Neighborhood

Portland City Club: Bright Lights

Last Monday night I heard Rick Lowe speak about some of his work. Mr. Lowe is part artist and part social activist. He has worked on several projects where he has been trying to do something to help poor neighborhoods. Perhaps bring some cohesiveness to them. After I left I got to thinking about what he had said and I realized that "neighborhood" meant something entirely different to me. He looked at it as a community of people. I looked at it as a location on a map. Most everyplace I have ever lived I new very few of the people in my "neighborhood".

When I was in elementary school in West Seattle I knew, or knew of most of the people on my block. Most of them didn't have kids, so I didn't have much to do with them. But it was a small block holding 18 houses. I remember eleven of the houses, and probably about the same number of people.

These days I see even less of the people in my neighborhood. Unless my neighbors happen to be outside when I go out to my car, I may not see them for months, and as long as they don't bother me, I'm fine with that. I have a few friends I see on a regular basis, but they don't live anywhere near me, and generally speaking we don't visit each other's homes.

People move in and out of my neighborhood all the time. I only talk to two or three people on my street. I don't even know who most of them are. One family we knew packed up and moved to Arizona as soon as their kids were out of high school. We may do the same. Sense of community? If there is one it is more a community of the mind, rather than because we are neighbors.

All this reminds me of talk about small towns. Great thing about small towns is everybody knows everybody else. Bad thing is that everybody knows about everybody else's business. Gossip keeps people entertained, but it can also cause all kinds of problems.

I originally wrote this last Tuesday, but I wasn't too happy with it. I thought I could say something more or better, but the week has gone by and I haven't come up with anything better, so here it is.