Chicagotalkingtotheworld’s Neighborhood

        They form faster here than in their original habitat.
        Since excavation began 70 years ago, water found the crevices leading from the Chicago streets to this subterranean cavern 40 feet below.
        The schizophrenic seasons produce ample precipitation that seeps down, absorbing minerals from the clay surface layer, then from the concrete foundation, and then from the steel beams, as it descends.
        Mineral-laden, it drips into the dark and dirty space, falling from the t-bone intersection of the steel beams and the concave concrete ceiling, to splat onto the dingy red paint peeling platform, where fast feet shuffle through the potential puddle, leaving nothing but a wet spot.
        But with every drip, an excess of minerals is left behind at the t-bone. And the succession of minerals deposits over the past few decades has created tiny white and tan colored stalactites, hardly noticeable amidst the tan stain speckled ceiling and rusty, peeling white paint.
        Where stalactites hang above utility boxes, fist-shaped mounds of the same white and tan mineral deposits – stalagmites – have been able to form, undisturbed in this urban cave, the State Street Subway.
        “Everything down here is brown and dripping, there’s all sorts of things dripping,” said Charlie Crawford, a 26-year-old computer systems salesman waiting for the Northbound Red Line at the Harrison Street stop.   
        He looked up at a stalactite.
        “I thought it was hobo spit,” said Crawford, who at one time alternately thought they were icicles.
        His guesses – however wrong – do accurately describe how these little guys appear to commuters, who probably only notice when a drop slides down the stalactite onto the tops of their heads.  

        At just an inch or two in length, the urban stalactite seems less than grandiose compared to its meters-long cousin magnificently hanging in ancient caves.  
        But it has a boasting point: It takes 100 years for a cave stalactite to grow a centimeter; here in the subway, the forms have grown to at least three centimeters in 70 years.
        “There is not a huge difference between the urban stalactite and its cave-dwelling cousins,” said Martin Short, a University of Arizona in Tucson professor, who studied cave stalactites to create a mathematical formula for their shape.
        It’s fair to say the equation could be applied to urban stalactites, since they both form the same way, Short said.
         “I would guess that the urban water has a much higher concentration of cement dissolved in it than the cave water has of calcium carbonate, thereby leading to quicker growth in the city,” he said.
        The great stalagmite/stalactites caves of Colorado are familiar to Crawford, who, when he was 19, first saw the specimen most people would imagine: huge chandelier formations protruding down like spikes and towering up from the ground like the sculptures children create by dropping wet sand out from inside their squeezing fists.
        He recently graduated from DePaul University with an economics degree and the daily school commute made him quite familiar with the subway stalactite scene as well.
        “I guess this is earth’s way of finding the city,” he said.
         Indeed, mineral rich water finds even the newer subway stops like Jackson Street, where stalactites grow silently, remaining incognito even in the bright, clean, shiny tiled station.     

            Left with 100-plus packets of Swiss Miss cocoa, Jared decided to hit the streets and distribute the brewed cocoa to the homeless and others working outside.  "I work in the non-profit sector because I care deeply about the philosophy behind it.  A far better paying job could be had elsewhere, but I do it because I want to be helping people that are less advantaged than I have been.  I'm not at work, but that doesn't mean there aren't opportunities to help people now.  There are people in need living in the first world, too.."

~

            It is easy to sink comfortably into the luxuries of the American upper-middle class.  Images of flood ravaged shantytowns in the Asian Pacific and the hunger swollen bellies of African children flash across high-definition flatscreens every day in West Bloomfield, Michigan.  Though the image is sharp, it remains isolated in that box of entertainment – an isolation that makes the viewer all that much more content to brush off the scene with an "isn't that a shame," or an "I wish I could do something," – statements that ring hollow with indifference; assuagement comes with the flick of a button.

            Jared Acker was never content with changing the channel, however;  he wouldn't feel complacent unless he worked to change the reality.  His friends and classmates never paid much attention to the affairs of far off lands, nor did they aspire to toil for low wages in the service of humanity. West Bloomfield produces doctors and lawyers, not international aid workers; it is a place where giving means philanthropic financial donations, not time and effort. 

"Yeah, I don't know anyone from our school that's doing that kind of work," says Stephen Maiseloff.  Maiseloff grew up with Acker; the two were close friends at West Bloomfield High School and later shared an apartment at Michigan State University (MSU).  "Everyone I can think of ended up studying business or econ or is in grad school for law or medicine," he says.  Maiseloff graduated from Michigan State with a degree in marketing and is now pursuing an MBA at Loyola. 

"I'm just not motivated by that kind of thing – the endless accumulation of wealth," says Acker.  "I could never work in a little cubicle all day wearing a suit and tie, it just never appealed to me."  Acker got his undergraduate degree in criminal justice and is now enrolled in DePaul's graduate program in International Public Service.  "It's a pretty short program, but I keep taking big breaks in between to do aid work overseas," he says.

Acker maintains that early inspiration for public service came at a much younger age; he recalls watching the television show COPS at the age of ten or eleven and deciding then he wanted to be a police officer, entering college years later with a major in criminal justice.  "I did a lot of public service work in there, working with the police," he says of his time at MSU.  "Public service is something that has always been close to me.  The international thing is just another manifestation of that desire to help, perhaps on a bigger scale."

~

Last year, while enrolled in the DePaul program, Acker worked as a Public Policy Research Intern at the Global FoodBanking Network, a global non-profit headquartered in Chicago that works to fight world hunger through better food distribution and food-banking systems.  "I sat in an office on LaSallle (drive) all day researching the policy, laws and regulations of developing nations regarding food banking," he explains.  "It was a great learning experience, but the kind of aid work I like to be doing is in the field, getting to know the people and places I am trying to help." 

            Additionally, Acker worked part-time at the Chicago Teaching Center's Outdoor Education Program. "Schools can sign up through the (Chicago Teaching) Center, we pick them up from their schools, bring them out to the ropes course, and it's all paid for by a grant from the U.S. government department of education," Acker says of the low ropes course he headed in the outdoor education program on Chicago's south side.  "It encourages team building and cooperation between students who might be in different gangs, from different (neighbor)hoods." 

Though now on a leave of absense, Acker speaks fondly of the DePaul program; "the first thing that struck me was - I was sitting in a class with 25 other people who had no other plans but to serve the public - and that, my friend, is an amazing feeling," he recalls.  "The professors in the program have lived and served in hundreds of other countries with all types of people; their experience alone makes the program worthwhile."  He plans to return, he's just not sure when.

"Jared doesn't like to make plans set in stone.  He doesn't know when he'll be back, but I suspect it'll be within the next year," Cooper offers. 

Jared will be heading back to the Dominican Republic February 1 to continue working on getting clean drinking water to rural villages.  He has begun to draw the vague outlines of a plan that has him heading to Guatemala City from there for another project. 

To see where he is now and what he is doing, check his website/blog at backpackeracker.com

            Left with 100-plus packets of Swiss Miss cocoa, Jared decided to hit the streets and distribute the brewed cocoa to the homeless and others working outside.  "I work in the non-profit sector because I care deeply about the philosophy behind it.  A far better paying job could be had elsewhere, but I do it because I want to be helping people that are less advantaged than I have been.  I'm not at work, but that doesn't mean there aren't opportunities to help people now.  There are people in need living in the first world, too.."

~

            It is easy to sink comfortably into the luxuries of the American upper-middle class.  Images of flood ravaged shantytowns in the Asian Pacific and the hunger swollen bellies of African children flash across high-definition flatscreens every day in West Bloomfield, Michigan.  Though the image is sharp, it remains isolated in that box of entertainment – an isolation that makes the viewer all that much more content to brush off the scene with an "isn't that a shame," or an "I wish I could do something," – statements that ring hollow with indifference; assuagement comes with the flick of a button.

            Jared Acker was never content with changing the channel, however;  he wouldn't feel complacent unless he worked to change the reality.  His friends and classmates never paid much attention to the affairs of far off lands, nor did they aspire to toil for low wages in the service of humanity. West Bloomfield produces doctors and lawyers, not international aid workers; it is a place where giving means philanthropic financial donations, not time and effort. 

"Yeah, I don't know anyone from our school that's doing that kind of work," says Stephen Maiseloff.  Maiseloff grew up with Acker; the two were close friends at West Bloomfield High School and later shared an apartment at Michigan State University (MSU).  "Everyone I can think of ended up studying business or econ or is in grad school for law or medicine," he says.  Maiseloff graduated from Michigan State with a degree in marketing and is now pursuing an MBA at Loyola. 

"I'm just not motivated by that kind of thing – the endless accumulation of wealth," says Acker.  "I could never work in a little cubicle all day wearing a suit and tie, it just never appealed to me."  Acker got his undergraduate degree in criminal justice and is now enrolled in DePaul's graduate program in International Public Service.  "It's a pretty short program, but I keep taking big breaks in between to do aid work overseas," he says.

Acker maintains that early inspiration for public service came at a much younger age; he recalls watching the television show COPS at the age of ten or eleven and deciding then he wanted to be a police officer, entering college years later with a major in criminal justice.  "I did a lot of public service work in there, working with the police," he says of his time at MSU.  "Public service is something that has always been close to me.  The international thing is just another manifestation of that desire to help, perhaps on a bigger scale."

~

Last year, while enrolled in the DePaul program, Acker worked as a Public Policy Research Intern at the Global FoodBanking Network, a global non-profit headquartered in Chicago that works to fight world hunger through better food distribution and food-banking systems.  "I sat in an office on LaSallle (drive) all day researching the policy, laws and regulations of developing nations regarding food banking," he explains.  "It was a great learning experience, but the kind of aid work I like to be doing is in the field, getting to know the people and places I am trying to help." 

            Additionally, Acker worked part-time at the Chicago Teaching Center's Outdoor Education Program. "Schools can sign up through the (Chicago Teaching) Center, we pick them up from their schools, bring them out to the ropes course, and it's all paid for by a grant from the U.S. government department of education," Acker says of the low ropes course he headed in the outdoor education program on Chicago's south side.  "It encourages team building and cooperation between students who might be in different gangs, from different (neighbor)hoods." 

Though now on a leave of absense, Acker speaks fondly of the DePaul program; "the first thing that struck me was - I was sitting in a class with 25 other people who had no other plans but to serve the public - and that, my friend, is an amazing feeling," he recalls.  "The professors in the program have lived and served in hundreds of other countries with all types of people; their experience alone makes the program worthwhile."  He plans to return, he's just not sure when.

"Jared doesn't like to make plans set in stone.  He doesn't know when he'll be back, but I suspect it'll be within the next year," Cooper offers. 

Jared will be heading back to the Dominican Republic February 1 to continue working on getting clean drinking water to rural villages.  He has begun to draw the vague outlines of a plan that has him heading to Guatemala City from there for another project. 

To see where he is now and what he is doing, check his website/blog at backpackeracker.com