Re: fences and good neighbors

**A*@aol.com**

Education and positive change are difficult and incremental at best.  That is 
why our society pays so much lip service to the ideal, but defunds the 
process whenever it thinks people aren't paying attention to it - which seems to be 
most of the time. 

However, education and evolution does happen.  Ran into a fairly rough 
neighborhood kid who is now a cop at the  peace rally last February.  My group was 
trying to get over to the UN and his job was to keep us away from it.  As he 
moved us along third avenue, he said, " I remember you, mister, from the garden 
on 48th Street.  I was peeing through the fence, like I always did on the way 
home from school, and you and a bunch of grow-ups told me it might kill one of 
the plants and  asked me how I would feel if I was peed on.  And at the time, 
you guys were so big (the cop now towers over me by a good foot) I half 
believed that you were going to pee on me!  Funny, it made me think about what I 
was doing, consequences of actions, stuff..."

Incremental change and education - it does happen. 

Adam Honigman

<< Subj:     [cg] fences and good neighbors
 Date:  5/23/03 9:09:18 AM Eastern Daylight Time
 From:  gfcp@mindspring.com (a.h.steely)
 Sender:    community_garden-admin@mallorn.com
 To:    community_garden@mallorn.com

 All the tales from the zucchini police were enlightening.  Saddest of all
 was the one from Fairbanks, about how the drug dealers and their children
 don't need to listen to ranting gardeners about stolen cabbages...  The last
 frontier is polluted with our general lack of courtesy.  For my lawn,
 breaking down and buying a chain link fence is now a necessity.  We are in a
 relatively middle-class city neighborhood but the kids cut across the lawn,
 through flowers, not around the walk.  I don't want to discontinue the
 school bus stop which has been in the same place for 20 years, since my
 boyfriend's kids attended school over a decade ago, because my car is full
 of posters in the back window and bumper stickers for thought.  How else can
 we reach the drug dealers kids?  My car in the driveway is the most
 political thing they know.

 SAD state of affairs but nothing new, my late father-in-law had the problem
 in the 1950's across from Camden H.S. in New Jersey.  His fence was only 4
 ft. so after his death in 1961 the kids took to jumping the fence to destroy
 the organic fruit trees.  Maybe some of the former students remember that
 garden and are part of the people in Camden trying to do a community garden.

 Helen Steely
 Hbg., Pa. >>

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