I have been working with the Tri-Park Neighborhood Association, Little House, and the DCR to get a work-day going for Atheneum Park/Meaney Playground, and we’ve settled on Saturday, September 23rd, at 9 a.m. Anyone who wants to pitch in is welcome. It shouldn’t be too strenuous. Just some cleaning up, painting the playground equipment, maybe some bulb-planting. Reps from the DCR will be there to boss us around. They have been very cool, very helpful with this.

If you want more information, or whatever, feel free to contact me HERE.

HERE.

So, three of us (Leslie from Little House, David DiRocco, who owns a triple decker on Chase St., and myself) met with two reps from DCR (Margie Lynch, director of partnerships and Karl Pastore, director of the Harbor region) on Friday.

The DCR was able to get two grand from Ben Affleck in return for rights to film at the park. They are able to get matching funds for any contributions to the park, so there’s actually four grand for benches, a new coat of paint for the playground equipment, and a late-autumn bulb-planting. Karl also mentioned he would like to
check into new rubbish receptacles–not barrels, but those kind of mesh ones that are pretty common in parks these days. There was no commitment on this, however.

Karl said he would get some inmates on work-detail to scrape paint and prime the playground equipment. Margie suggested a gathering in late September, to paint it. Margie said it would not take many people to do it. Leslie said some of the youths at Little House might be interested.

As for broken fencing, they suggested if anyone knows any union construction workers, we might do some networking with them. If not, I’m sure we can work with DCR on it.

I asked about shrubs, and Margie said the DCR had nothing against the idea of some being planted, but that someone from the neighborhood would have to make sure they were maintained.

Margie encouraged the idea of a “friends of Atheneum Park” group to form a “friends of” partnership with DCR, but that is a matter of interest, organization, and commitment. I think a good first step is to set up a September work-day, and see who is interested in helping out and to what extent and in what capacity.

With just a little TLC I think the park/playground could be improved immeasurably. If anyone is interested you know where to reach me.

I am all set to meet with Margie Lynch and Holly Richardson of the Department of Conservation and Recreation the morning of August 18th. Margie also suggested I contact the Tri-Park Neighborhood Association, which I have done through a Yahoo! group, although I am wary of Neighborhood Associations in general.

The purpose of the meeting, which will take place in the park itself at 10:30 a.m., is to discuss some possible landscaping/beautification/maintenance projects for the park and playground. Anyone interested or with ideas is welcome to come, or email me here if you can’t but still want to give your two cents.

Two or three times a week, when I’m working from home and have nothing in the larder, except the emergency provisions our vigilant governor has urged us all to keep on hand (several liters of bottled water and a variety 12-pack of ramen noodles, some duct tape, and The Book of Mormon), I amble over to the nearest Dunkin Donuts for my Bavarian cream fix. Say what you will, I’m not ashamed. I am a cream queen, and proud of it. I mean, a donut’s eighty-nine cents whether there’s just a hole full of air in the middle (hold it up to your ear and you can hear the wind whistling through it) or a hole filled with pudding. HELL-O. Is this an intelligence test? I’ll take door number two, Monty.

But the great thing about my Dunkin Donuts, roughly at the intersection of Mass Ave and Columbia Road, is that along with your Bavarian Cream and coffee, you get your daily recommended dose of DESPAIR, absolutely free of charge. Jesus God, that place is Desperation Central.

I mean, first of all you’ve got all these people rushing to get to their dead-end jobs. There are little acts of kindness, of course–a big, burly construction worker type (rowr!) held the door open for me this morning, as an entry-level schlub tried to shove his way past me–but even the kindness has the poignant feel of politeness between doomed seamen (oops–there’s that cream again) aboard the Lusitania.

But the real misery is behind the counter. Always new faces, always the same look of doom on them. Doing things is definitely not what they like to do. Nope. The thing that gives me that extra kick on the way to my daily existential crisis is that the despair is always fresh (like the coffee and donuts), and there are so many varieties to choose from.

This morning, for instance, the young woman behind the counter was overly affectless. Overly unresponsive to any attempt at human kindness. She seemed to have a force-field of affectlessness all around her to repel even the most minor acts of compassion one might feel compelled to engage in on her beleaguered behalf.

I want to be clear: I believe–really it is the cornerstone of my “belief system,” if you will–in the sacred autonomy of each individual. This belief has many implications that I won’t get into at the moment. I don’t for a moment think that this young woman’s job at Dunkin Nonuts entails fulfilling some psychic need of customers for some semblance of humanity along with their purchase. This young woman is obviously not present inasmuch as she can not be present while being present, and is likely not paid enough to be fully present. With her aggressive affectlessness she says to her customers: I will use certain of my body parts to fulfill certain simple requests, but I will not use my soul. And a customer has no right to ask it.

She is, of course, working out her own answer to the old mind-body problem. I would say, from my brief interaction with her this morning, that she’s probably your average, garden-variety substance-dualist. It was not mixing well with my physicalistic-monist mood, though. If they had been out of bavarian cream donuts, there could have been an ontological rift into which all of existence would have been spontaneously sucked.

Not to say that existence sucks.

And so another day begins.

What a pleasant surprise.

National holidays. Gotta love ‘em.

I have always had a–let’s call it a “nontraditional” schedule. I’m not interested in working nine to five, in the whole TGIF routine, in going shopping on Saturdays, to mass on Sundays, and so on. I am especially not interested in taking my vacations with hordes of other vacationers. Isn’t the point to “get away”? Or did I miss something? I mean, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go to, say, the Cape this weekend. Half of Boston is there. What are you getting away from? Hmm, well, the other half, I guess.

It could be enough to be able to say, on the fifth, at the water cooler, or whatever: “yeah, I went down to the Cape last weekend.” That way, if nothing else, people know you weren’t forced to tough it out here in Boston with the prolies. I mean, lining up on Storrow Drive to watch the fireworks. How working class is that?

Personally, I’m all for fireworks. In my neighborhood they’ve been shooting them off pretty much nonstop every night for a month already. Every night’s the 4th of July here in Dot! As long as it means you can shoot something off, blow something up, or light something (or someone) on fire! ¡Viva América!

But if you want to know the truth, I never really got into national holidays. They always seem like an accident waiting to happen. I mean, masses of people with nothing to do all day. You got ‘em gathering with no supervision. And we all know that crowds are just mobs that haven’t been incited yet.

And the fourth is not one of those holidays where people are getting or giving gifts, or hunting for eggs or going door to door begging for candy, either. You’re just sitting around eating hotdogs and drinking beer all day. It’s inevitable that by the end of it all people are going to want to blow shit up, just out of sheer boredom.

That’s why the state sponsors all these fireworks. Because, can you imagine if they didn’t?

Still, I’m sorry, but I just don’t like crowds. And I don’t like crowds because I don’t trust crowds. And I don’t trust crowds because you can’t trust crowds. I don’t care how well-intentioned they are. One-on-one a person can’t stampede you to death. In a crowd, they’ll do it gladly.

And we all know it doesn’t take much to spook ‘em. They say two heads are better than one, but that applies mainly to cattle. As stupid as people act when they’re alone, they get exponentially stupider the more you put together. And people love crowds because there’s no accountability in crowds. People in a crowd will stomp you to a bloody pulp and then be like, “what?”

Thing is, I was a latchkey kid, same as every other kid in the neighborhood where I grew up. Every summer in my neighborhood was like The Lord of the Flies. No adults around ten hours a day and when they did come home, after they put out the slop and you all fed at the trough, they were finished with you. We were raised like free-range pigs. We had adult supervision for, like, twenty minutes a day, max. As long as you weren’t missing any limbs at bed-check, they considered that the supreme proof of good-parenting.

That’s where I come from.

But it wasn’t so bad. I think it was better, for me, at least, than if my every move had been micromanaged, like it seems is the case with kids nowadays. Longfellow wrote, “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,/And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” And that sums up those long, adult-free, summer days of my lost youth.

I loved my latchkey summers. I could hold my own with the kid-gangs that ruled the streets, but even at an early age I didn’t care for the flaming hoops and hierarchies that define a social life, regardless of age, color, or class. I built myself a little hobbit hutch amongst the pine trees in the back yard–my own little Walden before I’d ever heard of Henry Thoreau–and that’s where I spent most of my time, digging in the dirt, conducting my thought experiments, contemplating infinity, thinking those long, long thoughts.

So I never liked the big to-do type holidays, where you got loaded up with the rest of the family in the old station wagon, and trundled off to relatives’ or family friends’, seemingly against everyone involded’s will (and certainly against all our better judgment).

And this was especially bad in the summer. There were two criteria for family outings in the summertime: wherever we went had to have an amusement park and a major league baseball team. (These criteria might have been even further refined, but they already spelled a sort of doom and gloom for me, so I didn’t go any further into it than I had to.)

Even when I was a kid, I was never amused by amusement parks. They always seemed an utter waste of time for me. I was pretty capable of amusing myself for the most part, and didn’t see the point of having to stand in long lines in what always seemed to be oppressive heat to do something that was not really all that amusing in the first place.

But then, there’s a certain type of personage, I have gathered—my older brother was one—for whom rollercoasters are especially thrilling. Yes, speed gets the adrenaline pumping, there’s no doubt. But there are apparently people for whom that adrenaline rush is enough. Not for me. From a very early age, I was more demanding of my amusements. I needed catharsis. I never found a rollercoaster that did it for me. Descarte’s Demon at Six Flags over Cincinnati came close. The Cathartic Comet at Busch Gardens St. Louis was on the right track but disappointed on that last loop-dee-loop.

It was enough for my bro, though. He could go back to the same rollercoaster again and again. He’d wait in line forever for that three-minute frig, like an addict in search of his fix. And when it was over, what had changed? Nothing. Hmm. need another fix.

His never-ending enthusiasm was almost infectious. Once I got so infected, in fact, that I threw up on my mother, who, upon drawing the short straw, had been forced to accompany me on one of those girlie rides: the spinning teacups. Oh, goodie.

Personally, I liked the idea of teacups. The ride seemed very refined and civilized, like that Mad Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland, and as such, somehow, potentially cathartic.

But while we sometimes confuse catharsis with throwing up, and vice-versa, I have come to understand, after ample experience with both, that they are not the same thing.

But it was enough for my brother. It’s like people for whom drunkenness is the point of being drunk. The rush was an end in itself. The thrill was the thrill. For me it was always, like, “hmm, thrilling. Is that all there is?” This question would lead down the path to despair, I knew. But there in the abyss, beyond the loop-dee-loop I would find my catharsis as well. While my brother stood in line, scratching his ass, in despair of not knowing he’s in despair. Poor sod.

But I do like hotdogs. I am a food whore. Always have been. Not gonna lie about it, try and pretty it up. Why should I? And we’re talking anything from bratwurst to beluga here. It’s all good.

I guess there’s no reason the fourth can’t be a few choice friends, good food, and fireworks. Still don’t know if I’m willing to brave the crowds down at the hatch shell, though.

Our resident wastrel has been back on his park bench since the rain’s let up. As I’ve said before–and I do mean it–I’ve got nothing against lovable vagrants and the like, but a park bench is not a housing solution. Bums are a sort of social barometer. Neglected parks and neglected people tend to go together.

Technically, our Meaney Man is not doing anything wrong. Parks are for loitering, after all. So long as he’s not exposing himself to children, stabbing other bums, or drinking publicly or doing or selling drugs, he’s free to set up shop. So says a local cop of my acquaintance who’s probably related to him, anyway.

Not that I would have him forcibly ejected or anything. What good would that do? There is an old saying: a park gets the squirrels it deserves. One bum moves on, another takes his place. The bums aren’t really so much the problem as the culture of neglect.

In fact, I think his presence there is important at this point. He’s a constant reminder (except when it rains) of the state of our neighborhood. He’s not actively bothering anyone, but his passive presence there is bothering, because he personifies the poverty, neglect, and despair endemic to Dorchester at this point in time.

There are lots worse scenarios for parks than drunks sleeping on park benches. I know that. And I’m not saying, simply, “gawd, I wish that old drunk would disappear.” But I think we can do better on both of these separate but related fronts–making our parks nicer, safer places for everyone in our neighborhoods, and providing better care for our poor and high-risk populations.

Doing nothing on either front and pretending like that’s good enough doesn’t cut it.

Margie Lynch from the DCR wants to set up a meeting for mid-July with anyone from the neighborhood who wants to pitch in. A rep from the DCR will be there, along with the landscaping contractor. An exact date has not been set. I’ll keep you posted.

The screamers are out tonight.

There are two little girls next door–probably around five or six, maybe seven years old–and they are just total screechers–they scream bloody murder for everything. When they’re happy, sad, angry, bored, it’s a no brainer: scream. Of course. It has an elegant logic to it.

Now, I don’t want to sound like the Grinch of Upham’s Corner, or whatever, but they’ve got this little kiddie pool out there, like, right under my window. And it’s too hot and muggy to shut my window, and I don’t have AC, and don’t want it, but it would certainly drown out the blood-curdling screams. I don’t mind quiet children, or even children who laugh occasionally, although I think in most cases a simple smile would suffice. But what is with the screaming?

And whatever happened to the days when kids were marched off to bed at nine o’clock? These kids were out screaming bloody murder until nearly eleven last night.

You know, all it would take to start an all-out war is for me to set my boombox in the window right now and start blasting, I dunno, GWAR, or something, at top volume. Of course then I would have to leave the house, come back in a couple hours. See how they like hearing somebody else scream for a while.

Just got this message from Margie at the DCR:

I just received confirmation that we’ve contracted with a landscaping company to do some work at Meaney Playground in the next few weeks.

DCR’s Regional Director who supervises this area let me know that he would be very interested in meeting with any groups interested in assisting us with maintaining the park. Perhaps we could all plan to get together sometime after the July 4 holiday (when our time frees up a bit here) to discuss how we might partner in this effort. It would be great to create some momentum from the landscaping work.

If anyone in the neighborhood is interested in getting in on this, please contact me here or at mmennonno@yahoo.com.