Countering a crisis with a neighborhood stroll By Carolyn Kelly Elm Street Writers Group Solutions to America's crisis over obesity and its attendant health care....
Countering a crisis with a neighborhood stroll
By Carolyn Kelly
Elm Street Writers Group

Solutions to America's crisis over obesity and its attendant health care costs are not all about shopping, but rather about design, and place, and community. The ingredients for a much healthier life can be right at home.

When I moved to Hyde Park on Chicago's South Side, walking and biking was a matter of practicality: As a student at the University of Chicago at the turn of the 21st century, I didn't have a car. So I walked or biked to classes, jobs, the grocery store, and bookstore.

On Saturday mornings, I dutifully packed Proust's a'la Recherche du Temps Perdu and trudged off to the library. I walked up 56th street, with its quiet houses and gardens, turned on Woodlawn Avenue by the red stone Baptist church and walked to the Unitarian church on the next corner. Then I'd double back along 57th Street to rifle through the box of free used books outside of Powell's Bookstore or buy a cinnamon roll at the Medici bakery. By the time I reached the Midway, a sweeping boulevard with playing fields at the center and flanked by long stretches of white blossomed trees, I would have been procrastinating for at least three-quarters of a mile.

I'm 23 years old now, and unlike most Americans, even people my age, I'm still walking. As a student I avoided the "Freshman 15" because exercising wasn't a matter of discipline, it was just how you got around. As an editor, living in a rural village in northern Michigan, I'm just as slim even though I now have a car and it's harder to stay fit, especially in the deep snow, cold, and dark of winter.

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