The Public Square
Fridays at 4:45 and 6:45 pm on WILL-AM
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Public Square archives
Jenny Hill on Urbana's recent at-large ballot referendum and Kelsey Kellner on the Allerton Park deer hunt. Both are students from the Urbana Middle school enrichment program
Friday, December 03, 2004
Hi. My name is Jenny Hill. I am 11 years old and a member of the Urbana Middle School enrichment program.
By now the subject of whether or not to add 2 at-large seats in the city council has already been settled. But was it necessary to vote on it?
This is an issue that turns people of the same political party against each other. Some people feel strongly about different sides of this subject, and they have their own reasons to support them. One example is my parents. They are both democrats, but my dad was in favor of the addition of 2 at-large seats, and my mom was against it. All around my neighborhood (mostly democrats) the signs about this issue were not all alike.
After hearing my parents' opinions, I figured out that the "+2 group" believed that adding 2 at-large seats could help our mayor's position in the city council get stronger. The "no at large group" felt that the mayor didn't give good enough reasons to add these seats because he brought up the subject too quickly.
My own conclusion is that the issue of the 2 at-large seats should not have deserved a place on the 2004 ballot because there are much more urgent issues that our country has to face right now.
Hi, my name is Kelsey Kellner. I am a sixth grade student at Urbana Middle School. Anupama Pilbrow is the author of this commentary.
There are an estimated 383 deer at Allerton Park. Exactly 162 permits are given out to the hunters per season. 24 hunters are allowed in Allerton Park per week. The population of deer doubles about every five years. Let's say that there was a limit (even though there actually is a limit on the number of hunters, but none for the amount of deer that they can take) and that each hunter took three deer, there would be 127 deer left. Should this happen? NO WAY! That is a tremendous decrease in deer.
A few good ideas for decreasing the population of deer without bow hunting, and possibly mutilating, deer would be creating a "force-out", or tranquilizing and then moving the deer to a better location, such as an abandoned forest. With archery you must shoot in curtain places such as the neck; if you neglect to do this then the deer will become mutilated, and could die months later because of infection. Managing deer populations is a necessity, but surely we can do it in a more civilized manner.
Deer do not deserve to suffer, and mutilation is not a humane solution. As Mark Straka stated in a letter to the News-Gazette, "Kids do not need to see a gut shot deer bleed out in the 4-H Camp!"
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Laura Marland from Broadlands, IL, on "Headroom of One's Own"
Friday, November 26, 2004
My name is Laura Marland. I’m a free-lance writer and artist, newly settled in Broadlands, Illinois.
My friend Carol and I have, once or twice, gotten into a minor tiff about what it takes to be a writer. Carol was my high-school history teacher many years ago, and she does, bless her heart, tend toward a certain all-knowing maternalism, which, at times, drives me nuts.
The tiff develops when she points out to me that to be a writer, one has to write every day, for a significant length of time.
“Get real,” I say. “If that were true, no one except the wealthy would ever get out a book. People who do dishes, change diapers, work as firefighters, clerks, bartenders, bankers, they write.”
I get impatient with talk about What It Takes to Be a Writer because I think it’s based on Romantic notions that place more importance on artists than on art and argues for an irrelevant perfectionism that dwells uneasily with creativity.
But there is, famously, an argument about another “requirement” of the writing life that has influenced me—Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. She points out that a writer must have what few women of her day had--a place to engage in that most unfeminine activity—thought.
In the spring I married the man of my dreams; last summer we moved to a house in the southeastern edge of Champaign County, Illinois. The floor’s bare; nothing matches; it’s crowded; it’s home. But there’s a problem. It’s just one big room.
We’ve got plans. My husband has begun designing the attic, says it’s got plenty of room for a separate study for me. A Room of My Own, where I can retire and write.
But for now, I write at an old farmhouse kitchen table, inches from the big table at which we spend most of our time. Beyond the window in front of me there’s a crabapple tree, swarming with robins. They make quite a picture: the birds, the berries, the clear blue sky of early autumn.
Of course, I haven’t written anything when anyone’s around—neither my husband nor my two stepchildren, who come to stay every few weekends, and are, like their father, bearers of light and laughter and joy.
They are a great gift to me, the only children I will every have.
But I get tense when I hear they’re planning to come.
My husband knows why. He says it’s because I act like their arrival is the Second Coming. I cook; I clean; I treat them like honored guests. He says I need to learn to treat them like children, who understand that grown-ups have things to do. And really just want to be around.
So last weekend, while they were here, I popped Beethoven into my Walkman, sat down at my little blue table, inches from where my new family gathered, and wrote.
The Pastoral filled my head; the birds perched; the keys of my laptop clicked. I had achieved something that wasn’t available to Virginia Woolf: an electronic space. Headroom of My Own.
Between my last marriage and this one, I had plenty of time to be alone. I had an apartment overlooking Lake Michigan where waves crashed on the beach across the street. I had, my friends said, Taken Control of My Life and My Space. I didn’t write a word.
It will be spring before the attic space is finished, spring before I can
climb to my perfect little writer’s retreat, sit among my books, be alone, and create.
I’m going to get lonely and go downstairs to work.
