Planting Things That Grow

The girl scout in me could not help but respond to Obama's call to Renew America Together on the MLK holiday. I signed up early to help renew a 60's built library in the Valley. We arrived at ten this morning with tools and plants in hand. The library was closed and we all milled around the sign in table out front. I successfully avoided the box of donuts. The grass out front was buried beneath dead leaves, fallen acorns and random litter. Despite evidence of a sprinkler system, the garden box that hugged the side of the library was as hard, dry and cracked.

More people arrived; people from the neighborhood, families with little kids, teenagers, an elderly couple with advanced gardening (they came with all sorts of tools, potting soil, garbage bags...all I had was a trowel). We stood in a ragged circle for the pledge of allegiance. That said, we were told where the sun hit the building and to arrange our plants were they would best thrive. I entrusted the perennials I had brought to an alert little boy to plant. The garden box was full of people trying to dig dead roots out of the baked dry earth. I looked up from my rake when I heard the garden box cheer; a neighbor had brought a water hose from across the street. The afternoon hummed along interrupted by occasional honks of encouragement and support from the passing motorists. I got a blister on my hand and raked up great piles of leaves.

The kids I was working with spent part of the time jumping into the piles and the other part gathering the leaves into trash bags. As we worked told me how Obama was going to be president tomorrow. When I left, the library had been transformed. It was now tidy, and cheerful. Bright flowers dotted the deep brown of the tilled garden box soil.

I hope we planted more than just flowers today; I hope we planted the seed of public service in the hearts and minds of all of those kids.

UPDATE 02.01.09
A special thanks to Councilmember Weiss, who has secured water for the Sherman Oaks Library garden!

The Public Square was a Derelict Place

Well, here I am at the beginning of a new year, facing many of the same systemic challenges as I was last year. In many ways I feel like a reflection of the nation, 30 years of deferred maintenance. If something is built quickly and on the cheap, the whole structure may collapse. That sort of building process is not sustainable, but then, I have never known anything different.

The public square of civil society was a derelict place when I came of age. The civility having been drained from the very concrete. I have grown up entirely post-Watergate; old enough to witness the end of the cold war, but far too young to have experienced the hope of Kennedy, or MLK. Too young even for Regan, really. I am part of a generation that has never known a segregated classroom and grew up watching Sesame Street. And that has made a great difference. But as the petty cultural divisions of baby-boomers consumed them, my generation has been out on the streets. In L.A., I grew up with wildstyle graffiti down in the river and above the freeways, and the internet took it global. The artists hit high profile spots controlled by business shoveling advertising, or the government (that labeled the artists criminals for violating property rights). Without having any of the capital to buy in, graffiti artists took space. They demanded a place in the visual discourse of the city, so successfully in fact, that marketing companies would mimic their techniques. Graffiti art seems to me to reflect a seemingly harsh reality of life; you must participate and participation will be hard. However, with that time you can choose to create something of beauty and meaning.

Tomorrow will witness the swearing in of Barak Obama. I know that this is a momentous occasion for millions of people across the globe. A wealth of layered meaning has been composed for the inauguration. I will try to take in the whole of its parts soon. But tonight, I am thinking about the strains that resonate with my own better angels: the focus and the discipline to change.