morgan-park.org inspiration - Posted: Fri, May 11, 2007

First, a little more about my inspiration for this project...

My wife and I had briefly talked about doing this one day... awhile ago. I think we've all heard it said that people are more disconnected and isolated nowadays. I guess I don't have anything personal to compare it to as I grew up in a lot of apartments and moved fairly often. My wife, however, grew up in a neighborhood that knew each other and developed some pretty great annual traditions. Now that I am a "family man" and a homeowner, I am committed to this place. Being as busy as the next guy trying to make ends meet and raise our child, the idea got buried somewhere as a nice idea that might net me some karma someday.

Meanwhile, a year and half has passed. My daughter is taller and smarter. I've met my immediate neighbors and they are all great, but don't really know a lot more about the area. Someday has a way of never quite arriving at our house. New projects keep filling up the freetime we planned on having. So I was getting pretty lost in the grind...

Until recently. I'm not sure the exact combination of events, but suffice it to say I've become a lot more aware of our long term future, my daughter's future, the planet's future... I blame a series of documentaries that my wife got from Netflix and made me watch... but the real catalyst has been oil prices and my awareness being raised by a site called www.worldwithoutoil.org. People are coming up with some great ways to pull together, conserve and share. So, being that I have the skillset and the idea, and that probably nobody else is going to step in and do it for me, I figured I'd put it together, let you all know it's here as a tool to use as you will... to communicate and hopefully pull together - perhaps even share some resources and help each other out.

I know I am getting real close to sounding like a hippy. Trust that coming to the website doesn't require you to stop bathing. I just hope it can be a useful tool. It really can become whatever we put into it. My wife and I have some ideas... a new one tonight was a walking club... Pace the neighborhood. I know there are some already doing it. Perhaps there are others who might want to join. So.. I will shut up now. Send me your ideas!

OK, so here's my plan from here... I'll probably tweak this some more, then I am going to print out a little flyer about it and distribute it to all the households in Morgan Park. In the process, I am hoping to meet everyone and explain myself a bit. After confirmation of who's who, I'd also like to create a private (password protected area) that has contact info for those that want to provide it. Also some private neighborhood discussion forums for things that don't need to be public, but that we still want to dish about. We have lots of ideas for the site... I'd like to start an annual garage sale day, perhaps a neighborhood party day, maybe a garden swap (my neighbor does peppers... it's his thing...). Last year we got rid of buckets of tomatoes and cucumbers that someone probably would have appreciated. I was also thinking about neighborhood watch, issues with people driving too fast up and down our streets (god I am old)... also vandalism at the park... I'd like to get people contributing photos and stories, things we are proud about our kids, accomplishments, new babies.. all kinds of stuff. Maybe a bit utopian, but I am hoping we can do some random acts of kindness as well. And perhaps the world is too jaded and isolated and this will wither to nothing. In that case, i guess I'll just write stuff to entertain myself. Who knows :)

Stay tuned...

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