It’s ugly. The tagging, the graffiti — it’s gotten worse. When guests come, I like to point out off the Emerald Metropolis and paint the city pink. However it’s painted impolite. And when the ugliness hits residence because it did ours, it hurts.
“Hey, you children, get off my garden!”
Our household residence of 20 years overlooks Inexperienced Lake. Our “entrance garden” is the park, the trail and the lake. The change of seasons and continuous stream of exercise brings us pleasure via our image window and from our deck. Canine walkers, joggers, rowers, eagles, picnickers and pickleballers: A parade of humanity biking via nature because the Olmsteads supposed.
Ten years in the past as a household undertaking, we constructed a Little Free Library on the nook of our property. It’s an amenity of gratitude to the parents who stroll by day by day. Since then, we’ve seen over 10,000 books and periodicals in each style come and go. It’s most likely essentially the most visited Little Free Library within the state. Nicely, it was.
Till a few weeks in the past, when, in the course of the evening, somebody burned it to the bottom, together with some foliage round it. Firefighters extinguished the blaze earlier than it might unfold to our residence. However the injury was executed.
At occasions, our Little Free Library was vandalized. Small stuff. We rebuilt it a couple of years in the past to incorporate a panorama of Inexperienced Lake replete with miniature figures of bicyclers, walkers and canines on the trail. Once they went lacking, we changed them, however this time, ka-boom! Our neighbors gathered to commiserate over the charred wreckage. I joked, “Amazon’s taken ‘Kindle Limitless’ to a brand new stage.”
However there’s a bigger civic subject concerning the wanton disregard for public property. There’s that “stain” of graffiti throughout Interstate 5 and worse, on the extension of the sunshine rail tracks heading north. It’s onerous to imagine neither the authorities nor “vigilantes” on their Nextdoor or Ring apps can’t pinpoint the perpetrators. They could be low-level offenders, however their crimes have high-level visibility. I’d prefer to see extra precedence given to an answer earlier than ugly morphs to thugly. Whether or not the accountable events are juveniles or adults who act like juveniles issues much less to me than cleansing up their messes. The crimes aren’t so “victimless” after we’re all victims of the blight day by day.
This Seattle liberal finds himself with two unusual bedfellows in in search of an answer: Ladybird Johnson and Rudy Giuliani. Ladybird’s “Don’t Mess With Texas” marketing campaign had extra to do with cleansing up conventional trash. For almost 40 years, it’s labored. Try Austin, comparable in dimension to Seattle. We’re the recyclers however they’re nice at exterminating litterbugs.
And Rudy? Again in 1993 as New York Metropolis mayor, he (via his police chief) instituted a coverage to crack down on low-level crime (together with graffiti) based mostly on the “broken windows” idea to wash up components of NYC that have been in decay. The concept is that in any neighborhood the place all is well-maintained, there’s much less petty crime, but when, for instance, one damaged window stays unrepaired, it acts as an invite for additional mischief.
Nicely, they did clear up Manhattan, although not with out unintended penalties, and though the speculation, as most go, is much from good, it’s value trying into at residence.
Concerning our “damaged window,” we’ve cleaned up the rubble and ready like a phoenix to rise from the ashes and create a more recent, extra lovely Little Free Library for all to take pleasure in.
To borrow a phrase, we’ll “construct again higher” however Seattle must be a spot the place senseless vandalism has no residence.
