Blinders Optional

I wandered down Saturday afternoon from near Chelsea Parade, where we live, to Howard Brown Park for the return of the Taste of Italy. Thanks to the organizers, sponsors, volunteers, vendors, and everyone else who worked so hard to make it all happen. It was a lot of fun, a day where the weather threatened but never delivered, and a delicious experience. 

Its success helps underscore a fundamental point I strive to the point of irritation of others to make: offer people a reason to come to downtown Norwich and they will, because they did on Saturday in droves.

We spend a lot of time in Norwich waiting for 'them' to do something (the something seems to vary from person to person, but is rarely the same across any segment of our population). And then we wonder why it's hard to get anything accomplished. 

Walking from Chelsea Parade down Washington Street towards Brown Park, the litter along the curb runs almost the length of the street. As a matter of fact, almost anywhere you look in Norwich, there's trash at the curb, on the sidewalks and front lawns, or in the streets. 

Some of it happens because when the trash and recycling boxes are emptied and detritus falls on the ground, no one picks it up. We don't need a 'them' to put trash in its place, but if each of us picked up one piece of junk every day, we'd soon have a handle on the litter.

And good luck walking on the sidewalks across from the former Buckingham School all the way to the Sweeney Bridge because they are a nightmare and a safety hazard. All the broken concrete allows weeds and other flora and fauna to grow wild, adding that 'untamed' flavor that urban planners say is so important in modern downtowns these days. 

Actually, there are portions of sidewalk on both sides of Washington that are practically impassable. Berserk bushes, overgrown shrubbery, household garbage, broken glass, discarded fast food containers, dirty diapers, the flotsam and jetsam of life in the 21st Century, strewn like so much junk all across the horizon.

And we don't even see it anymore.
We've become inured to the thousands of discarded cigarette butts near the pedestrian islands across from the Flat Iron building. The next time you're out walking downtown, check them out for yourself. I'm sure they will still be there. 

Squaring away our sidewalks and side streets would take thirty minutes, probably less, out of our week, but we've decided it's not our job to make where we live a better and nicer place to be. We'd rather complain about what we don't have rather than conserve and preserve what we do. Maybe we're afraid we're just not worth the effort. And maybe we're right.

-bill kenny