I have touched on some of this stuff before, and even brushed up against it previous when i had 4 things i just touched upon.

So here we go, I’m writing from notes i took on a paper plate.  I almost prefer writing on unconventional things than on a legal pad of paper with a pen.  well, I generally always write with a pen.

I know when i initially came home from college and started looking to create my own community and find friends and people with common interest, it was difficult.  I was baffled at, when  i sat down and fully thought about it, where in the hell i was supposed to meet these "like minded people".  I thought about the old days of a small town and how you could run into people at the grocery store, and see them on the street later, and run into them at the bank or post office, and then see them again on sunday at church or at a friend’s party.  Now granted… this is a small western town idea that i have seen in TV shows and movies.  Lord only knows if it really existed, but i like to think it did.  And I like to believe that this sort of community also existed in cities.  People didn’t have the ability to cover as much geographical distance and so would stay within a certain radii as they went about their business.  *side note*  there are always pluses and minuses when it comes to innovation and new technology, the car/train/airplanes are great, but they separate us.  computers and cellphones are fabulous, but they isolate us.  But these are highly innovative and great advances… it’s the nature of the beast**  So to continue… I entered my suburban lifestyle living with my parents almost a year ago and struggled with the concept of where i was supposed to come up with people to have relationship and community with because as a human, that’s what i crave.  (which ties into a lot of what i’m learning and reading in Searching for God Knows What by donald Miller)  So i thought, well there’s bars and coffee shops, and church and my job… and my family.  But realistically, my job was very isolated, i don’t like the bar scene, I have no intention of approaching people at a coffee shop, and my family had limited connections, it was their friends from their interests…  so there really was no place to meet people except at church.  So that’s where i started.  But i think that is a sad sad state of affairs.  the ability to find community is slim and hard.  and making friends is a difficult task to begin with, and now we have gotten to a point where it is even harder.  Do you know your neighbors?

So that was one point.   another one is something i may have forgotten what i meant.  *looks at plate*  all i have written down is "the city community".  I’ll go with this one where i’m at right now.  I think there is a lot of potential for the city community.  I think there is so much benefit in investing in the area where you live, in getting to know your neighbors, being involved in your area.  It gives back to the city, it keeps areas in better repair, and it shows people that we care about the area around us, the public space and that it deserves respect.  I know it’s like throwing a stone in an ocean in hopes of creating a dam.  but i think it’s possible.  There’s something about seeing people on their porches, walking the streets, and hanging around outside that us suburban folk have forgotten.  These actions mean that the neighborhood is safe, it’s taken care of in whatever capacity the residents can.  When people are out and about thei’re looking after each other, they’re aware of the changes and happenings of their neighborhood and their outside of their own head.  Now granted this is very idealistic and not true for probably 25% of the people out.  and there’s the issue of loitering and "idle hands becoming devil’s tools" but there’s always a cost/benefit ratio that is present.  In the suburbs, people have enough yard space and that they’re more isolated and introverted.  they don’t have ot interact with people around them.  this affords some sense of security but it also isolates people.   so choose what’s more important to you and do it.    Yay for hitting two points in one.  my third point was the “porch monkey/ saftey” issue.  When i get my house, i’d love to hang out on the porch and watch my neighbors go by.  Because if they see you around and become accostom to you then they can watch your back persay.  When i go and visit the co-op, it makes me laugh and feel almost more comfortable, one of the neighbors knows me because my car is beat up like hell, and they’ve watched it get all beat up.  So they recognize me… i feel accepted almost.

My fourth point in this crisis was just an introspective look at how i would train myself to become an urbanite and become comfortable doing community and being around and involved in the neighborhood as a suburbanite.  How does this transition occur, is it easy?  I know initially i was apprehensive to tool around the area, but my friend, who introduced me to the co-op and got me comfortable in the area, doesn’t really have a cautious sense of feeling unsafe or truely worrying about it, so i was a little more willing to just move around and tool around with him, and then i grew comfortable in the neighborhood.  it’s curious watching boys’ security and comfort in an area vs. female security, caution and comfort in an area.

I also somewhat hit on the point of how technology is aiding in the creation and destruction of community.  I know a number of people that would have never found the co-op that i hang out at, without the internet and everything, and many people passing through using the co-op as a hostile would have never been introduced, met or helped out without technology.  But it also serves as a tool to isolate us and seperate us.

This point i’m stealing more from my friend who feels passionate about the crisis of community .  The rate of change in our socitey is soo fast and frequent that at this point, i don’t think we have time to process them or react to them with enough time and thought to process what the consequences might be and how this will affect the future of our lives etc.  I mean how is the construction of new office space in the city and outside of the city affecting our neighborhoods?  how is the continual vacant office and store fronts in our city coupled with the new construction affecting us.  and How is the destruction of vacant property affecting both pro/con the neighborhoods?  we need to stop and dialogue, assess some of the actions we’re taking.  even when there’s good consequences and when it’s the best route to take at a sepcific time, we need to conintually be coming back and check-pointing and seeing if we should change our courses of action…

there.  that’s what i have to say for now.

OH and the old people.  how can we do anything about that?  I don’t know.  They’re already helping themselves out somewhat. Living in Condos with lots of other people.

I think the thing we would need to do, is create the sort of communities and city neighborhoods that would eliminate some or  most of the need to drive. This would be through having corner grocery stores that were actually practical.
*side note*  when visiting my grandparents in Syracuse on st. patty’s day, grandma showed my mom and I an article about some guy that started a grocery store in the city.  Syracuse is working hard to renovate their old buildings in the city.  This particular project is in the Amos Building and will have luxury apartments on the other floors and this grocery store on the first floor.  How cool is that?  and it’s not just some lame grocery store, i think they’re making it a “luxury” one.  For the life of me I can’t find any google articles on it specifically.
*end side note*  But if we do things like that.  Put some restaurants and coffee shops  and grocery stores in the city, in these little communities,  and neighborhoods.  Just think of NYC.  they do it real well.  My sister has a bunch of stuff way close by and a fairly easy transit system to use.

That’s the other thing.  Create a public transit system that would feel safe, and easy to use.  Old folks move slowly and don’t like anything complicated.  So if you’re introducing something new to them, like putting a quality transit system in a city, you’ve gotta make it user friendly.  You gotta sell this stuff.  get the widowed women talking.  If they feel safe, then you’ve got a successful thing.

But you’ve gotta build up your city commerce back to the street level neighborhood stuff, you’ve gotta get a good transit system and you’ve gotta move them back into the city.  The other thing is.  they’re old, they don’t do stairs well, so the majority won’t be buying the colonial and cape cod houses.  but the high rises are trashy looking.  SO somehow that would have to be reconciled.  because we want to keep the integrity of the city without continuing to build the same old trash that we’ve been building for the last 60 years.

That’s my two cents.

Or are they still called Senior Citizens…

Friday when i was driving home from work, I saw this older car (the boxy type) and this weee little old lady driving it.  as my boss calls them, she was a “no see ‘em”  She could just barely look over the steering wheel.  I couldn’t tell if she seems nervous, prepared to face the trials of driving, or cynical.  But it seemed to me that she shouldn’t be driving in any case.  she stopped a whole entire car length behind the first car at the red light.  Don’t know why, I can only speculate.

But it seems to be the case in our spread out world.  Whether our city neighbor hoods suck because they don’t have stores; need based, quality stores within walking distance. Or because we don’t have quality public transportation that any middle class old person would feel dignified riding.  (Dignity is an odd thing)  Or because of the way our communities are structured, so that old people become isolated and need to fend for themselves.  In some cases they just are purely strong willed and fell helpless and powerless if they are unable to do anything for themselves anymore.

But i feel like if we created and changed the places we are living now, we as drivers won’t have to be afraid of the old people, the old people won’t have to be afraid of the young drivers, and they can actually have people around them  helping them out (probably in only 75% of the situations, some old people are grumpy and others just get lost)

One of the dearest people to me passed away a year and a half ago.  her husband died about 10 years before she did.  and she stopped driving about 6 years before she passed.  But she didn’t have anyone, besides us and we were living our typical busy middle class suburban American life style.   She became an invalid and still lived by herself.  quite the spunky, with it, and strongest person I know.  It’s amazing that she was able to do all the necessary things to live, survive, and thrive in a house by herself.  I think she’s an extraordinary case.

But I believe there are more old people out there living like that than we know and than should be living like that.   a lot of the old women I help do jobs for are still pretty with it, but these big oldish houses get a lot to handle.

I just think we need to start creating a feeling of community in the gross suburbs, or in the cities we live so that when at least I get that old, i can relinquish my drivers license, however spitefully, with the comfort of knowing i’m not trapped in a houseing track out in the middle of nowhere.

So my soap box has only been built recently. I took a Senior Seminar at my college, obviously, my senior semester. (from now on it shall be refered to as that. It was a semester, no reason to call it my senior year.)

The senior Sem class was called God Earth and Ethics. The thing that most seniors do is pick the seminar that is closest to their field of study (some science, theater, lit, computer, sports, religion or some combination of them all) They’re broad and sometimes a really bad selection. I like the earth better than theater and would never want to see the reading list for the Lit seminar so I picked God, Earth and Ethics. This class is taught by the resident “Enviornmental Ethicist” on campus. Professor BP. He’s got a thick black beard, young but leathery skin, and a dark mop of somewhat trimmed hair. He used to have way big, old, out of style glasses. But those have been replaced by much less obtrusive frames.

This class opened my eyes to the relationship we as humans, and as christians, have with the earth we walk upon. After I figuratively pulled the cotton out of my brain and myself out of the educational (or was it the self cente..) haze of the past like 15 years I remembered all the anual camping trips i took with my family, the things i would amuze myself with as a small child (diggins a small dam with sticks in the roots of my climbing tree), and said (Besides the fact that this is a way ugly run-on) That I liked nature. I liked climbing trees, and the more general and specific things trees stood for. I like the green, brown, and white seasons i experienced and that I really would rather hang out with people in a forest, lake and field than any building you could ever build (As long as my suburban upper middle class ass could be spared the bugs, sunburn and other bothersome parts of nature)

the class was an interesting look at the earth, what our place was in it and relationally to it, what was our ethical responsibility and duty as humans, as christians and the superior human beings we are. It opened my eyes, blew my mind and made me passionate about something for the first time in college (besides advertisments, masculine and femine roles in the media, and the suckiness of the big 6 media corporations. I was a communication major afterall.) But I actually cared about this stuff. I care about what happens to the world around us, and the future of that world around us for generations to come. I think we as a whole do our part to completely screw the world, but we also do our part to really think about it and care for it. We just don’t think about the future, like after-we’ve-fully-decomposed-in-the-ground-future.

So then, i went out and graduated. But i’ve got this twitch in my bonnett and i’m going to go back and read fully the books from that class.

My sculpture prof. from this same school recommended a book back my sophmore year and I read that one too. And i was soo on board. It was about re-thinking the way we make things. so it’s actually changing the ingredients and/or the process to make things. So that we can truely recycle things, and we can have less trash and create less pollution. And we can make our buildings a lot more eco-friendly. The coolest part was they focused on the balance of ecology, economy and some other e-word. It was great.

and then My friend at church turned me onto an author who is all about urban planning and the direction our architecture has gone and our cities and suburbia and the use of cars as our culture etc. etc. etc. Indirectly this has to do with the enviornmental high/passion I have becuase I really like buidlings, old buidlings and old things. old furniature, old history etc. So i’ve been reading and following these books.

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So here’s the book list:

Small Wonder - Barbra Kingsolver (great writer, amazing book)
Earth in Mind - David Orr
Enough - Bill McKibben
For the Beauty of the Earth - Steven Bouma-Prediger
Sex, Economy, and Community - Wendell Berry

Cradle to Cradle - William McDonough, Michael Braugart (great book, it’s plasitc, sooo cool)

The Geography of Nowhere - James Howard Kunstler (i gleened 23 book titles from the appendix that I am reading. some are just architectural, some are more “new urbanism” but mainly more historical)
Home from Nowhere - James Howard Kunstler (I gleend like 10 books from the citations throughout the book that i am excited to read, these are more New Urbanism focused)

And then more of just a cool look at the christian faith is
Blue Like Jazz -Donald Miller (i want to read his second book Searching for God Knows What)
And a curious look at the force,history and direction of Technology is

The world is Flat - Thomas Friedman (i’m in the process of finishing this one)