I hosted my second annual community “Night Out” on August 1st. It was part of what I’ve always called the Night out Against Crime, is really called National Night Out and is associated with law enforcement. Out of curiosity, I sent away for their materials but recycled them when I saw they were mostly offering swag and didn’t offer any community-building tips I was interested in.
I prefer the name The Night to Unite. My motivation to gather my neighbors is not safety, per-se, but simply to be able to enjoy my neighbors’ company and create a feeling of community.
Except for a couple of people, the folks that showed up this year were different from the ones that joined us last year.
Last Year
Last year, with a large number of people working from home, there were several families I got to know. Walking by my house regularly were a young mom, her infant son in a stroller. She was a talker and while I named her Tiffany, it took me a few tries to get her real name down. She was sweet. Her son was cute. Although she didn’t share my climate activist’s take on the poly-crisis we’re living in, I enjoyed stopping what I was doing and visiting with her.
Another couple, with a three-year old, would stop by to pick raspberries or carrots or whatever was in season. I worked with the mom on a participatory budget project sponsored by King County. I borrowed a leaf shredder from the dad. I really liked this family. They seemed very happy together.
Finally, there was the quirky couple with three-year old boy and the ginormous Irish Wolf Hound. I suppose the adjective ginormous is unnecessary since all Irish Wolf Hounds are huge. The mom, Sandra, was the stay-at-home kind and I marveled at her patience.
She would slowly walk as her son explored every puddle, bent down to see a trail of ants or tried to catch a grasshopper. They also came to pick berries and I learned that she loved dandelions and was collecting the flowers to make wine. I had lots of dandelion flowers to share.
Sandra is the one mom I made friends with, asking her to join me in guerilla gardening a strip of soil laid bare when the county put in a new bus stop.
Last year’s event was charming, beginning with the children bringing us joy with their playfulness, then the mom’s leaving to put them to bed, leaving behind the husbands to chat. The neighbor from across the street, who owns a bar, brought a tray of delicious cheeses as well as a beautifully displayed assortment of alcoholic drinks (mine were in a generic plastic cooler).
I wanted to broach the topic of the climate and ecological crisis and had books on a table, ready to share. However, the neighbors had a different plan. They wanted to talk about other things. I don’t remember what. I didn’t want to appear to have hosted the gathering with an agenda, so I let my plan go and just followed the conversation wherever it went.
This Year
This year, except for my now friend Sandra and her family, none of the other families showed up. They haven’t been walking the neighborhood. They haven’t responded to texts. I hear that they are swamped with work.
To be clear, I’ve lived in this neighborhood since 1999. I know my neighbors by sight and name. I stop and chat with them. There’s Patty who works at 3 am so politely begged off from joining the gathering, Harry whose children I taught many years ago, Sarah who is now fostering 6 cats, Kathy on the corner, Mark who walks his nephew’s German Shephard, Wendy and her wife who trust me to open their door to put a package inside but keep to themselves. Trent who shares of himself on Facebook but avoids a dinner invitation. None of these folks stopped by.
Who did show up? My neighbor Karen who walks the neighborhood daily and is around my age invited a ‘bus friend’ from around the corner and this friend invited her neighbor. The older couple from down the street found the invitation in a mailbox they don’t use and managed to join us for an hour or so. The bar owning neighbor did not disappoint. He showed up with treats, drinks and lots of conversation. Unexpectedly, a neighbor far down the street, whose wife I used to work with, stopped by — indicating that she was home with a headache. A young couple I’d never met before came for a chat as well.
What I want from my neighbors
I don’t expect to be best friends with my neighbors, but with what I see as the end of life as we know it looming around the corner, I’d like to feel comfortable trusting my neighbors and even enjoying their company. I’d like to know that a neighbor across the street would gladly accept the extra spinach or cucumbers from my garden. I don’t want to put my precious produce anonymously into the little food pantry around the corner. I want folks to know that it came from me. I’d like to host a game night and have someone say, ‘sounds great!’ or offer native plants and to plant in their yard and have someone say — tell me more.
The neighbor who plays the banjo and guitar and used to jam with two friends in the back yard — haven’t seen him in ages. The neighbor whose porch I sat on during COVID lockdown as she shared delicious expresso coffee — back to work and in what looks like a distressed fog at times. The young neighbor who rode with me on bicycles to scout out a protest location last year — no reply. I would love to get a response, to hear them playing music in their back yard, to share coffee on a Saturday.
In my ideal world, during the gathering, I would steer the conversation to the Great Unravelling we are living in, but that’s not where my neighbors are. I broached it, commenting on the wildfires in Canada, unlivable temperatures in Phoenix, with people getting burns from touching the sidewalks, hot tub level waters off of Florida. The response was the , “What can we do about it? It’s human nature.” Or “Sure, Lots of people are going to die, but the we’re stuck with capitalism.” And then the conversation quickly turned to Speak Easy bars, California wines and the new music venue up the street. Not wanting to ruin my community building efforts with exasperation, I let the conversation go where it would.
I didn’t even get snippy when my neighbor asked me for the tenth time if I missed teaching. He knows I quit to focus on climate activism. I repeated what I’ve said nine times before.
“No, I don’t miss teaching. I couldn’t face the students knowing what I know about the climate and ecological catastrophe we’re living in and it’s only going to get worse. This, to me, is much more important than teaching 4th graders multiplication. It the world weren’t falling apart, I’d be happily teaching. But it is. So, I’m not.”
His response, “Lori is going to teach a few more years and then retire.” He won’t remember what I said. He’s already forgotten it. I’m sure when I see him again he’ll ask me the eleventh time. I suppose I should just say, “Yes, I do miss teaching.” Would he stop asking me then?
I’ll just hold on to my copy of I Want a Better Catastrophe by Andrew Boyd to share next year, or I can slip it into conversation when I see Harry or Mark on the street.
I’ll have another year of asking myself daily, what will it take to get people, not just my climate activist friends, but my former co-workers, friends and community members, to see the disaster that industrialization has become, that we’re at the end of the road, the end of the planet’s capacity to give? That corporate capitalism is killing us?
I look forward to The Night to Unite 2024. Karen offered to host.
Andrea
August, 2023
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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