smartripoff

29 Nov 2004 Leave a Comment

by Jeff Covey in ramblings

Congressman Tom Davis
U.S. House of Representatives
2348 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4611

Dear Congressman Davis:

I’d like to share with you the horrible experience we had when we tried to use the D.C. Metro system today. We’re from Baltimore, and we wanted to see an exhibition at the Freer Gallery. We drove to the Landover station and parked. As we entered the lot, I read a sign about the need to get a card from the station to pay our $3.50 to leave. I thought this meant I needed to get a transfer ticket from our destination, as I’d had to do when I used the Metro many years ago, and I didn’t think any more of it.

We had a fine time downtown, and when we returned to Landover, I asked the attendant on duty what I needed to do to pay for my parking. She told me I would have to pay $13.50 because I didn’t have a “SmarTrip” card. I was blown over, but she insisted there was no option. She showed me where the SmarTrip machines were. Unfortunately, they only took $1, $5, and $10 bills. We’d paid the full roundtrip fee when we bought our Metro tickets, and had nothing but $20s with us. We tried to get change from several other Metro riders buying their tickets, but no one could help us. The attendant pointed out that the machines would take credit cards, so I went back to try my Visa on them. The first machine read the card, asked for my Zip code, then said it was unable to process the card. I tried the second machine, and got the same result. The attendant came over and tried to help. I did it again to show her what was happening. I then tried it one last time as a debit card instead of as a credit card. I entered my PIN and waited a much longer time, but still got the message that my card could not be processed.

We were seriously concerned that we were stranded at this point. We had no money that the machines would take, they gave error messages in response to my only credit card, the attendant said she was not allowed to give change, there were no change machines, and the attendant said we absolutely had to have the SmarTrip card to leave and there was no way we could just pay our $3.50 to a human parking attendant. We seemed to be hostages in the parking lot indefinitely until she suggested we go outside and try the cab drivers. One of them was able to give us two $10s for one of our $20s, and we finally got the card and could leave. Luckily, the attendant was mistaken, and the $10 cost was $5 for the card itself plus a $5 credit toward Metro services, so we ended with a $5 card, $3.50 paid, and a $1.50 credit.

The bizarre incident seemed to be over until I returned home and was balancing my checkbook against my bank’s website this evening. I found four $10 debits made against my account by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. At this point, we’ve paid $53.50 toward a $3.50 parking fee.

I assume that when it’s discovered that these four charges were made and no cards were issued, the $40 will be automatically refunded to my account, but given the comments from other Metro riders I found in a Washington Post article, my optimism may be poorly placed.

But even if the whole exchange had gone smoothly, the system is patently ridiculous. We live in Baltimore and usually drive downtown on the rare occasions when we visit Washington. Why did we have to pay $5 for this card? It’s going to be years before we use it, if ever. It and its $1.50 credit will probably sit in our sock drawer for decades. What about this card could possibly cost $5? Is it made of gold-plated plastic?

While we were in the Smithsonian station, we helped three Japanese tourists to find their way. When they returned to their rental car, did they find themselves similarly stranded? Did they have to use their limited English to try to understand the complicated procedure they had to follow? Did they have a $10 U.S. bill, or were they humiliated by having to beg for money from Americans entering the station? Did they have to invest $6.50 in a piece of useless plastic to take back to Tokyo with them? How many people from all over our country and the world have had to pay this unadvertised $6.50 tax just because they parked at a Metro station?

I’ve always encouraged people from out of town to visit our nation’s capital and to take advantage of its subway system, but I’ll now be advising them to stay far away from this nightmarish scam. I’m embarrassed that we’re treating our guests this way.

The Post article listed you as one of the people trying to straighten out this farce. I hope you’re able to do something about it.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey Covey

freecycle's future

25 Aug 2004 31 Comments

by Jeff Covey in ramblings

freecycling is one of the best ideas to hit the internet in recent years. unfortunately, it’s become a victim of its own success.

• freecycle’s future
  • background
  • disclaimer
  • how it could be
    • problem 1: getting onboard
    • problem 2: managing what you receive
    • problem 3: opening and closing offers and requests
    • problem 4: transferring items
      • choosing who gets it
      • arranging the exchange
    • problem 5: moderating
  • objections
    • it will take too much work and money
    • the horse is already out of the barn
    • it will destroy the freecycle community
  • conclusion

background

freecycle was created last year by deron beal as part of his work for a recycling program of a tucson-based non-profit organization. it was made very simply: he created a mailing list on which the members could offer items they owned but didn’t need or want. anyone who wanted them could contact the posters privately to make an exchange. for a small, local program, this was perfectly adequate.

now, the freecycle idea has been copied all over the world. there are 1,297 official freecycle mailing lists as i write. they’re all based on the tucson model, but each has its own rules. some of them cover huge metropolitan areas and regularly split into smaller spinoff groups for specific neighborhoods or suburbs. because they’re simply free-form mailing lists, it’s impossible to keep everyone using the prescribed format for messages. discussions frequently erupt, wander off topic, and go down in flames. those on the losing side of the argument leave and create their own splinter group.

people trying to reach as wide an audience as possible join all the groups they can find in their area and crosspost to them all. the same message goes to six groups with different guidelines; it’s acceptable on four of them, spurs 17 flames of indignation on the other two. three of the lists are moderated, and by the time the message is approved and reaches the members of the moderated lists, the item has already gone to someone on the unmoderated one. someone gets tired of this and creates freecycletopekaksnomods. the original poster remembers to tell two of the lists that the item has been taken. members of the other four lists continue to write him for days, getting no reply.

it’s a trainwreck.

disclaimer

i don’t mean to say that freecycling isn’t doing good. even with all its problems, i see it doing great things every day. i just want to say that it could be so much easier and better.

before i make my suggestions, i want to point out that i’m very much on the fringe of the freecycle community. i’ve been a moderator of freecyclebaltimore and a member of various area groups for a month. there are many people who have been involved in the project and working as moderators for much longer. my opinions don’t have the authority of a long-time moderator behind them. i’ve just been bothered for several days by thinking about the wasted potential of freecycling, and wanted to write down my thoughts.

how it could be

my suggestion is just this: freecycle has long outgrown the mailing list model. it should be centralized and web-based.

i’ll explain why i think this is so by describing how it could address the problems freecycle faces.

problem 1: getting onboard

freecycle is getting a lot of press these days. someone who reads about it in a newspaper is sent to freecycle.org. she finds the clean, nicely-organized list of groups. let’s say that, like many people, she lives outside baltimore, maryland, and works in washington, d.c. she joins the lists for her town, glen burnie, her metropolitan area, baltimore, the area where she works, washington, and the town she passes through on her way to work, bowie. she spends weekends with her boyfriend in annapolis, so she joins that list, too. she starts getting messages which tell her about two smaller groups near her. she joins them.

she now has to manage subscriptions to seven mailing lists. she has to learn and try to follow the conflicting rules for what is acceptable on each of them. she receives the same messages over and over and over as people post what they want to one list, then another and another.

what i think should happen instead is that she should go to freecycle.org, register an account, give her address, and specify that she would like to be informed of offers and/or requests within 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25 miles of her home. that’s it. nothing more complicated.

problem 2: managing what you receive

as it is now, members of a freecycle list have to receive whatever messages the other members want to send them. if the list is moderated, there’s at least some quality control, but everyone still has to receive:

• offers.
• requests for items.
• notices that an item has been taken (whether or not the item was of any interest to the reader).
• messages from bob saying he lost joe’s phone number and asking him to send it again.
• clarifications of earlier offers and requests.
• any discussions the moderators allow.
• all the malformed messages from people who can’t remember to use appropriate subject lines.

it’s too much. people should be able to just check off whether they want to receive offers, requests, or both. they could then choose whether to receive an email message each time an appropriate item appears or just log in to freecycle.org whenever they want to see what’s new.

centralization would also make it possible to offer announcements by other means, such as rss.

problem 3: opening and closing offers and requests

someone who makes an offer now has to post a message offering it, then post another to say it’s been taken. those following the transaction have to see the offer message, then look for a “taken” message in the list’s archive to see whether or not they should bother the offerer about it. hopefully, the subject lines will be clear. even if they are, this is too much work.

what should happen is that an item appears in the list of offers. once someone has replied and been picked as the recipient, it’s removed from the offers. if someone gets a message about it too late and goes to freecycle.org to reply, she’ll be told it’s no longer available. if the transaction falls through, the offerer can just mark it as canceled, and the item will appear in the list of offers again. there’s no need to post a message offering the item again, as is done now.

requests can work the same way. an item appears as wanted until it’s fulfilled. there’s no need for anyone to keep posting her list of wants once or twice a week to be sure people see it.

problem 4: transferring items

once an item has been offered or requested and someone has replied wanting or offering it, the offerer has two jobs to do:

choosing who gets it

currently, the offerer has to manage all the email from people who reply, try to organize it, pick someone to give the item to, backtrack and try to find the mail from the other people who replied when that exchange falls through, etc. this is unnecessary.

the offerer should just get a page with a list of everyone who’s interested. this page could
offer several ways of helping the offerer decide who gets it:

• it could be sorted by time, so the first responders are at the top.
• a note from each responder could be included to say something about why the person wants it.
• each username could have a link to the responder’s public profile for more information about her.
• there could be an indication of the distance from the responder’s home address to the offerer’s (without giving the addresses).
• there could be a marker showing the responder’s freecycle rating.

by “freecycle rating”, i mean that there could be a rating system in place like those people are used to using on ebay or amazon. a week after an item was promised to someone, freecycle could remind the offerer to mark the transaction as either canceled (reopening the item) or completed. if it were marked completed, both the offerer and receiver would be asked to rate the exchange on a scale of 1 to 5 and give a brief comment about it.

this would solve the problem of people worrying about complete strangers coming to their homes; they could look at the responders’ ratings and the comments other freecyclers have made about their interactions with them.

another common problem is that items just go to the first person who replies because offerers don’t want to be bothered with sifting all the mail. those who don’t sit in front of their computers all day never have a chance. this could be solved by making the list of replies unavailable to the offerer until 24 hours after the offer is made. this would also solve the problem of moderators abusing their privileges to take items first. even if all posts were moderated, the moderator’s reply to an offer would reach the offerer at the same time as the others. contacting offerers privately before the replies are made available would have to be forbidden.

arranging the exchange

once someone has been picked as the recipient, a web-based freecycle could offer tools to facilitate the exchange. the offerer could have the option of having her address and/or phone number automatically given to the recipient. the address could come with a link to a map site showing directions from the recipient’s address to the offerer’s.

if the offerer didn’t like giving recipients her home address, she could specify another address (such as her work address or a public place) as the one which should be given. if the offerer were worried about spam, she could choose not to give her email address to the recipient, and make all communication through freecycle.org.

once an item was marked as promised but not yet completed, the list of responders could be greyed out. if the exchange were canceled, it could become available again, and the offerer could pick another recipient from the list.

problem 5: moderating

moderating a freecycle list can be a very time-consuming process. it can also involve a lot of thinking about whether certain offers and requests are acceptable, and (sometimes unpleasant) discussion with list members and moderators of other lists to get their opinions.

a centralized freecycle would remove this duplicated effort. sitewide policies could be decided, and that would be that. the rules could be posted, and posts which violated them would be removed. the burden of reviewing posts for violations could be distributed to all of the site’s users, removing the burden from the moderators. each offer and request could have a “report violation” link like those on craigslist. it could lead to a list of the rules with a link next to each. clicking the link would report the item as in violation of that rule. if more than one user reported a problem with an item, it would be flagged for review by a moderator.

many moderators are exasperated by list members who can’t or won’t follow the guidelines for how to write their messages. each message is supposed to have a subject line which begins with “offer:”, “taken:”, “wanted:”, or “admin:”. some members can’t or won’t do this, and everyone has to open their messages to see what they’re about. when submitting their items through the web, the only mistake people could make is to mark an offer as a request, or vice-versa. everything would be formatted in a consistent way because people would be filling in forms.

also, many lists ask their members to include certain information, but people ofter forget to do so. we ask people to give their location, for example. this would be handled automatically, because the offerer’s zip code would be displayed. we ask people to describe the item’s condition, but this often isn’t done. offerers could be required to choose from a list such as “like new”, “good”, “well-loved”, “needs repair”, etc. a web-based system would also allow people to upload photos of their items.

one of the biggest headaches for moderators is trying to keep discussions under control. someone offers a puppy, someone complains about offering animals, ten people jump on each side of the issue, a dozen more jump in to complain about the discussion, and the moderators heave a sigh. some spam gets through, and it starts all over again. removing the possibility of public discussions from the method of exchanging items will put an end to this.

objections

i can think of several objections to this plan.

it will take too much work and money

someone will probably offer the most basic objection:

“it’s not worth the trouble.”

i think it is. freecycling is a terrific idea, but the system established for a single community has not scaled well to an international movement. the problems i’ve described have nearly torn several freecycle lists apart, have led to flamewars both on the local lists and on the international moderators discussion list, and have caused many good participants to unsubscribe.

yes, it would be a lot of work. the system i’ve described is not trivial, but it’s not rocket science or anything very original, either. any competent web programmer could do it, and it doesn’t all have to be done all at once. i’ve just brainstormed many features here; they could be added a bit at a time once the basic mechanism is in place.

“it would cost too much to make it.”

there are lots of ways to get it done. the simplest is just to ask for volunteers. it’s a worthy cause and has a high enough profile that people may be interested in giving their time to it. if volunteers can’t be found, we could try schools. college students might be found who could work on it for credit, or a professor willing to assign it as a project. the non-profit could take a student as an intern.

if someone has to be hired for the job, there are plenty of capable, underemployed programmers these days. there are said to be 420,982 people in the official freecycle groups today. there should be no problem getting enough in donations to pay for the work and the ongoing cost of maintenance and server fees.

if worst came to worst, advertising space could be sold.

the horse is already out of the barn

“it’s too late for this now. the mailing lists are already established, and no one’s going to want to change.”

i think the advantages i’ve described are enough to make both users and moderators want to switch. nothing would stop those who prefer the mailing lists from continuing to use them, and they may eventually decide to join. in the meantime, momentum will grow from new people coming to freecycle.org for the first time and opening accounts.

it will destroy the freecycle community

“centralizing freecycle will ruin the local community we’ve established.”

there’s no reason this has to be the case. discussion can still go on, it just has to be kept separate from the day-to-day business of transferring items so that those who aren’t interested don’t have to read
it. there could be discussions organized by zip code or state so local conversation can continue. it could be as simple as adding a third item to the subscriptions: “offers”, “requests”, and “comments”. by checking “comments”, the user would receive any public comments posted by anyone within the area she’s chosen (her home address plus [x] miles). again, she could choose to receive comments by email or just read them on the site.

moderation could continue to be done locally; people could volunteer to moderate items posted in their own zip codes. the difference would be that moderators would be more accountable to the members. the system-wide rules would provide the parameters within which the local moderators could operate. if the members felt the moderators were overstepping their authority, they could appeal to the freecycle administration. if the moderators were found to be at fault, the administration could replace them.

a centralized, web-based freecycle could offer many more means of fostering community, both locally and globally. in addition to local discussion, sitewide discussion lists could offer the opportunity for anyone to share her ideas and help shape freecycle’s policies and direction. each member would have a public profile page on which she could reveal as much or as little about herself as she liked. user ratings and feedback would minimize the interference of spammers and scammers. the administration would have the ability to send messages to all users announcing site and policy changes, etc.

i believe that, paradoxically, moving freecycle from many small, scattered groups to one site will bring the community together in the cities, not just as a whole.

conclusion

freecycle and its many members have a lot to give. i believe it’s reached a critical point at which it can either continue to suffer from trends it’s developed or, with a bit of elbow grease, greatly increase its ability to do good.

i’ll welcome your thoughts and comments about this.

a little peace and quiet

29 Apr 2001 1 Comment

by Jeff Covey in ramblings

in 1993, i met dan, and in 1994, i went to live with him in his house on carey street in southwest baltimore. after he died in 1996, his sister asked if i wanted to continue living in the house, and i said yes and have been here ever since.

i love this house; it’s beautiful (well, the part that was fully renovated, anyway and comfortable and, well, home. i love the brick walls and the woodwork around the doors and windows and fireplaces. i love the wood floors that can be cleaned with a quick sweep of a broom. i love the big windows that let the light pour in. i love all the space that gives my cat room to run around like mad the way cats do sometimes. i love the window sills where she can lay and watch the birds in the trees.

i love being in the city. i love going for a walk and seeing the squares with the cherry trees in bloom. i love the activity of the city, the fact that there’s always something new happening every day. i love having the resources of a city in the palm of my hand, being able to hop in the car and, in five minutes, be at a good restaurant or library or concert hall.

and i love this street. people who don’t live in the city and only come into it during the day don’t know how peaceful it can be. you wake up in the morning with the windows open, and the birds are chirping in the trees out back, and there’s no way to tell that you’re not a thousand miles from civilization. you can have the peace of that solitude and the support of the city all at once.

if you know where i live, by now you’re poking and prodding me to get on to the other side of it. yes, it’s a poor community. it’s almost entirely made up of black residents. there are three kinds of buildings in the neighborhood: houses, churches, and liquor stores. it’s been torn apart by the drug trade. if you head north a few blocks, violence and vandalism are everywhere. a few blocks west is the intersection of fayette and munroe, about which david simon and ed burns wrote the corner.

every alley and every lot is covered in garbage. drunks smash their bottles in playgrounds and pass out on park benches. addicts break into abandoned houses, use them as shooting galleries, and set them on fire.

as i drove to the y yesterday, i stopped at a light and saw a funeral letting out across the street. it was obviously a funeral for a dealer; half the crowd was in its sunday best, and half were members of his crew, in tshirts and jeans with their boxer shorts pushed way out of their pants, gang style. most of them had matching white shirts with some image or pattern which i couldn’t make out but which obviously related to the dead member of the gang in some way. one had a plain white shirt on which he’d painted “r.i.p.” and the name and birth and death dates of his friend. they were all standing around in their sunglasses, striking stereotypical yo-boy poses and trying to look cool.

this is the second lost generation, the children of the first generation lost to crack and the war on drugs. this is the crowd that grew up with dad in jail and mom locked in her bedroom with the crack pipe. there were no adults around, no rules and no guidance. it was lord of the flies on an urban island, and they had to invent their own way of life. the one they created is simple: you deal drugs. someone shoots you or stabs you or you overdose, and you die in a gutter or an alley somewhere. someone spray paints your name on a wall. fade to black.

it’s so damned stupid. i wanted to get out of the car and grab them and shake them and make them look at what they’re doing to themselves. even here, the resources they need are all around in the churches and community centers, the schools and libraries just waiting for someone to ask. they could wake up tomorrow and put a stop to it and make life into whatever they wanted it to be, if they just had the imagination to think that they don’t have to kill one another.

of course, grabbing people and shaking them doesn’t seem like such a good idea when you stop and reflect that they’re all carrying guns and razor blades.

so why am i here, five years after dan and my ostensible reason for being here have gone? well, there’s always the practical reason that i have a beautiful rent-free house. there’s the fact that this was our home, and, for a long time, it kept me close to the memories. there’s the simple inertia of being so long in one place and settling into it.

and as i said, i love the house and i love the location, and my block has been a good place to live until very recently. the west side of the street is all rental properties, but my side has been made up of homeowners since before i lived here, and they take pride in their homes and look out for one another. linda and gloria and ruth and sam — i’ve never had a complaint about any of them.

there’s crime and dirt to deal with, but they’ve never really gotten me down. my car was broken into twice, but that happens anywhere in a big city. there was a fellow who did some odd jobs for me, then kicked in my back door while i was out and stole some odds and ends (then came back a week later and asked for a handout, if you can imagine). that seemed like a big deal when i came home that night, but was nothing much by the light of the morning. i knew why he’d done it, and that heroin is a harsh mistress. he’d actually been quite considerate, not causing any damage, and even carefully picking up a videotape and setting it to the side before he took the vcr. he gave me the chance to stop and think about space and the extent to which it makes sense to call it “mine”. it was dan’s space before it was mine, and someone else’s before that. some day, it will be used by someone else. for maybe a quarter of an hour that night, it was his. that vcr was dan’s, then mine, then his, now someone else’s. someday, it will rust and fall apart and sink back into the earth. this house will fall down, and the space that was marked off by the walls will be part of the open air again. in the end, it’s just a space and just a vcr, and the label “mine” that i stick on them is as temporary as i am, and you can’t let your ideas about possession become more rigid than the facts about how things come and go.

i don’t mind him taking some junk that was cluttering the place in exchange for helping me clear my thoughts about that.

there are signs of hope in the neighborhood, too. not everyone ended up on the street; some of the people who were here before the 80s are still here. some younger working people with families have moved in. there are lots of churches and community groups that try to improve life around here. i don’t mind lending a hand where i can; if you’re not willing to do what work you can to help the community, you have no business being there.

but there is something i do mind, and it’s driving me out after none of the other problems could.

as i’ve said, this was a quiet, peaceful street. aside from the occasional siren or the rumble of a truck going by that are part of life in any city, i could enjoy a relaxed evening at home at almost any time of the year. winter was the best, when the cold had driven everyone inside, but even in the summer, there was rarely more noise than the sound of kids playing on the sidewalk.

sometime during the past year, this changed, like a switch had been thrown and everyone had new orders. it’s a mystery to me how it could happen overnight, but when i look back, there was nothing gradual about it. it wasn’t there, and then it was. what is “it”? well, let me describe a typical evening at home now:

i was at barnes & noble, and i splurged a bit in their music section. one of the gems i brought home was a complete set of the scores to the brahms symphonies. my work’s done for the day, and i get out the book. the windows are open, and one of the first warm breezes of spring is blowing softly through the house. across the stree
t, the trees are swaying gently. the setting sun is throwing rich shafts of light over the rooftops and making my living room glow with a lazy, comfortable warmth. i put on the mpegs of the second symphony, carefully adjusting the volume so i don’t disturb the neighbors, and sit on the couch by the window, my legs propped up and the score in my lap.

after a couple of minutes, i hear this from the street:

LOVE MY NIGGAS, BUT WHERE’S MY BITCHES?
LOVE MY NIGGAS, BUT WHERE’S MY BITCHES?
LOVE MY NIGGAS, BUT WHERE’S MY BITCHES?
LOVE MY NIGGAS, BUT WHERE’S MY BITCHES?
IT’S ALL GOOD!
IT’S ALRIGHT!
FUCK ALL DAY!
FUCK ALL NIGHT!

etc., etc.

well, what to do? the obvious solution is to go down and ask them to please turn it down. that’s fine, and when it’s been neighbors causing the noise and i’ve asked them to turn it down, they’ve always apologized for the trouble and done so.

the problem is that “it” is somehow related to overnight advances in car radio technology. 98% of the time, the noise is coming not from someone on the street, but from someone sitting in his car, waiting for the traffic light to change. by the time you pull on your shoes and walk downstairs, he’s already gone. what can you do about that?

some of them have speakers that take up the whole widths of the trunks of their cars. when they come by, i can hear my windows rattling from the barrage and feel the floorboards shaking under my feet.

i’ve run into this wherever i’ve gone in the city, whether in so-called “good” neighborhoods or in so-called “bad” ones. there’s no escaping it, and it’s making this whole great city that i love unlivable for me.

i’m willing to put up with quite a lot, but i just can’t live this way. i think it’s good for practicing living under circumstances you wouldn’t choose, a skill that’s necessary for a life that’s frequently out of our control, but i can’t work in it. i can’t sit and write or edit someone else’s writing for very long when i’m constantly being bombarded by the sound of drum machines and the latest ballad about the glories of “slinging coke” and “slapping hos”.

so i’m looking around at places to live, and it’s a little depressing. i remember reading some comments in a book once (i think it was in your money or your life, and i wish i could find the quote) about the american way of having a home. the gist of it was that we try to make our homes as private and self-sufficient as we can. we each get our own house with our own kitchen and our own washer and dryer and our own telephone and our own tv, until we never have to leave it or see anyone who lives around us. we sit by ourselves in our little space with our stuff year after year, and then we pay thousands of dollars to psychiatrists to try to figure out why we feel lonely. what we ought to wonder instead is why we don’t all just go home and blow our brains out more often than we do. most people know that solitary confinement is the most dreaded punishment in prisons, but we don’t stop to think that we willingly inflict the same conditions on ourselves.

everywhere i look, i’m seeing that the american home is a sad and lonely place. i saw that there were cheap townhomes for rent in essex. i hadn’t been in that area, but the location looked good on the map, so i drove out there yesterday to look at them, and i got to see why they’re so cheap. it’s a flat stretch of land with all the trees cut down, and row after row of identical houses with just a view of one another. the whole area around them is made up of nothing but gas stations and fast food restaurants. it’s horrible. it’s no wonder people hide inside watching tv to escape from it.

but how different is it in the most expensive apartment building? everyone goes in, says hello as they pass in the lobby, then each disappear into their own set of rooms and lock themselves in.

where do you find community in america?

we seem to have replaced community with family. each family has its own house and lives privately behind closed doors. the people who live in the next house have no reason to have any contact with us. we no longer have an agricultural society in which everyone goes to work in the fields together. we don’t have an industrial one in which people live together to be near the factory, and walk there together every morning. in the extreme case of someone like me who just needs a phone line to work, there’s no reason for me to be anywhere in particular, and therefore no common bond with the people who live around me.

i live in my own little family with only the most passing interaction with the people on either side. the trouble with relying on families is that they come and go. dan and i were a family here, and since he’s gone, it’s just me. maybe someone else will come along, but then he’ll be gone, too. in families that have children, the children grow up and move away. you can’t rely on family to take care of the need for community. you wouldn’t want to, even if you could. keeping your circle of relationships that small leads to stagnation and overburdens the people involved; couples that don’t have friends don’t make it.

my solution to the problem of finding community (a live one, not just online) has been to have friends that i see regularly. i have my privacy at home, then i go out and join friends for lunch or work at the agape house, get my fill of interacting with other people, and come back and enjoy my privacy again.

now i’m pondering the dilemma of where to live. on the one hand, i’m jonesing for peace and quiet. my picture of the ideal place is a townhouse with a patio on the back that connects to a lawn that connects to a forest. i walk out the back, onto a trail, and i’m in patapsco state park. the people around me work 9-5 jobs in offices, and i have the whole long, peaceful day to work and listen to the wind in the trees.

on the other hand, i’m picturing myself living there like a hermit, not really connecting to anyone around me, and not being in easy reach of friends and the city.

there should be a compromise between privacy and community; neither one is what you need all the time, and can be harmful in excess.

americans err on the side of privacy — i have my stuff in my place and you have your stuff in yours. never mind that it makes no sense to have my own washer and dryer in my apartment 24/7 when i only use them once a week and walking down to the community laundry center and chatting with you through the spin cycle might be just what i need to give my day a lift. on the other hand, excessive community is the way we start, as part of a family we didn’t choose but that we have to be with every day for the for the first decade of our lives. if enough allowances are made there for privacy and individual activity, that can be wonderful. otherwise, it can be hell.

there are a few times in my life that make me think i’m missing something now. there was high school, when we all got up together, prayed together, ate together, studied together, played together… an open barracks-like dormitory is a bit more community than i would want as an adult, but i look back on that experience and the friends i had there, and think that people who didn’t have that really missed something.

then there were a couple of houses i shared with classmates in college. there was my room and my stuff, but there was also the common area downstairs. it was like a family that you chose to be a part of; you could go down and sit and talk all you wanted, and you could go to your room when you wanted to be alone.

that strikes me as what people need — the availability of both and the ability to choose one or the other. both a room of one’s own and the company of people who have a reason to want to live together. maybe there’s a place that compromises between the monastery and the freestanding home at the end of the cul de sac, an update on the communal college house, someplac
e where i have my own kitchen for when i’m on my own schedule, but we can still all get together and talk over dinner whenever we like.

i should look into intentional communities. in the meantime, i’ll keep all this in the back of my mind and just try to find someplace quiet…