russklettke.com

As Boston’s new youth hostel comes online in 2012, it welcomes travelers both foreign and domestic to a very green future for budget travel in the U.S. While European hostels are often government subsidized, the American facilities are built on donor dollars ($43 million) and operate on guest revenues (about $40/night).

My article on the hostel and its sustainable conversion from a derelict, 19th Century office building is in the January/February/March 2012 issue of Green Building & Design. As a writer for this publisher – on this title and American Builders Quarterly and New American Luxury – I work only on stories that include an environmental feature.

“The Biggest Loser,” love it or hate it, is thought by some to be the driver of a fitness trend: group exercise classes are increasingly popular with fitness trainees and fitness center operators alike.

Why? People who are new to fitness often try and fail with a simple gym membership –- they have no clue as to what they should do once there. Group exercises classes offer a social component, creating a sense of community, the opportunity to meet new people and accountability to attend and achieve. Fitness centers are finding they can charge a bit more from members who elect to exercise with three, ten or 20 other people under the supervision of a fitness professional.

I wrote about group fitness about a year ago for HairLoss.com and the trend continues, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.

Regardless of whether you are eating at a fast food joint or a gourmet-acclaimed restaurant, on the averages you will ingest 55 percent more calories in those places than if you made the meal yourself (source: Center for Science in the Public Interest).

Think about that: you can reduce by half your caloric intake by simply changing how and where you eat. In this article written for Hairloss.com, I boil down the premise of my book, A Guy’s Gotta Eat, the regular guy’s guide to eating smart (DaCapo Press, 2004, with Deanna Conte, MS RD LD). Learn to make a healthy, 15-minute meal at home and you’ll likely eat better and manage your weight more effectively.

Certainly, there will be many occasions when eating out will still be necessary. But if you switch just three or four meals a week to your kitchen, your caloric intake will effectively be reduced and the amount of beneficial nutrients that you consume will increase.

Here is a case where I got to write* about two personal passions – sustainable architecture/design and wellness – in one story. This article is about a Boston-based architecture firm, ARC/Architectural Resources Cambridge, which designed some remarkable green campus buildings in Rochester (RIT) and Dallas (the Episcopal School of Dallas). Special kudos to the Episcopal School and former Dallas Cowboy Daryl Johnston, where the new athletic center building and program focus on nutrition and non-athlete wellness as much as athletes.

http://gbdmagazine.com/2011/11/novdec-2011/

Navigate to page 137 for my article (“Two Schools, Two Climates”).

*Green Building & Design magazine, November-December 2011

In health clubs throughout the world, millions of people are working out with the best of intentions and worst of exercise form. Often, this is due to a poor understanding of their own physiology and how it works. The phenomenon is known as proprioception. Arguably, the person who has studied human physiology has a very good understanding of it.

Of course it does not make sense for everyone to go out and get a degree in exercise physiology. That’s what fitness trainers do (or should do). But at least a rudimentary understanding of where the muscles are and their role in an exercise can help quite a bit.

I write about proprioception in this article for Hairloss.com, explaining how simply observing others perform the choreography of an exercise is inadequate instruction. The tall swimmer has different body geometry than the squat-but-powerful wrestler, hence the way they execute the same exercise might differ in how it appears. What is better and more effective is for the individual to have some knowledge of his or her own muscle, tendon and bone structure. A good trainer should be able to communicate this somewhat, but the visual aid of a physiology chart (try this one) can be very instructive as well.

The value of search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo lies in their ability to deliver what Internet users are looking for. That fact is a fundamental driver of what I do as a writer of search-optimized web content, the value that I provide many of my clients.

An article on avoiding pothole damage, written for my client Pothole.info, is a good example. It introduces factual information on a concept – that potholes can cause expensive problems for motorists – then it provides key steps for avoiding or mitigating the damage. How-to information helps bump up an article in a search because that tends to be what people are looking for.

Potholes are an evergreen subject of interest and of web searches. This is because, unfortunately, infrastructure maintenance is sorely lacking at the federal, state and local levels. As a writer about infrastructure, road building and asphalt, I am made acutely aware of how our roads and bridges will continue to deteriorate to an increasing degree because the poor economy (and resultant reduced road repair budgets) and basic physics (those having to do with freeze-thaw cycles and traffic, all basic natural atrophy) have found a point of collision. Smarter, more efficient methods of building and maintaining roads and bridges are now in development to answer this need – part of what Pothole.info documents.

Philadelphia architect Alvin Holm, who champions classical design in his work, was a delight to interview for this story I wrote for American Builders Quarterly (September 2011, from the link navigate to page 93). Trained in the mid-20th century in all that mid-century modern architecture was meant to be, Holm found his way back to classicism in the 1980s and never came back.

He describes with gusto his classical parlor design for an Irish pub as a place “where a multitude of happy drinkers gather every evening in a Corinthian saloon.” Holm also worked on the 19th century galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which he says was a victory for the paintings it held: “The previous interior was one big Miesian universal space, like an airplane hangar. Museum-goers were confused. People respond better to a universe that is orderly, where you do not need to know much to get it. The museum functions now as an organism, where all the parts related harmoniously to the others – the paintings to walls, the walls to the rooms, and one set of galleries to all the others.”

Note: I write frequently about architecture, landscape architecture, building, construction, infrastructure, urban planning, green building, public housing and community development for American Builders Quarterly, Green Building & Design and Pothole.info.

People take their potholes very seriously. So there was great concern in New York City when the streets department deemed what looked like a pothole to in fact be a “street defect,” which is not their department.

I had fun with this one in my article on Pothole.info – perhaps due to seeing too many B movies in my childhood. That street defect might be a window on something more sinister in a subterranean world.

As a writer for Pothole.info – the blogsite that tracks news relating to pavement and infrastructure – it was hardly a stretch to connect personally with the primary topic. Everyone uses roads, and potholes are everywhere (more today than ever before, given the underfunding of our aging highways and streets). But I’m also an avid urban biker, routinely commuting 16 miles by bike nine months out of the year to my gym. Plus I am an amateur triathlete, having completed my 50th and 51st lifetime races in 2011.

In this article on biking and pavement problems, I am the bicycling writer who could explore how potholes affect racers, long-distance riders and recreational bikers. To goose the SEO characteristics of the story, I made sure to include a variety of geographical locations and a how-to guide on avoiding potholes – which I sourced from experts, but understand well from my own peddling about town.

Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are a category of prescriptive and over-the-counter medications that go by names such as  Nexium, Pepcid, Prevacid, Prilosec, Protonix and Zegerid. These are some of the most profitable medications made as they are used by millions of people in developed countries, including and especially the U.S. For an article I wrote for HairLoss.com, I interviewed a handful of doctors, therapists, nutritionists, holistic health practitioners and others who offer their advice on managing gastronintestinal conditions that include acid reflux disease (gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD), Crohn’s disease and related conditions. They offer solid advice that largely addresses the cause of these conditions – unlike medications that more typically manage symptoms, not the root problems of stress and poor diet. As a writer, I also felt close to these conditions because I suffered severe heartburn for years when I was younger – and which I have successfully addressed holistically since.

Chicago Sun-Times food writer Michael Austin includes mention of my book, A Guy’s Gotta Eat, in a review of two other books (Esquire Eat Like a Man and Men’s Health Big Book of Food & Nutrition) on the general topic of men and cooking. Austin allowed me some sense of victory in the piece, seven years after my own book was published:

Chicagoan Russ Klettke was preaching the importance of healthy eating among men long before the era of guy food arrived. His book on the subject was released in 2004. In it, he talked about the importance of avoiding high-fructose corn syrup, among other simple ways to lose weight. It was a novel concept back then, but it is almost a given today.

Another of his weight-loss suggestions: Cook at home.

Non-cooking men, mostly single and on the younger side, have relied on processed foods through the years, and it shows. The fat, sugar and salt that keep those foods alive tends to bulge the waistline and the cheeks.

A Guy’s Gotta Eat: The Regular Guy’s Guide to Eating Smart by Klettke with Deanna Conte (Marlowe & Company, with a second printing by DeCapo, $15.95) offers fellas processed-food alternatives, and simple rules to follow. It has recipes, too, including roasted beer-can chicken.

“Nothing’s verboten,” says Klettke, a freelance writer and certified fitness trainer who grows lettuce, beans, Swiss chard, tomatoes and oregano in the backyard of his North Side home. “When my book came out, everyone was talking about the Atkins Diet, and low-carb, and cutting out certain categories. No one likes that and it doesn’t work. Don’t think of being on a diet. Just think about enjoying your food, but go about it with some skill.”

The recipes in Esquire Eat Like a Man are not “healthy” per se, but as Klettke sees it, as long as men are being encouraged to cook, it’s a step in the right direction.

“There’s a victory in that,” Klettke says. “If you make your food at home, chances are it’s going to be healthier than if you eat something outside of your house.”

Which leads me to conclude: People should listen to me in real time.

At Pothole.info, the blog site that reports and analyzes all things related to pavement maintenance and deterioration, we endeavor to summarize key developments in infrastructure. This includes funding and, inevitably, politics. As funny as a site dedicated to the lowly pothole may sound, this ultimately has to do with our nation’s $1.6 trillion investment in roads since the 1950s: how road deterioration affects commerce, safety and productivity, and where the topics of government spending and job creation intersect. As a long-time student of economics, I like writing about these kinds of real world challenges – in particular, because potholes are a universal experience.

Needless to say, there is a lot of news on the topic today. In this article, we looked at a pronouncement to the business community by the governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley, pledging to increase infrastructure funding. Naturally, those funds will need to be raised and likely will come from a combination of gas taxes and toll increases. Our approach was to look at the opinion writers, pro and con, as well as objective third party views, to provide a 360-degree perspective on O’Malley’s proposal.

Pothole.info, the site on all things pavement – which I populate with a majority of its content – takes on national politics with a challenge to President Obama. Following his April speech extolling Republicans for endangering the country’s infrastructure by underfunding maintenance programs, Pothole.info felt it important to provide a larger historical perspective on politics, potholes and infrastructure. After all, is there anything more shovel ready than a pothole? This article looks at 2009-2010 stimulus package spending relative to good and bad road conditions and missed opportunities for job creation.

As a Chicagoan, I am surrounded by more than a century’s accumulation of important architecture that is recognized around the world. So it has been particularly thrilling for me to write for Guerrero Howe, a publisher based here that produces titles including Green Building & Design and American Builders Quarterly.

The May 2011 issue of GB&D includes my profile of the Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago, designed by Murphy/Jahn architects. Built just steps away from where the first controlled nuclear reaction took place during World War II (Manhattan Project), the largely-submerged facility benefits from a passive geothermal temperature-control system. But what most users of the library will experience is the above-grade, glass-domed reading room and unimpeded sight lines within and outside the 28,800-square-foot structure (books are all underground, accessible in minutes through an automated storage and retrieval system).

The article can be found at http://gbdmagazine.com/2011/05/may-2011/ — navigate to page 110 or simply search in the document by my last name, Klettke.

The mere phrase “junk food” carries a simple, recognized image: bad for you, something to avoid, but ubiquitous in our culture. So why do people keep eating it by the truckload?

The American Institute for Cancer Research has found that about 25 percent of caloric intake comes from junk food. So it stands to reason that if we could just stop eating these meals and snacks that are rich in fat, sugar and salt, a serious dent in obesity and metabolic-syndrome diseases could be made.

While our society as a whole would benefit from doing so, dietary changes can only realistically begin with individuals. This article on junk foods you can loose takes the task down to actionable steps for addressing one of Western society’s largest dietary problems. I write about nutrition, fitness and well-being for HairLoss.com, where we look at how such lifestyle factors affect hair, skin and overall health.

In our ongoing work with Pothole.info, we get to follow the development of “swarm theory” as it unfolds in reality. Specifically, we are tracking the smartphone apps that are connecting citizens – regular folks who can point their mobile devices at problems such as potholes, graffiti or broken street lights - with the government agency responsible for their repair.

This story is on SeeClickFix and lead developer Ben Berkowitz. More than 90,000 local problems have been sent through the SeeClickFix system, about half of which have been rectified, claims Berkowitz. The developers have secured more than $1.5 million in financing, and Berkowitz was named by The Huffington Post as “Greatest Person of the Day” on December 2, 2010 for his work at providing Millennials – the biggest cohort to incorporate apps into their daily lives – an opportunity to get involved in their communities. My story on this cites independent research that shows that people in the 21-33 year age group readily believe that an app can create meaningful change, particularly on local government matters.

What incentive do municipalities have to go along with all these complaints from SeeClickFix? Several cities that have embraced it are able to remove staff from pothole identification duty and shift their work to actually fixing the potholes. And the accuracy of how the app identifies the location of the pothole is reducing redundant repair trips, bringing costs down further. Potholes are fixed and cities, counties and states save money – and citizens get a smoother ride. It’s a win-win-win – as a writer, it’s the kind of consumer technology story I love to cover.

I write reviews of books and movies that address food and fitness for my client, HairLoss.com. When asked by the client to write a review of “Supersize Me,” the hilarious 30-day journey of filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, I jumped at the opportunity. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie when I saw it in the theater at its initial release. And its message, to critically analyze the dangers of overeating processed foods, was pretty much what I wrote about in my own book (A Guy’s Gotta Eat, the Regular Guy’s Guide to Eating Smart, with Deanna Conte MS RD LD, Marlowe/Da Capo Press, 2004).

I often wonder about how much impact one movie or one book or a collection of such things can have on our culture. There simply is no way to measure it, but the decision makers at major food companies at least give indication that they are trying. Post-Spurlock’s movie, McDonald’s discontinued the Supersize meal offering. And as of March 2011, Subway sandwich shops worldwide have more units than McDonald’s. While there is plenty of opportunity to find a high-fat, high-calorie meal at a Subway, the perception of “healthier for you” is there. Perhaps the message is getting through.

With two-thirds of adult Americans overweight and obese, the reasons why we have gotten to this point of ill health are varied, complex and often mysterious. But a segment of this population engages in compulsive overeating.

This article, which I wrote for HairLoss.com, delves into the theories, books and therapies that address chronic overeating and binge-eating behaviors. As I conclude in the article, “There are no easy solutions. But approaching it outside of the simple construct of diet and exercise could establish a more meaningful basis to weight management — changing the dynamic enough to approach healthier living with a completely different mindset.”

As part of my responsibilities as senior correspondent for Pothole.info, I was invited to join a panel of experts on potholes and pavement preservation. Other guests included Kevin Nursick, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Transportation, Jim Mahoney, a pavement materials engineer and program director for the Connecticut Advanced Pavement Lab at the University of Connecticut, and Ben Berkowtiz, CEO and co-founder of SeeClickFix.com, who was named by Huffington Post in 2010 as a Tech Gamechanger.

Here is the hour-long program: Potholes Are Unbearable/The Colin McEnroe Show WNPR/CPTC

Pothole.info is the go-to source for news, information, perspective and even humor on the universal experience of potholed pavement. With more than $1.65 trillion dollars invested in American roads, streets and highways – most of those constructed 40, 50 and 60 years ago – the ticking time bomb of infrastructure deterioration calls for innovative ways to economically and effectively keep those roads serving individuals, municipal services and the economy overall.