Day: January 23, 2006

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| Blagden Alley Association |
| Monthly Meeting |
| THURSDAY, January 26, 2006 |
| 7:30-9:00 pm |
| Marthlu and Hal’s |
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| Celebrate |
| No “Street Cleaning” |
| Tickets till St. Paddy’s Day |
|—————————————-|
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| Stoney’s Is GONE |
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The newsletter is at

http://www.pro-messenger.com/Blagden/Monthly%20Pages/2006%20Monthly%20Pages/BAN_
2006_01_P1X1.html

Major topic of the meeting:
The redevelopment of another major piece of the 1200 block of Ninth Street.
(West Side)

Also, see the new web page at http://blagdenalley.com or http://naylorcourt.com,
(depending on your persuasion).

Do hope to see you there.

Well I have finished London Calling and I’ve come away from it wondering about something. Is the diversity that we laud when speaking about the positives of the neighborhood just background scenery? How often and how deeply to we engage in any sort of activity with those who are different than ourselves? Of course, the same could be said about living in a homogeneous neighborhood too, but that wasn’t examined in the book. Authors looked at where respondents in the gentrifying neighborhoods best friends came from (clumsy sentence, I know). Their best friends came from university or work followed by “other” which could be a club, church, political group or the like. Organizations that do not require participants to live in the same neighborhood. Yet that seemed like an unfair question to me. There is more of an opportunity to interact with the same people and engage in the small talk that leads to deeper revelations of who we all are at work and school than standing in one’s front yard. What did seem fair was to try to see how the generally Anglo middle class interacted with immigrant, non-white, council housing (public housing) or working class residents who add to the diversity theme.
Thinking of my own interactions with folks on my block we come together on whatever is our sameness. There is the impromptu ‘garden club’, ‘kennel club’ and other little on the sidewalk and over the fence discussion groups where the racial and age dynamics change depending on what calls one over or away. During these little neighborly get togethers I’m not thinking about our differences. That is unless the focus of the discussion is exclusionary as I, not owning a dog, cannot add to a doggy gossip session.

I recorded part of the ANC5C meeting. Unfortunately my Zire, which I recorded on only has so much memory. If you have no interest in the Mondie testimony don’t bother downloading this one, no music, no commentary, no frills.
Audio has been removed. Please request it directly from mari at inshaw period com.