Really? That's sad! In our town, we have beautification days when everyone comes out and spends a SAt picking up trash and making our little community beautiful again. We built an incredible playground for the children at the local park with all volunteer effort. If you didn't paint or hammer, you sent food---there were wonderful meals provided--we had a wonderful time. On the Fourth of July, we have a band concert in the park with free watermelon (after a wagon and bike parade) and the community band plays all the Armed Forces themes and the men who served in each branch stand up and are applauded. I cry every year. The children run free, and there is no danger at all, because everyone knows everyone and a stranger would be quickly spotted. On any given day at any one of our schools, you will find mommies volunteering in the office, in the library, on class trips.
However, I will not tell you the median income of our town, the racial balances (or im-), or the strict statutes about lot size, and housing permits. Apartments are not allowed.
I don't know how wrong all this is. Or even if it is. We did this for our children, that they feel safe and protected, and I won't second guess our choices at this point. In the same way Christine chooses to send her child to a school for gifted, we have chosen this.
Yes, we live in Fantasyville.
The corollary to our life here is the work we do outside of our wealthy community--is this wrong though? Is this what Skipper means by insulation from the truly needy? I don't know--The best gift we have to give our children is the belief that they can change things, do things, make life better for others. And they'll learn that by watching US try to do it. The separation between our lives and our works? I don't believe my children are going to ignore the hurting the hungry, the uneducated because of the privileged way they are raised. I hope they are just being equipped well to get out and make the changes. But I have a feeling that some here would see this as self-justification for our way of life. I would hope they won't sit in judgment of me and mine because of what we are or what they think we should be.
I have learned one thing: not to look down
So much upon the damned. They in their sphere,
Harmonize strangely with the divine
Love.
Geoffrey Hill
|
