Spend last evening in the Emergency Room. You know you have officially become an adult, or a parent or mature or any adjective you would like to place on a person as they age, when spending the night with your newly pregnant wife in the emergency room is the most relaxing evening of your week. But two IV's of fluid later we are both relaxed my wife's morning sickness is once again slightly management and I actually got to read twenty pages further into my book without being interupted. God bless our neighbors though they took Anna at a moments notice when an hour clinic visit became an all night excursion to the ER. Which ironically is nothing like the show. Awhh I thought everything the media portrayed was real. Another icon bites the dust. Into the pile with Santa, the tooth fairy, and Roger Clemens. My neighbors didn't even bat an eye. By the time we got out of the hospital Anna was feed, bathed and sound asleep. For those things money can't buy... peace of mind as a parent. But truly their is nothing like having neighbors that are virtually our extended family. As luck or fate would have it the next night my neighbor's wife goes into labor and we watch their daughter Nora for the evening. See my neighbor and I both have daughters around the same age and are both expecting our second. It is so odd we went to the country, Albertville, to find community. What we found there more resembled paradise lost. As the sign should have said community for those that have lived here 10 years or more and have proven themselves worthy. Thus we move to South Minneapolis which to me meant ghetto. Anything implied with living in Mpls meant ghetto little did I realize there are very diverse nooks and areas within Mpls. But from my view of Mpls from the 'burbs' growing up all I saw of the city was the crime reports on the news that was all I needed to cement my opinion. But now that I've lived here for a year I wouldn't trade it for all the tea in China as my dad would say. I know all my neighbors and their kids my goodness I even know my neighbors parents we have barbeques, birthday parties, or just hang out on the front stoop blowing bubbles and writing in chalk on the sidewalk. We even hosted our own block parade on the fourth of July. Very Norman Rockwellesqe in a place where some would think you were absurd to expect to find it. As a social studies teaching we like to have an overaching question to try to tie things together, to wrap things up in a nice, tighty bow.
How does one create community? In the age of the internet and this fast paced would of ours where people don't even have to step outside their door to enjoy the comforts of life. How do we maintain that sense of community that so many of us long for? For me it was just having neighbors that decided to bring us cookies on frigid December. They embraced us as family from day one and that genuine spirit has infected our whole community.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
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