stories
2023
Rising Concerns
CHicago Health Magazine
In Chicago — as thousands whose homes have flooded know — wastewater and storm water go together here. When heavy rain storms hit, combined systems risk overflowing large amounts of sewage water into local waterways. People rarely think about any of this until something goes awry — which has been happening more often.
“Now these 100-year storms show up every three years,” says Dan Lyvers, chief operating engineer with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation Department (MWRD). “Last September, we got an entire month’s worth of rain in four hours.”
Life After Death
Chicago Health Magazine
Some answers only reveal themselves after a person dies. For those paying attention, the information can change perspectives and save lives.
In the office of Chief Medical Examiner Ponni Arunkumar, MD, shelves lined with pathology books and photos of her children fill one wall. Since 2016, Arunkumar, has led the organization in an understated and self-assured manner.
“We are the patient’s last physician,” Arunkumar says. Her office performed 10,443 autopsies in 2022 (down from a peak of 16,047 in 2020), but still significantly higher than the annual pre-Covid average of 6,200 deaths. In total, 47,077 people died in Cook County in 2021 and 52,298 in 2020.
A Shared Future
Native Science Report
The American Buffalo, a new documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns, argues that bison and Native Americans share a common history. Here’s a look at how tribes today are working to heal their communities by rebuilding herds.
“It was an incredibly cynical calculus that if you kill the buffalo, you’ll kill the Indian,” Burns told me in an interview. “It’s terrifying to contemplate what happened to the Plains tribes, who were so invested in the buffalo, who were so intertwined from birth to death, in every aspect of their lives and their spiritual lives.”
An Urban Oasis
Native Science Report
Chicago’s First Nation’s Garden thrives as a gathering space for the area’s 65,000 Native residents. In November 2018, the Chi-Nations Youth Council took over the abandoned lot that locals had been using as an unofficial dog park. Feces, trash, and rats overran the space. But a core group of 15 people, ages 7 to 80, dedicated themselves to clean-up, said Janie Pochel, Saulteaux, who works with the Youth Council. They focused one month on clearing garbage and another on bringing in soil, boulders, and plants, using a tipi to flatten land as needed.
“People really wanted green space,” Pochel said. But, she added, “It’s not just a garden.”
Capturing Time
Caregiving Magazine
At a piazza in Sicily, Patricia Solano watched her fellow photography students get turned away every time they asked to take someone’s photo. So instead of asking for photos, she told one man she liked his shoes, as she walked past.
That was enough to gain entry into his and his friends’ world. “They were waving me back. I got so many photos,” Solano says. The encounter was nothing new to Solano, who has traveled to every U.S. state and 58 countries. Most of that travel has happened in the years since her retirement, and much of it now centers around photography.
Healthy Yards, Healthy People
Chicago Health Magazine
Illinois looks nothing like it did 150 years ago and beyond. Only .01% of the Prairie State’s prairies remain.
People, however, can reclaim some of that prairie land — and the insects and wildlife that rely on it — in their yard. “They can be these little repositories to our shrinking natural areas,” says Mary Fortmann, landscape ecologist with non-profit conservation organization Openlands.
Honey bee veterinarian Elizabeth Hilborn, DVM, is a researcher with the Environmental Protection Agency. She calls native gardens “the supportive framework for our beloved and helpful wildlife.”