10:41 p.m. - 2004-04-13
Progress
It has been very warm here the past while - record breaking temperatures. 20+ C/ mid 70's to 80 F. Not normal for around these parts. It has farmers, ranchers and forresters very worried. Dirty_thirties_revisited. My youngest and I started the yard work this afternoon - focusing our efforts on the south facing backyard. The grass is starting to green up nicely. It needs to be cleared before we can start watering it. Cleaning up all the garbage blown into the bushes and corners by winter winds was the biggest task then dead branches, old dried up grass and leaves. That sort of thing. As I was working under the balcony, shoveling out all the detritus there, I noticed flowers! The first blush pink blossoms on my Nanking cherry tree. Next to my star spring bloomer, the lilac bushes were leafing nicely as was the Rowan/Mountain Ash that protects the balcony and my home from the heat of the day in summer.
We probably filled a dozen large garbage bags and left them out back for the pick up tomorrow. The odd conundrum about that? Well, the city has just put into place a five bag restriction on the weekly amount of garbage bags left for their crews. At the same time an omnibus by-law that very strigently sets standards for property maintenance - even to the maximum height one is allowed to let their grass grow -is about to be debated and passed by city council. Community standards don't you know.
Add in one of the local newspapers soliciting "entries" for their yard improvement initiative and one has to wonder when the left and right hands of government and their spokespeople are going to act in unison. I don't like the newspapers' approach much. Neighbours being encouraged to report untidy yards, so that their owners can be publicly outed. Wonder if either the neighbours or the paper will take the time to find out why a yard is being left unkempt. Illness, poverty, someone working two or three jobs in order to make their mortgage payments, a new baby, a single parent - the list goes on and on as to why the outside of a home might not be someone's priority. All they need is the extra stress or distress of being told that they aren't acceptable and that the "community" is going to do something about it. Some people value their property value much more than they do the human beings they live near, but they don't have the right to dictate to others how their homes are maintained. Its bad enough already where communities are writing into residents' mortgages that they may only use certain colours of paint or certain plants in their yards. Architectural controls it's called. Well maybe in cases like this it's acceptable Palace, but not in this one Beach_bums. "It's Just Another Pleasant Valley Sunday".
I think the original idea might have been to encourage neighbours to help each other. That is a good thing if it is a mutual agreement done quietly and respectfully,but photos and a story on the local news page. How would someone from the newspaper or the tattling neighbours like to be told their neighbours were getting together in order to "help" them develop better morals, or ethics or parenting skills - photos and story to detail the whole process. Not. The approach is exploitive even if the intent is not.
Progrees in the news was evident today. Some were giant steps dalai_lama. Others were simply the act of acknowledging the problem. At the time that may not seem like much but sometimes it is the most important step of all. domesticity, healing, doctor_error, and homeless_women.
This was the request from the philosophy e-zine I receive and I thought, dear diary, that statistically it might be better for the analysis of data if a more random selection of the general community was available rather than one based on self identified special interest groups - that being philosophers themselves.
"The forum in the next issue of TPM will be on death. We'd like to know what you think about death, so we'd be very grateful if you would complete our quick death survey: Death. It only takes a couple of minutes and a couple of questions left me thinking a lot harder than when I started.
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