paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- breakfast bash Yesterday I took a small group of economics students to a community breakfast fund-raiser for a neighborhood association. The neighborhood, once an area of city-wide pride, fell into extreme blight due to the manner in which land acquisition for bringing a highway from the suburbs to downtown transpired. The neighborhood sits on a hill with an incredible view of downtown and has been in the process of redevelopment for years. Currently there are some houses, and many, many brownfields on which people not from the neighborhood regularly bring truck loads of trash, broken appliances and furniture and even cars and tractors and dump them. Sometimes even in the street. The residents are continually faced with cleaning up the mess and as a university our students are beginning to help. They cannot keep up. Residents already dealing with poverty have to pay to have old tires removed because the city cannot make exceptions � how does the city know those tires were really dumped there and are not in fact the person�s? (A drawback of government and bureaucracy that keeps impacting those not in a position to do anything about it.) The residents are supportive of the redevelopment, but how could they not be after living through years of abandoned houses turned drug houses, so much vacant property, and all of this illegal dumping. The police work with the residents, but are never able to catch those who cart their trash to their homes and leave it. The brownfields are not mowed or tended and have dense weeds several feet high in places. Everything about this dynamic challenges me and each semester it challenges the economics students who have made a commitment to the neighborhood and do their community service work there. Yesterday morning was the big bash -- $5 for all-you-can-eat pancakes. About 200 people came. The money will be used for a scholarship program, they raffeled off a computer to a young student, they sold an afro-centric history book they wrote about their neighborhood. And it was an incredible morning. I am proud of the students. At the beginning of the morning they repeatedly came up to me asking �what can we do?� After a while of watching them hang back, I took them aside and talked to them about a different way of looking at the situation. They were thinking of the paper they had to write in which they told all about the great things they accomplished. In response I encouraged them to shift their focus from themselves to the people at the breakfast. To talk to people and get to know them. To think about how they might learn something about themselves, about other people and even about economics from serving seniors breakfast, helping people in and out of church buses, setting up chairs, throwing away plates. I made one request: that they quit worrying about what they were going to quantify in their paper � I even told them they could blame me if my request backfired � and they made their goal to talk to five people about their experiences living in the neighborhood and they kept their eyes open and looked for all of the small opportunities where they could pitch in and be helpful. (As an aside, I think females learn how to do this better because we have the tradition of preparing and cleaning-up large family meals that, at least in ninety percent of the situations I have been in, are not organized but much more of an intuitive process.) I told them that if they would trust me on my request, I would help them unpack their observations if they found that they had nothing about which to write. I had hoped that they would have struggled with the situation and realized this, but I think my presence there and their desires for good grades were placing pressures on them that perhaps without the paper and without me they might have come to this conclusion more organically. Only two of us were white � one male student and myself. A friend of mine was just remarking to me recently that she finds it good to be in a situation where she is one of the only white people. And I agree. I sat next to Etta for a long time, talking to her and watching how she relates to people. She is a wonderful leader � she leads with the soul and knows everyone�s name. She is commanding but not over-powering and every little thing that arose, she handled beautifully and in ways I would not have considered. One person wanted her breakfast to go, but I could not find any way to cover the plate while accommodating the hot, sticky syrup. Etta stepped in and said to this woman �now don�t tell me you don�t have ten minutes to sit down and eat your pancake breakfast.� I don�t know if this would have worked if I had said something similar, but I still admired her way of solving the problem. And so did the woman, as Etta put her arm around her and led her into the room where the pancakes were being fixed. Similarly, when Etta began to tire, she said, I�m going home with Piper because I know I�ll get some peace from you there.� And to that I felt complimented and honored. At first, people were not very talkative. I know Etta, so we talked a bunch, but other than that, people were quiet. But I kept pitching in and talking and asking open-ended questions. And soon, I had talked to five people. And I had learned at least ten new things. After a while, while I was selling tickets to the breakfast, I saw on old primary, middle and high school friend of mine. �Piper? My god, what are you doing here? What on earth?� She gave me a giant hug and she had with her another person I remembered from middle school, I think her current boyfriend. �This is Piper, we were friends for years, we went to Europe to together, we �.� My old friend listed so many memories that we shared. As it turns out, another friend had been in town just the weekend before getting married and they had tried to find me for a little reunion. In high school we drifted apart because of how segregated our city is and how quickly and without intention or understanding, this segregation becomes enormous. I remembered going over to my friend�s house, now an empty lot full of weeds, to play. I remembered how close everyone was in the neighborhood � between cousins and family friends, my childhood friend had a connection with nearly everyone on her block. And I had so much fun seeing her family again and the families of other friends of mine who started joining the breakfast bash. We exchanged e-mail addresses to keep in touch because that is how my friend always was. I did not ask her what she was doing now. I can ask that later, but I had the impression that she has not had an easy time of life the past 10 years. It made me open my eyes a bit because we had the exact same education and my friend is intelligent and driven. More driven than I ever was, and yet I could see something in her eyes. Still happy and beautiful as ever, but something else that I cannot name. It was just a feeling and it may have been similar to what was in my eyes. I am glad that my answer to her question what are you doing here was �I am having a great time here with Etta, she is showing me how to be a neighborhood association president. And I have some students in tow who are helping the neighborhood association with their big fall projects. There is so much going on around here.� Because that is how I was looking at it. And I think I am going to talk to the economics professors about how to better prepare their class for the project. After the breakfast I hung out a while with some of the people I used to know. And then, I took off to join Quinn�s family at their annual camping trip. Tune in again for �Night in the Woods.� 12:59 p.m. - 2002-09-29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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