Neighborhood natter

A clear, windy evening. The neighborhood community meeting in the basement of the nearby Home for Little Wanderers. Bright lights, yellow walls, wooden chairs, round tables. A dozen or so people including representatives from the mayor's office, the police, our city councilor, and an articulate young man talking about solar energy installations. Announcement of spring cleanup day, review of local police activity (domestic violence, motor vehicle stuff, petty theft), upcoming public hearing on trailer classroom coming to Haley School, etc. Most people were silent but some spoke at considerable length ("When does she breathe?" my friend Yori wants to know) about drainage, trash, school parent drop-off behavior ("the worst people on the planet"), 3 am drag racing. The officials calm, respectful, surely even more bored than me, placatory but making no promises beyond their normal duty: "Call the office...call 911...get a tracking number."

"If you want to get something done, you need to enough people at such meetings to impress the politicians," said one old-timer. "This place used to be filled with people. Why is attendance these days so low?" he inquired querulously. The answer is simple, I think; these meetings are boring. I have no pressing concerns; I pitch in on clean up days but my worries are on the scale of the city (pending permits for the infectious disease study lab in the South End), the state, the nation, and, heck, what about global warming. Neighborhood issues are small bore (except 3 am Sunday mornings.) So why spend to much time talking about it. In thirty years of living here, I've attended maybe a dozen meetings.

Yet I found out a lot about what goes on around where I live, especially when I'm at work. I got some ideas of the issues that rile my neighbors. I learned how something could be fixed that hadn't occurred to me as a problem (return our voting site to the armory across the street).  Looking around the room I saw (mostly) quiet older people  black and white committed to improving the quality of, let's call it, the pedestrian scale.

The stakes were low; the temperature was low (though that lady could talk), yet this is how we (see my uninvolvement above) manage our community business; It doesn't get more grassroots; and I found it impressive. For all the complaints, there were also acknowledgement that things are better these days and this community meeting had contributed much to that.

"Thanks, thanks for coming," Yori said as he got up finally and we all walked out into the gleam of the waxing moon. He tells me every meeting is different; I'm not sure I'm going to test the assertion soon. As encounters go, this could have been better (at least more entertaining), but that it happened at all seems like a kind of miracle, one of the ordinary, everyday kind, like breathing.