Getting to Know My Neighbors

July 29, 2024

 

I decided to take it upon myself to take charge of walking our Green Acres Neighborhood, seeking signatures for our petition to give to the Historic Commission, which will accompany our long, detailed, and very interesting application to become  a Conservation District prior to (and in order to foil) scheduled demolition of five houses on August 14.

We have until 5 pm today to get all our materials in, so they can be reviewed by the Historic Commission before meeting with us on August 12 to decide yes or no. If yes, then the demolition is stopped, until the City Council weighs in a few weeks later. Hopefully the City Council will also see the value of maintaining Green Acres Neighborhood, located next to Indiana University, as an historic time capsule: one of the original suburban neighborhoods that sprang up after WWII with returning GIs and their wives seeking to own a little house and to get an education — all on the G. I. Bill.

I probably spent nine hours total in the past week, out in the neighborhood, explaining to various owners who live in their houses just why we want to keep the neighborhood the way it is and not allow monstrous multistory development. In total, there are about 75 live-in owners now, fewer each year, as their owners die off or move elsewhere, selling their house to real estate companies which rent the houses out, and likely, would love to build multistory apartment buildings instead.

We focused on live-in owners; about half of whom were not home. Of the other half, I got 39 to sign on, most of them  very grateful that we four women are attempting to save our precious sanctuary neighborhood from development.

I also got signatures from student renters who love living in this neighborhood and don’t like living in the multistoried student apartment buildings.

I found this process of “getting to know my neighbors” incredibly interesting.

Of the four live-in home owners who declined to sign the petition, I asked each one why. One of them said, “because we need more density.” Me: “Even in Green Acres?” “Yes.” Sounds like she’s been brainwashed by those who want to drive us all into smart cities where we will live in tiny apartments in giant buildings, “own nothing and be happy.” Or am I being too cynical? Needless to say, I voiced none of this, but just thanked her and moved on.

Another one, an old man, got furious, a fury that, frankly, I can understand, and told him so. “I WANT NO MORE REGULATIONS. YOU HEAR ME? NO MORE REGULATIONS.”

A third, which really surprised me, a woman who lives on a corner near here with a beautifully well-kept yard with flower gardens, said, when I asked why she didn’t want to sign on: “I don’t sign anything of this sort.” Huh? Oh well.

But what takes the cake is a man who was actually eager to sign.

I had approached his house, very plain, nothing going on in the yard, looked more like a rental than owner-occupied, wondering what I would find. Would anyone answer the door? (No car in driveway.) I heard thumping inside. Aha, someone is home. Will he or she come to the door?

The door cracked open. Inside, was a man who said, immediately, “I don’t have any clothes on. I don’t believe in wearing clothes at home.”

“Well, okay!” I responded, taking his remark in stride.

I told him what I had come for and he said he wanted to sign it. So I adroitly slipped the clipboard with the petition on its side and through the opening.

A minute later, after signing, he slipped it back to me, and then announced “Actually, I’m not naked. I have boxer shorts on. But I don’t like people to see my aging body.”

“I’ve got one too! I shouted back, laughing, as I turned and walked with my new puppy Scrappy down the steps, out the sidewalk, and onto the street.

Whew. You just never know. As my Mom always said, “It takes all kinds.”

Here’s an article that came out today:

Special meeting: Bloomington historic preservation group to consider ‘time capsule’ as protected district

 

 

“Should I do a post about God today?”

July 28, 2024

 

I copied the above from a note to myself this morning. It’s been brewing, this post about “god.” Several things give rise to it, one extremely personal, the other what I’m noticing now on the internet.

Personal: I was in the middle of a very important, urgent meeting with two other women the other day, and these words escaped me “Oh Jesus Christ!” Meaning: “That’s so hard to believe!” Or, “Do we really have to put up with that?” Or some such. You get the gist.

Right then, the woman to my left (a new friend of mine) said to me, out of the blue (that’s how I experienced her remark; and I imagine she experienced my remark the same way!) “I wish you would stop saying our Lord’s name in vain.” Or some such. Can’t remember exactly what her first remark was. But she kept going. And I can’t remember any of what she said next, except to make clear to me that she is a church-going person who believes in some version of Christian theology, and so for me to use those words in that way, as she put it, “hurts my heart.” Well that remark I could get behind. Said something like, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt your heart!” Which I certainly did not! Then I added, knowing full well that I probably shouldn’t because it would go nowhere, “I see things differently.” Which offended her all over again, though in a more muted tone, at which point the third woman called us back to the meeting’s agenda.

What I wanted to say to her was that I am spiritual, but not religious. In other words, that I see the entire universe as shot through with the divine.

That spirituality unites, but religions divide.

That religions end up with dogmatic theologies, used way too often to divide us from one another.

Here’s a long tweet that says it all:

BTW: Given the above, what bothers me right now about so many posts on X is how Christianity is being used as the antidote to the satanic hell that, for example the Olympic Opening Ceremony tried to force feed us with. No thank you. I refuse to limit my mind, imagination, or experience of the mysterious divinity in which we are all immersed, and in which “good” and “evil” both have their parts to play, requiring our free will to continuously choose between them.

FYI: I am a recovering Catholic who remembers very well my horror in childhood of thinking my non-Catholic friends would go to hell because they weren’t Catholic.