SAT achieving teenagers! Go Intown!

If only it were so easy. Food is so good. TV is so comfortable. Video games are so addictive. "Excercise" kinda sucks. This article is good news though. The linear and street bordered parks of Norwood Blvd, Bush Blvd and Highland Avenue were designed in tandem as gems in a dreamed of city of parks and open spaces. I still get excited about that idea. Perhaps if we can find more social reasons to draw people out into our many open spaces we can actualize the health potential of our parks?

For the technical out there you can read the actual Journal article here.

Birmingham Chamber wants to know how people feel about living in Birmingham.

We have a regional Chamber of Commerce in Birmingham. Ideally that's supposed to help the Metro area to work better together, but you wouldn't guess that based on the many fiefdoms that make up our area's political geography. UrbanUpscale focuses on the historic and older areas of Birmingham and the surrounding area, but I'm interested in a poll that the Regional Chamber is looking for responses to. Please take a second to take our poll to the right then click HERE to go to the poll that the Chamber is doing and see what people in neighborhoods all over the area-historic and otherwise are thinking.

The password for the Chamber poll is "bham".

"We grow old by deserting our ideals." Sam Ullman

I think I would have liked Sam Ullman if I'd had the opportunity to know him in 19th century Birmingham. His progressive work and independent spirit live on in the spirit of the Southside today. His home, preserved and historically designated through UAB, serves as a reminder of the inspiration the living man gave to Birmingham and the world.

One of my customers is a retired teacher who over several years has told me several stories about the old Ullman High School, named after Sam Ullman. This was one of the few high schools that educated Blacks in Birmingham beginning in 1937 and continuing until 1970. The building still stands on UAB's campus near the football field and track on 6th Avenue South. A few weeks ago I came across the poem that has contributed as much as anything to make Ullman's name known worldwide, "Youth". Reading it I get a sense of the way the man thought and perhaps a window into the unique character that lives on the Southside of Birmingham in particular and perhaps in the new residents and businesses creating Intown in general. I'm including the first two paragraphs of the poem but you can read the full poem here.

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a body of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Lots of choices in the city for election night.

You'd think it was a friday. For my neighbors in Norwood, it looks like many will be heading to Norwood Circle for a pot luck and intimate company looking out over downtown from a large back porch. Email me for an address. For those who want to get out into the streets there's ton's of choices. Cosmos Bar and Grill will be open and watching its many LCD screens and there is no cover except on weekends during special occasions. Free programs are going on at Steel Urban Lounge at 1st Ave N and 23rd Street downtown, Steppers and Walkers at 2223 4th Ave North, downtown next to the Birmingham News (they say they will have drink and food specials all night), I've heard from friends meeting at several different restaurants around the city and the Birmingham Obama campaign office will be partying at the Boutwell Auditorium in the Exhibition Hall, 1930 8th Avenue North, Birmingham, Al 35203 at 7:00 P.M. until 11:00 P.M. Whew! As I always say:

What to do, what to do?

Blog hyper-local, Buy hyper-local. Neighborhood stores help with election lines.

Tomorrow is the biggest election day in anybody's recent memory. UrbanUpscale-Intown Green's staff (me) was so inspired by CNN correspondent and Tom Joyner Morning Show regular guest Roland Martin's idea of helping the election by helping people who are expected to be standing in tomorrow's long lines.

What to do? What to do?


Oh, I know. Food and drink.

I contacted two neighborhood stores who I have worked with in the past and they have donated and discounted some food items to help out the cause. This is part of the

"Shop where I sleep" campaign

that has been hinted here in the past. Now I'm stepping up the volume. Southwest Supermarket in Titusville and Lusco Foods Grocery in Collegeville at 3800 Shuttlesworth Drive. The owners are great guys and carry some nice items that I like and hadn't been able to find in the big national chains. Notice the Morgan Creek muscadine table wine in the picture (the wine is for tomorrow night, not for the lines. Just so we're clear). This is from an Alabama winery located off of 280. Lusco Foods sells this brand; I'd recently been hipped to this brand by downtown fashion haberdasher Sonya Faye's Tailors. Hadn't noticed it yet at my regular grocery store, but Bill Mardis has it ready for the taking. Lusco's is also sponsoring the "name these 5 red trees" Ben and Jerry's pint give away.

I need your help in this. If you want to donate some snacks, please call me tomorrow and I'll let you know which poll I'm working at that time. I'm trying to go to both the Norwood Community Center location and The Hudson School location during the course of the day starting at about 11am or noon. I can be reached at 205-223-8637

Birmingham Home and Garden Magazine wants you, Norwoodians.

Some of you have put some serious money into your home and have great taste to back it up. Now's the time to floss a little in full, glossy color. Birmingham Home and Garden wants to do an article on Norwood for the magazine in an upcoming issue. My contact, a church member, tells me that they are looking for folk who have done upgrades recently to their homes. Email me or send a response at the end of this post and I will get your information to the magazine. cdechols@gmail.com is the direct email address.

Thus sayeth Mike, Eat not of the fruit of the tree in the center of Norwood Boulevard.

Lesson learned yesterday: beautiful trees aren't always your friends. At 34th Street and Norwood Blvd. there is a female gingko biloba tree, very rare, that produces a small, round, smelly fruit that is on the ground now.

Me: "So will eating or making a tea of this fruit improve my memory?"
Mike Helms: "No. But it may kill you!"

Me: "Oh."

My ensuing laughter shows you my dark sense of humor. Mike Helms (no relation to the late Senator, Jesse) is an unapologetic botany enthusiast. In the span of about 30 minutes I got many times more information on the day to day workings of the greenery I walk past everyday than a biology degree and a lifelong interest in science ever provided. It helps when you love something, and Mike loves green, growing things. Turns out this ginkgo tree is rare because the smelly fruit causes people to not plant female species, so the Boulevard has yet another distinction to it's name. Even the shape of the gingko leaf figures into neighborhood architecture history: the ginkgo leaf was a common motif in the Art Nouveau/ Art Deco movement that influenced architecture and home fashions when many of the homes in Norwood, Forest Park, and Bush Blvd were built.

Mike has agreed to regularly make readers privy to the deep wellspring of botany knowledge he has amassed here on UrbUps-Intown Green. We plan video and printable description you can use in planning your garden and yard. For now though stay away from Gingko fruit and stick to the in store extracts.