Thank you, Martha Latta! In response to the latest, "King of Indy" blog post: In response to this article: indystar/article/20130710/NEWS21/307100083 I have this to say: It is my opinion that the Near East Side is not feeling as lucky these days for their new “local celebrity,” Robert King, who was welcomed two months ago with open arms, roses, cookies, rhubarb preserves, and an excitement from many that someone living on our side of the tracks would be putting the story of the Near East Side and his new neighborhood, St. Claire Place, on the map through regular blog posts on IndyStar. King, fresh out of the suburbs, moved into the Near East Side two months ago with a flags-waving- banners-streaming-welcome-Kings-of-Indy-attitude. Lauding he and his family’s own arrival, they had, it seemed to me, moved in on a mission to help save the Near East Side. I wasn’t impressed from the get go, I suppose simply because of who I am. King’s tone and praise Jesus attitude clearly really put me off, but many of my neighbors seemed excited. Plus he wrote that he promised his kids some chickens, so I figured he can’t be that bad for our little slice of Indy. I shared the first article on Facebook like everyone else I live near and moved on. Fast forward two months to this morning. It seems now that Near East siders are not so fast to share his articles on neighborhood Facebook pages, or their own newsfeeds, any more. To me they are being passed along in private messages and emails. “Can you believe this guy?” they say, link attached. “He needs to keep his war zone reporting out of our BBQ’s,” another writes. King has been on the Near East Side, as he regularly likes to remind us, for only two months, and I truly do respect the learning curve, but as far as I can tell in his two months on the Near East Side he has, through his writing at least, managed to alienate a pretty large handful of neighbors. I should clarify that I probably use the term neighbor more loosely than most people. I have my next-door neighbors here in Windsor Park, the neighbor’s whose names and phone numbers I all know, and then I have my Woodruff neighbors, my St. Claire neighbors, my Cottage Home neighbors, my Springdale neighbors, My Spades Park neighbors, My Brookside neighbors… They all might be a few streets away, but I know them well enough to know some names and we all know we’re in the same ‘hood together, fighting the same good fight. We attend each other’s fundraisers, flea markets, block parties and festivals, clean up streets, plant flowers and gardens in shared spaces, have cook outs, drink each other’s beer, and even find each other’s lost dogs. So, I have to say that, unlike King who tells us in his most recent article that he’s been making mental maps of danger zones, my mental maps include things like the house of the person whose dog I helped return home, how nice someone’s flower garden is looking this year sans drought, how so-and-so’s peach tree doesn’t have as much fruit this year, how I stopped on my bike ride to talk to someone in that spot for an hour once, how many people in how many houses around my own house have been in my back yard to meet my chickens… So, if you live in my neighborhood, I like to think you get my drift. Good things happen, bad things happen, and crazy day-to-day things happen. Tires go flat, car batteries die, poison ivy grows up more trees than naught, small items go missing out of yards, and kids play in the street. Kids toss basketballs, footballs, bicycles, and in King’s case a loud fire craker, in front of your car and you just stop and wait for it to pass or roll into the curb. If you’re like me, you wave as you drive past. Why? Because these kids are my neighbors. Generally if my husband and I see a problem out on our street we either go out and help the neighbor solve the problem, or if it is something we can’t help with, sit on the porch and watch. I honestly think most parents living on the Near East Side don’t have the luxury of time to hustle their kids inside at the first drop of an “F-bomb.” It’s just part of life here. Nothing to write home about. Trying to remember to lock your car, your front door, set your alarm- it’s called daily living. Thankfully, King doesn’t burden us with his worry-wart attitude of “Did I turn off my oven?” or “Did I forget again to take out the trash?” If you’re new, like King, you are apparently afraid to stay out after dark, or make eye-contact with contemptuous passers-by, or stop and fill up your gas tank at the wrong time of day. On the other hand, I have been at the 10th and Rural gas station at 2 a.m. I’ve had that one really big guy pound on my window before I’m even out of the car and hold my hand and cry, telling me his baby needs diapers, or he needs bus fare to get home to his momma on her birthday. I dole out a few cigarettes, some loose change, and I head inside for what I need. It doesn’t even give me pause. It’s living life. One thing I am proud of is that I have made a point to know every single attendant that works at that gas station. I know what country they are from, and how many different languages they speak, and how many kids they have. I take them pies on holidays and they bring me glorious treats from some African grocery store I’ve never heard of and we laugh with each other’s jokes, theirs often spoken often in broken English. They ask me about a word in French, or Arabic, or Spanish, or Punjabi and want to know the English equivalent. And if I am there late at night, to fill my tank or pick up cigarettes and someone outside the store is really acting off their rocker, they’ll walk me to me car even though I have never once asked. In my life, instead of sitting in my car and having some playing-chicken stare down with the people who make me nervous, I talk to them. Last week I was out working on the community garden and some guy walked by and I said, “Hello. How are you?” He gave me the strangest look and kept walking. It actually made me mad he couldn’t be bothered to say hello back, and for forty-five minutes I weeded and swore under my breath, “What a jerk.” Then he walked back by. “Whatcha planting?” he asked. I told him. He said he’d be back when the tomatoes were ready and I thought to myself as he walked away smiling that our conversation had just made my day. My day had be improved by talking with a stranger, by someone who doesn’t look like me, have the same problems as me, and probably thinks I’m just a crazy white girl standing out in the sun sweating for no good reason at all. For both of us though, it was just living. As King continues on his Near East Side journey, I hope to eventually see his mind set change. I really want to encourage him to say hello to more strangers, drive through the neighborhood with his window down and say hey or wave every now and then. I want to encourage him to write about the good things that happened at the neighborhood picnic rather than using a BBQ as a sounding board to point out the not-even-related-to-the-cookout bad things around him. A cook-out with all your neighbors really is something to write about. Who did you meet? Whose adorable kittens were in the pictures you shared on your blog? Who made the best pie? Tell me more about the people you’ve met and what you’ve learned from them. That’s what I care about. Writing about all the dark corners you’re afraid of, I’m sorry, but that’s not news, it’s just fear-mongering. Robert, people actually live in those dark corners and the Near East Side doesn’t need you to forget that before you’ve even begun.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 16:17:53 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015