POSITIVE PAINTING

Until earlier this month, when passersby looked up at the overpass on Dodge

Street between Third and Fourth streets, the message they saw was quite the downer. The words “trash can” were written across the overpass in black spray paint.

A simple fix, however, is now in place after Enos Park Neighborhood Improvement Association member Chris Boyster organized a workday on Oct. 9. With pumpkin decorating and refreshments being served below, a handful of volunteers offered a little elbow grease and several hours of their time to give the west side of the overpass a fresh coat of paint.

“The end result was very good,” says Steve Combs, president of the neighborhood association. “Somewhere in the near future we hope to regroup and do the east side.”

ROCKET TRIKE STOPS IN SPRINGFIELD

Solar panels and pedal power are all one man needs in his latest effort to change the way the U.S. gets its energy. Tom Weis, an activist and former wind energy consultant, stopped his “rocket trike” in Springfield for a day this week on a ride from Boulder, Colo., to Washington, D.C.

Weis is collecting signatures for a petition – available online at www.ClimateCrisis Solutions.com – that he’ll present to federal lawmakers after he completes his 2,500-mile ride. The petition calls for the nation to develop a 100 percent renewable energy grid by 2020. Weis likens his goal for the nation to President John F. Kennedy’s goal to put man on the moon.

Weis’s mode of transportation – a Germanmade recumbent three-wheel bike with a lightweight carbon fiber shell, electric assist battery and solar powered headlights and blinkers – is just one example of what the U.S. should be exploring with greater vigor, he says. “It represents the creative potential of humans to do things differently,” he says. “When people see it they get excited.”

Weis is the president of Climate Crisis Solutions, an environmental consulting firm.