Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Anti-Social Americans

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

Shava SHAVA [at] NETWORK-SERVICES.UOREGON.EDU S: SHAVA [at] PHLOEM.UOREGON.EDU
is the author of the message below but due
to a listserv problem it was posted by the COHOUSING-L sysop (Fred).
****************  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS *********************

> I'd like to see our lives become more social in this sense of cooperation,
> shared communication, the tidbits of live, and of greater projects like
> barn-raisings.
> 
> What do you think?

When I was living in Cambridge MA, I was in a triple decker next to a run-
down playground, on a one block street.  

The playground was getting very decrepit, needing paint on the bball court
lines, and a lot of grass heaving up the paving.  The people who lived in
my house (including our landlord, who lived alone downstairs) were hanging
out on the back porch, wondering how long it would be before the "bad 
kids" moved in with loud music and such, and made it such that the little
kids on the block and the elementary school kids and moms etc, and old men
playing chess, no longer felt welcome.  So we got a permit from the city
to block off the street one Friday evening, got some of our friends in 
performing arts (even just friends we knew who could juggle, and a folk/
blues band we had friends in) to come and threw a street party.  We borrowed
tables and tablecloths from one person's workplace, and pitched in with 
sodas and juice and cups.  People ended up bringing out their suppers,
and making a potluck (we'd put fliers on doors, but most folks told us
they had no idea what it would be and hadn't planned to come).  Then we
told people at the party that the next afternoon we were having a cleanup
party for the playground, and to please bring trash bags and tools.

Almost the whole block came, even some elderly people who just watched 
and chatted from chairs.

People who'd lived on the block for years and never met each other got to
know each other.  Even two 60+ year old men discovered they'd been in
public school together, and never recognized each other, since they'd
both come *back* to Cambridge from elsewhere to retire with their 
younger family.

It was great.  A lot of people went back into their shells but others
got to be friends -- especially the folks with kids, who had never really
talked to each other while they watched their kids on the playground (?).

We eventually got the city to put more seating for big people in one 
corner of the park which had had a tetherball, which was never used since
the ball always disappeared.

Anyway, coming from a small town this seemed like a natural process, but
to a lot of folks it seemed revolutionary.  I'd just moved to the city
recently, and didn't understand why it shouldn't have worked...;)

Shava