It’s ugly. The tagging, the graffiti — it’s gotten worse. When guests come, I like to indicate off the Emerald Metropolis and paint the city crimson. However it’s painted impolite. And when the ugliness hits house because it did ours, it hurts.
“Hey, you children, get off my garden!”
Our household house of 20 years overlooks Inexperienced Lake. Our “entrance garden” is the park, the trail and the lake. The change of seasons and continuous movement 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 venture, we constructed a Little Free Library on the nook of our property. It’s an amenity of gratitude to the oldsters who stroll by each day. Since then, we’ve seen over 10,000 books and periodicals in each style come and go. It’s most likely probably the most visited Little Free Library within the state. Effectively, it was.
Till a few weeks in the past, when, in the course of the night time, somebody burned it to the bottom, together with some foliage round it. Firefighters extinguished the blaze earlier than it might unfold to our house. However the injury was performed.
At occasions, our Little Free Library was vandalized. Small stuff. We rebuilt it a number 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 degree.”
However there’s a bigger civic concern relating to 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 wish 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” once we’re all victims of the blight each day.
This Seattle liberal finds himself with two unusual bedfellows in searching for 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 measurement 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) primarily based on the “damaged home windows” principle to wash up elements 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.
Effectively, they did clear up Manhattan, although not with out unintended penalties, and though the speculation, as most go, is much from excellent, it’s value trying into at house.
Relating to our “damaged window,” we’ve cleaned up the rubble and ready like a phoenix to rise from the ashes and create a more moderen, extra lovely Little Free Library for all to get pleasure from.
To borrow a phrase, we’ll “construct again higher” however Seattle must be a spot the place senseless vandalism has no house.
