Good Neighbor

When did our concept of a “good neighbor” change?

When I was a kid, neighbors came over to our house, and we went over to their houses.  Neighbor women gave home permanents to Mom.  Neighbor men gave advice about lawn fertilizers to Dad.

Neighbors kept an eye out for our dog, which was free to roam wherever she wanted, and they probably kept an eye out for me, since I was also free to roam.

My favorite neighbors would invite us over for lunch.  They ate pancakes for lunch, something which seemed rather illicit to my young mind.

The concept of neighborliness once meant visiting your neighbors and doing favors for your neighbors. 

Nowadays, the neighborly thing to do is to not visit your neighbors and not do favors for them.  The definition has changed; a “good neighbor” is now defined as someone who does not bother you.

New Yorkers are well known for not bothering their neighbors.  But when the World Trade Center was attacked on SEP 11, 2001, New Yorkers started talking to their neighbors, started finding things in common with these people who were like strangers to them.

One New Yorker wanted to see if he could maintain this interaction among strangers.  He turned to the internet and created the Meetup system.

Through the Meetup system, which is free, people can find others in their locality with common interests.  There are Meetup groups all around the world.  In St. Louis alone, there is an urban farmers group, a Texas holdem group, an interior design group, an investment group, an atheists group, a hip mothers group, a web startup group, a nudist group, and dozens of others.

I became a member of the St. Louis Urban Experiences Meetup --- 450 people interested in St. Louis arts and culture.  The leader arranges an event, such as a tour of a historic building followed by a meal at a restaurant, you go to www.meetup.com, you RSVP, and then you can see all the names and photos of the other Urbanites who are planning to attend. 

Quite a handy system.

At Meetups, I have found people who want to go on my walking tours, I have arranged for someone to teach me WordPress, I have been invited to speak to a high school class.  This is not exactly the neighborliness that I knew as a kid, but it is nice to have this form of neighborliness in the Internet Age.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Thirty Landscape Architects From West Virginia

I am a volunteer tourguide.  On Saturday mornings, I lead walking tours showing off the architecture of downtown St. Louis.

The tourguide coordinator emailed and said that I should expect a large group this Saturday: 30 landscape architecture students from West Virginia University.  WVU has one of the ten best landscape architecture programs in the nation, according to the Design Future Council.

My first thought: did these people get landscape architecture confused with building architecture?  When I lead a walking tour, I tell people who designed a building, what it is made of, when and why it was built.  I don’t say anything about landscape.

My second thought: these 30 West Virginians are coming on my tour anyway; so I had better figure out what to tell them about the landscape of St. Louis.

My brilliant third thought: St. Louis exists because of its landscape.

In 1763, Pierre Laclede sailed up the Mississippi from New Orleans, found the grand meeting of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.  He turned around and travelled 25 miles southward to this spot.

Here he saw a small escarpment which stepped up to a medium escarpment, which stepped up to a final escarpment.  He ignored the first escarpment, envisioned a village on the second, and farming fields on the third escarpment, which was flat and fertile and stretched westward for miles.  All of this was uninhabited, and --- best of all --- it would never flood.

Laclede came back in February 1764 with 22 workers and started building.  Settlers poured into St. Louis, and by October, it had a population of 400 men, women, and children.  Instant village!

The village was laid out parallel to the Mississippi, only two blocks wide.

I plan to ask the West Virginia landscape architects why the village hugged the river.  They will probably answer: so it was a short walk to their supply of drinking water.  I will then surprise them: it was also a short walk to their supply of firewood.  After all, who would bother trek up to the third escarpment and chop down a tree when there were trees drifting down the river all the time…

So, the landscape made St. Louis a success.

Maybe I will stop there, because these folks are landscape architects.  I will skip the rest of the story. 

Back then, there was no priest in the village.  There was no governor.  There were no soldiers.  Land was free.  The nearby Indians were friendly and intermarried with the settlers. 

The landscape was beneficial, but the rest of the story says that people came here because St. Louis was a colonial utopia.  If they had a chamber of commerce in 1764, it would have proclaimed: “What happens in St. Louis, stays in St. Louis.”

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Three Symphony Concerts

When I lived in Brussels, Belgium, I grew tired of hearing foreigners complain.

A Frenchman told me, “Brussels is dull; it is not like Paris where I can buy elegant clothes in every neighborhood of the city.”  A Dutchman told me, “Brussels is dull; it is not like Amsterdam where I can dance all night because the clubs are open until dawn.”

I grew very tired of hearing complaints.

An Englishman told me, “Brussels is dull; it is not like London, where I can go to three symphony concerts in one night.”

Enough is enough.  I looked the Englishman in the eye and said, “Try as I might, I have never been able to attend more than one symphony concert in a single night.”

But when I left Brussels and moved back to the United States, I started to understand what the Englishman was talking about, because New York City was struggling.

It was the 1970’s. 

On a large scale, New York City was struggling with the possibility of bankruptcy.  On a medium scale, graffiti artists started to spray messages on subway cars.  On a small scale, the phone system was inadequate and it was hard to get a dial tone in the city.

In the midst of New York’s troubles, a reporter hit the streets and interviewed city residents.  “What makes you want to live in New York?”

The first resident responded, “Why, we have the Metropolitan Opera!”  “What is the last opera you saw there?”  “I have never seen an opera.”

Second resident, “Why, we have the Statue of Liberty!!”  “When is the last time you visited the Statue?”  “My parents took me there when I was six years old.”

Third resident, “Why, we have Central Park!!!”  “When is the last time you visited the park?”  “Oh, I don’t go there because it is too dangerous.”

After hearing these interviews, I started to realize that these New York City residents may not visit the opera, the statue, or the park --- but they have the option to do so.  They could visit these places if they wanted, and that fact gave them re-assurance that they were living in a worthwhile place.  They had options.

I then understood that the Englishman in Brussels did not have the option of choosing amongst three symphony concerts in one night.  By moving from London to Brussels, he had lost his options, and the Englishman felt deprived.

I started to regret that I had made a flip comment to him.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com