For the last few weeks, I have been talking with gardeners at an imperiled community garden on the South Side of Chicago. My colleagues at the Invisible Institute and I are making a “live documentary” about the garden, daily posting short conversations with gardeners, speaking out of their 10’ x 10’ plots, while we work on a full-length narrative. (You can taste our work at the end of this post.) At this point, we don’t yet know how the story ends.
Located at 61st Street and Dorchester Avenue, the garden is on land owned by the University of Chicago. Since 2000, the U of C has allowed the gardeners—I am among them—to use the site. Last spring, it informed us it wants its land back The University has no immediate plans to build on the site, but rather intends to use it temporarily as a staging area for the construction of a building at the other end of the block. It has set October 30 as the deadline for the gardeners to vacate the land they have cultivated.
Over the past six months, various efforts have been made to engage the U of C in conversation about possible practical alternatives that would preserve the garden until the time comes to build on it. (That process began with this essay.) While we have had some fruitful, informal conversations with individual administrators, the institution’s position has remained unchanged: It’s our land. We want it back. You always knew your use of it was provisional.
All true. Yet is this, under the circumstances, a sufficient response? While not contesting the University's right to do with its property what it wishes, community members have questioned whether the University, in assessing its own interests, is properly valuing the garden.
This line of argument has, I know, been intensely frustrating to some U of C administrators. They feel they have been generous and accommodating in allowing the gardeners to use the land for nine years and in offering to help “relocate” the garden. Their patience has been tried by what they see as endless second-guessing of their sovereign administrative decisions.
There is also frustration among those seeking to speak for the garden. It arises not only from the University’s refusal to engage at the level of practical problem-solving but also from our inability to adequately evoke the value of the garden. We have struggled to give voice to that which is at once precious and unrelocatable.
If the garden is destroyed, some individual gardeners and groups of gardeners will establish gardens elsewhere. That is a testament to human adaptability: life goes on. It does not testify to the wisdom of the U of C’s approach.
The University’s argument for relocation gives us too much credit. It assumes that we know how to do this, that we have a recipe for creating a wonderful garden. But the power of the 61st Street garden to nourish and console, to delight and instruct is more mysterious than that. It is the product of countless acts of attention and care by many people over time—an organic process of immense complexity shaped by chance, serendipity, and grace as well as design.
Our documentary project, The Garden Conversations, grows out of this realization. It is animated by the hope that a diversity of voices might articulate—and embody—what no single voice can fully express.
It would be disingenuous to pretend this project is not part of the ongoing effort to persuade the University to reconsider its course. That is not, however, its primary purpose. The approaching deadline imposed by the U of C—coupled with the coldest, wettest, swiftest autumn in memory—has created an urgency to understand. We are pressed to find words for dimensions of experience we would continue to take for granted, were they not imminently threatened.
So what have we learned thus far from our conversations in the garden? A number of themes have emerged, radiating outward from the intimate geography of individual plots toward the great questions of health, ecological sanity, and survival in our time.
One major theme, touched on in many of the conversations, centers on how gardeners come to know what they know. Virtually all those we have talked with, no matter how skilled and experienced, describe themselves variously as “beginners,” “amateurs,” or “duffers.” They recount how they learn things—by observing other plots; by seeking the advice of other gardeners; and, above all, by paying close attention to what grows and what doesn’t in their soil and light.
In different voices and idioms, they describe a mode of learning that is intensely practical and close to the ground; a matter of making oneself available to one’s environment and interacting with it mindfully; a practice, as Wallace Stegner once said of Wendell Berry, of subjecting oneself to one’s subject. It is a dynamic that carries one deeper into the world, disclosing the true conditions of life and offering the means to inhabit those realities.
These intellectual habits contrast sharply with the sort of power that shapes its environment to conform to what it already knows, seeking to define rather than discern the conditions of life around it, and disregarding what it doesn’t understand or control.
The University purports to be committed to something called “sustainability.” This term has, with record speed, joined that select category of words—“community” and “peace” come to mind—rendered so elastic by abuse that they can be draped over antithetical agendas.
For example: the construction of a state-of-the-art, green, LEED-certified building that will do avoidable damage to a unique urban ecosystem is celebrated as an expression of the U of C’s commitment to sustainability.
Listening to administrators try to dissolve this contradiction by repeating the University’s offer to help “relocate” the 61st Street garden, I am reminded of a remark Lech Walesa and Adam Michnik of Solidarity each attribute to the other. Referring to the state of the Polish economy as the nation emerged from Communist rule, one or the other (or perhaps both) said, “It’s easy to turn an aquarium into fish soup. It’s more difficult to turn fish soup back into an aquarium.”
This lesson—amply illustrated by the history of urban renewal on the South Side—suggests the standard of care required. The garden is a living thing. It cannot be relocated. The time will come to end it, but why now and for such faint reasons, when there are workable, safe, and cost-effective alternatives?
A friend with much experience working to advance “sustainability” within corporate and academic institutions once told me, endearingly, that she doesn’t know what the word means. That strikes me as a good place to start. The question then becomes: what sort of process will, over time, give concrete meaning to the term, while guarding against intellectual corruption?
Perhaps we would do better to think of “sustainability” as a verb grounded in practical activity rather than a noun skewed toward abstraction. If we did, we would find ourselves thinking less like social engineers and more like gardeners who learn things by practicing close attention to place, humility before mysteries they don’t fully comprehend, and hope for renewed inquiry in the spring.
Comments
Thank you for this beautiful essay. It puts the situation in such perfect perspective. As a recent transplant to the Hyde Park area, the Garden has by far been the most wonderful thing to discover here. Even though I have yet to participate in gardening there myself, I recognize what a completely vital asset it is to the Hyde Park Community and what a great tragedy it would be to lose it. It represents the clearest gateway and engagement between the sometimes isolated academic community of the university and the surrounding neighborhoods. My prayers, thoughts, and efforts are behind maintaining this plot of peaceful "sustainability" and source of life. Hopefully the University will see what we all see...
I am very sad to hear that the garden may be demolished by the university. I'm also angered that the university seems uninterested in attempting to save the garden while working on its adjacent construction projects. My husband and I enjoyed gardening in this space for two years. The garden is not only a *symbol* of community and cooperation between the university and the residents, it actually *is* a community of gardeners who socialize, grow healthy foods, and learn from each other. I hope many more voices emerge to convince the university they must engage with residents and gardeners on this issue. As graduate students of the university, former community gardeners, and residents of Hyde Park, we hold the university to its (now hollow-sounding) promises to foster community in the neighborhoods surrounding the U of C.
Amazing work, as ever, from Jamie, Patricia, the Invisible Institute, and so many allies. Thank you for leading the way. One day, public, business and academic institutions will understand that building community at the grassroots and strengthening local systems of all sorts (which community gardening accomplishes "organically" and better than most any other strategy)is important to their own bottom line.
I can only hope that the University will come to its senses and let the garden remain. I was fortunate this summer to visit my sister, Debra Hammond, while on vacation with my grandchildren, Gabriel, 8, and Amelia, 2. At every meal, we had some wonderful vegetable from her garden (imagine a 2-year-old eating and enjoying kale). We saw friendly garden snakes and lots of bugs while helping her to water the many plants. It was a magical afternoon that brought great pleasure to all.
We had a great summer together at the garden as a family needing to heal, needing to feel grounded in Hyde Park. We've been questioning this area as a place to live with small children since our violent encounter with robbers at our home in 2008. Our weekends in the garden gave us a way back to trusting the very concept of community again.
It also seemed like my initiation to U.S. soil, after 20 years of living here. Now I know that Hyde Park and Japan has worms, rolly pollies and praying mantises in common.
That's what our summer in the garden was about.
Thanks for doing this! Nice to see articles in the mainstream press, too. Are there going to be any demonstrations at all? I'm sure there are some campus and local activist groups that would get in on this. I would except I'm in Russia :(.
Although I should say that all of Russia might be on your side in this, too--- if anyone understands the value of a garden, it's the Russians.
This is a beautiful piece of work. Thank you for pulling together the images and spotlighting people's garden experiences. Every trip to Chicago to visit Shula has involved the garden, where we have pulled weeds, harvested lovely fresh vegetables, celebrated milestones, met her friends and fellow gardeners, and had long conversations under the arbor. Plants are not the only things that grow under these circumstances.
I hope the university comes to understand that what they are proposing to destroy is a hard-won sense of community that has developed under improbable and adverse conditions. This sort of development should be treasured and encouraged, not treated as disposable. An institution comprised of some of the finest minds in the country should be able to devise a solution which preserves the garden and promotes the peace and security of the neighborhood.
(I began this letter in September and modified it this week and sent it to the Hyde Park Herald.)
An Open Letter to the Powers that Be
I am sorry to hear that the community garden at the Experimental Station might be no more.
I had just returned from Europe in August and I thought I would approach Hyde Park with new eyes. I went to investigate the Farmer’s Market on 61st Street near the power station and discovered a garden --- and a café, too.
After suffering from much fatigue for over a decade, I have become sensitive to what is life-enhancing. Right now, this is the most life-enhancing experience in Hyde Park for me.
All my senses are slowly awakened as I enter the garden. Even now, as fall deepens, the fresh face of a rose, the bright green lettuces of Mike's Farm gently greet me. Such variety and beauty!
It was good of the U of C to have let the empty lot be used for gardening. But emotions run deep, especially when one works the land. I am attached to it, and I don’t even garden there.
What to do?
I am writing to acknowledge the loss of the garden.
The land didn’t belong to the gardeners. That’s the fact. But the effects of having such a community garden goes far beyond ownership.
Sincerely,
Diane Slaviero
Copy of e-mail sent to Pres. Zimmer Oct. 29:
I am an alum: MA in English in 1970. I now work for the American Planning Association, the national association of city and regional planners. As the executive editor of APA’s monthly magazine, Planning, I am familiar with cities and towns around the country (and world). Almost all of these places work hard to establish a “sense of place.” The garden at 61st and Blackstone is a major contributor to the sense of place in the Hyde Park-Woodlawn community. It seems counterproductive to destroy it for as flimsy a reason as a “staging area.”
Please reconsider this decision. It is terrible public relations for an institution that prides itself on being “green.”
Ruth Eckdish Knack, AICP
5602 S. Blackstone Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637
The university's stance is as baffling as ever--it seems the way is paved for it to do something good for this community by the garden, and yet they remain in the towers mumbling this and that about practicality, "sustainability" and "community" building. The administrators vision for the neighborhood and a sustainable university seems to go no deeper than a tea-cup; they're acting on offensively superficial levels. If the building must go up why not at least try to do something truly amazing with this garden space that does justice to the community that built it and the earth that it will sit on. This is a great piece Jamie and I hope its energy reaches them before it's too late.
October 22nd, 2009
To: President Robert Zimmer
and Vice President of Civic Engagement Ann Marie Lipinski:
Re: University’s choice to demolish socio and eco sustainability initiative at 61st and Blackstone (i.e. beautiful community garden)
I nearly transferred from the University of Chicago several times in my first year and half as an undergraduate.
In first deciding to attend the University, I was an east-coaster “stretching my horizons”. I was fascinated by agriculture, but experimenting with city life. I chose the University’s new interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Department, thinking I could weave my grounding in nature to the raw urban grit of the South Side.
My attempts to weave such a fabric were failing. I entered into my second tedious year of academia disdainful of its absence from natural cycles and ecological realities. I began to research schools in my home state of Maine, planning to transfer come winter.
It was an early October morning in 1998 when I passed by the 61st street garden on a run—or rather, jogged by the garden and stopped. I stopped running at the site of some towering urban sunflowers in the first community garden I had ever seen (or imagined), and I haven’t ever left that spot of awe.
Through my integration of that community garden and the worlds to which it led, I stayed at the University of Chicago, and even thrived. My professional life following graduation also draws from that first discovery of nature and community amidst city sprawl.
Without access to that embedded space of nature, spirit, sustainability and academia, I would never have stayed with, and been transformed by, the University of Chicago. I am saddened, even appalled, to think of my alma mater choosing to blot out the space that made this institution the transformative experience it was.
I earned a degree in Environmental Studies from a University that chooses to demolish the 61st Street Garden? A powerful entity that cannot understand the value of a successful, permanent community and ecological experience in the midst of its growing campus? If this is true, my degree becomes a point of embarrassment.
The University of Chicago could be a leader in urban sustainability—a topic every year more popular and relevant to incoming classes. The choice of construction staging over long-term integration of eco and socio-sustainable initiatives places the University far behind other leading institutions. This alumna feels no allegiance to such a backwards institution. Please reconsider your priorities.
Sincerely, Amelia Baxter
what a disaster! it is a disaster to lose this garden & the community it has grown. the community garden is not just a place to grow vegetables & flowers. it is a place to grow community, uc'ers and non-uc'ers, hyde parkers & woodlawnites, growners & consumers, experimental station contacts, farmer market venders & consumers.
it has been an organic growth, figuratively & actually.
it has been a force for community that can not & WILL not be duplicated by removing it to (a)nother location(s).
the GOOD WILL the university will lose by destroying the garden is mounumental. lost in the community as well as in the city. the loss will be added to the loss of good will over the hospital's disengagement in the community. it is a time when the university should be considering its reputation.
the staging area can be relocated. use an area that can be reconstructed easily such as a similiar sized area between the midway & 60th street east & west of dorchester. trees, bushes, grass & benches would be reestablished in the same plot. the garden could not be. be reasonable, consider other options, look at other perspectives. look for GOOD WILL.
the reputation of the university can only be IMPROVED by retaining the community garden in its present site with a commitment to its future as a permanent fixture for Woodlawn, the Experiment Station, Hyde Park & our greater communities.
Dear President Zimmer and the Office of Civic Engagement
I am sure that you are sick or hearing about our community garden on 61st Street, but I feel that I must make one last effort to convince you that the University is making a tactical error in closing the garden down. This garden is a treasure and resource to be maintained--and there are a couple of new points to I'd like to ask you to consider as we move toward demolition. The University needs to consider the place of the garden in broader contexts: the place (and face) of the University of Chicago vis-a-vis institutions of higher education that are seeking to build resources that you seek to tear down, and the role that the University of Chicago can take in supporting the City of Chicago in its climate change mitigation strategies. Other advocates of the garden have tried to convince you to save the garden for reasons of heart and soul. This has not worked, so I turn the argument to reasons of politics and economics.
First: It might be useful to think about the University's standing vis-a-vis similarly ranked institutions when it comes to gardening initiatives. If we think in these terms, we see that the garden at 61st Street is a valuable resource for publicity and recruitment, both of students and faculty. The social wind blows toward environmental endeavors and local agriculture--we have that here, so why throw it away? The university can capitalize on the garden in so many politically and economically viable ways that will keep us competitive with similarly ranked institutions. Consider: Harvard University is just now beginning to green its campus spaces (see
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/garden/24garden.html for a New York Times article about their new initiatives). Think of the publicity bragging rights the University of Chicago already has--our garden is 10 years old and has built community, green initiative, and supports the University's mission to build relationships that integrate Woodlawn into our community. Think of how that compares to Harvard--they are late to the game and the new kids on the block. And here's another example--my undergraduate alma mater, The Colorado College has established a community organic garden behind the president's house and their food service provider serves entirely locally and organically sourced food. How does the U of C stack up against that? Can you reconsider the garden within the broader context of what our sister institutions are doing? It's a marketing and social plus for the University to have this garden. If we think in terms of student recruitment and bottom lines, as well as our social, community, and intellectual standing with our sister institutions of higher education, then the garden--the University's garden--takes on a new significance as a resource to be banked upon in purely instrumental terms.
Second--if the argument above does not move you, consider the place of the garden within the context of the City of Chicago's Chicago Climate Action Plan (see http://www.chicagoclimateaction.org/ for the City's detailed plan for dealing with the effects of climate change in our area). My colleagues and I at the Field Museum have produced a report highlighting the role that community gardens must play in meeting City Hall's goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 2050 to 50% below 1990 emissions levels. Perhaps it is worth considering how The University's Garden is well-placed socially, politically, and pragmatically to help the City of Chicago meet its goals vis-a-vis climate change and taking steps to offset the inevitable effects that it will have on our city in the coming years. The University of Chicago could help lead the way in these endeavors.
There are many more political, pragmatic, and economic arguments that I could call upon to try to convince the University to reconsider its decision to dismantle the garden, but I will stop with these. I would love to have the opportunity to speak with you at length about the potential instrumental value of the garden to the University if you would like. There is much research out there to support this sort of understanding of the role of the garden in the University's structure and goals. I recognize that this letter may be a little too little and a little too late, but I hope that it introduces a new perspective that speaks to the University in terms it seems to want to hear. The heart and soul of the garden is paramount to us, the gardeners, but perhaps not to the University. However, the economic and political approach could convince you to rethink this decision.
Thank you for your time and attention in this matter. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have questions about the Chicago Climate Action Plan or the Field Museum report on community and institutional engagement with this plan.
Yours very sincerely,
Sarah B. Van Deusen Phillips, Ph.D.
Comparative Human Development, '08
The University of Chicago's decision to demolish the 61st Street Community Garden demonstrates its lack of creative vision and community commitment. One doesn't need to be an urban planner to know that a community garden provides more value to the University and to the community than another vacant lot on the Southside of Chicago.
For my family and me over the last decade, the garden has provided great eating, a place of beauty and peace, a special community of people, and pleasure.
Even in what may be its last hours, the garden is happy-making. There is still much to harvest and eat. There is magic and wonder. The tiny, charcoal mouse spotted in the Asian greens. The praying mantis on the sweet parsley. The fun of BBQ, picnic and singing together.
Many thanks to Aaron, Patsy and Jamie for the beautiful garden conversations. You have given us space to be eloquent, and given of your time and talents on our behalf; we are most grateful. Inestimable thanks to Jack Spicer for giving us top soil, mulch and just enough structure that we could all flower.
Some things we have seen in the garden over the years: finches, sparrows, rabbits, snakes, mice, praying mantises, bees, adults, kids, tomatoes, eggplants, corn, daisies, sunflowers, compost, kids having waterfights, kids playing king of the hill on the compost piles, kids digging in the dirt, kids eating snap peas, beer (at garden parties), trees, basil, garlic, wood chips, manure, shovels, forks, pots, raspberries, beans, peas, zinneas, roses, petunias, french bread (from the farmers' market), bicycles, wheelbarrows, peppers (red, yellow, orange, and green), and last but not least, the four pumpkins we grew this year. Two of them became our Halloween Jack 'o Lanterns, and the girls proudly showed them off to passersby.
Although I struggle with a lowly, small, back yard garden I can appreciate the efforts of the people who work and enjoy a really plentiful garden. In a time when we should be thinking green what sense does it make to destroy the years of work it took to produce such a garden. Surely another solution can be found with all of the good minds at work in the University.
I am posting my notes from my meeting on October 21st with Sonya Malunda of the Office of Civic Engagement and members of the facility services and constuction planning team.
At this meeting I explained that as a member of the garden steering committee that I, and I thought many of the other gardeners, were having difficulty accepting Sonya's offer to work with us and the alderman to move the garden to a different location because I didn't fully understand why the construction staging necessitated it. I also reiterated the point that had been made many times before that the ecology of the garden as it exists in its current location with the Experimental Station, farmer's market, U of C Press and eventually the Seminary is a valuable resource for the University itself that would not necessarily survive relocation. I also told them that the University's explanations thus far for why the construction had to be staged on the garden did not make sense. Thus, alternative explanations for the staging had been circulating, ie. that the garden would eventually be a parking lot and that the University felt that the transition from staging site to parking lot would be more palatable to the community than garden to parking lot. They were quick to point out that no one knew what the garden site would be used for after construction and so the parking lot theory was incorrect. At which point I asked if the garden could be "mothballed" during construction and then restarted in a year in a half after staging was done. Sonya said that restarting the garden after construction would not be possible because the garden was always meant to be temporary. I countered that the garden being temporary did not necessarily mean that it had to cease to exist at this moment in time. I thought that even though none of the gardeners thought that the garden would exist forever, even three or four more years until the University actually needed to build on the site would be a benefit to the gardeners.
Their arguments on using the garden for staging were that it would cost less to store the materials on the garden rather than using other University property on 61st Street. They also said that they had promised the 61st Street neighbors that once the library construction was over they would clean up the lots that they are using for dirt storage on 61st Street and not use them again until they needed to actually build on them. I then asked whether alternative staging that would preserve the garden was impossible. They said it was not but would be more expensive (when pressed they estimated a cost over run of somewhere in the five figures- which in retrospect is probably not so bad in the construction of a $33 million dollar building) and would upset the neighbors if they used the 61st Street lot. Sonya refused to get opinions from outside consultants on the feasibility of alternative staging.
I left the meeting with the impression that if sufficient outside pressure were brought to bear that there are alternative ways the staging could be done. If pressure is not applied clearly it will be much easier for them to proceed ahead as planned.
If they can turn the beautiful lakefront into a wildlife nectar for the birds and avoid cutting and maintaining the beautiful grass, why can't they just leave a garden alone. I do believe in gardens. Where do the young learn to nuture, grow, weed and eat from the earth? I think we should keep this garden as there is alot of blood, sweat, tears and love here!!
The Hyde Park Herald's editorial, *Taking the long view on 61st Street*, on November 4, 2009, summed it up well:
"The community garden on 61st Street is, as has been noted many times on this page, a unique and verdant destination that draws folks from all walks of life. The garden connects the university to the community in a way that is desperately needed in the current tense environment. Woodlawn and Hyde Park residents get to meet and mingle in a way that is inconceivable just about anywhere else. These are relationships to be treasured, not dismissed out of hand."
"The University of Chicago's vigorous intellectual reputation often links it with accusations of aridity, famously recorded by the fraternity that printed 'University of Chicago: where fun comes to die' T-shirts some years ago. Imperious, malevolent behavior that is clearly to the long-term detriment of even the university's own goals adds a whiff to truth to that old canard. It is as if the university cannot understand the value of community life."
"As winter approaches, it makes no sense to wipe out a community institution around which there is so much support for a construction project that will not be underway until spring. What this situation calls for is reasonableness and patience. Allow gardeners more time, President Zimmer, and talk to them. Hear them out. Be open to new ideas, new ways of doing things that are perhaps not like your own thoughts but bear merit. Take this opportunity to burnish, not besmirch, your own reputation."
12 November 2009
Dear Friends,
On October 28, I sent the following letter to President Zimmer, with a copy to Provost Thomas Rosenbaum. On October 30, I sent a postscript, which also follows below.
Sadly, to date I have received neither a reply to nor even an acknowledgement of these letters. With some two weeks having passed since I attempted to initiate a dialogue with Bob Zimmer on this subject, it seems more appropriate to present these thoughts as an open letter. I am releasing these letters, with minor revisions, for that purpose now.
Andrew Patner
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28 October 2009
Re: The Gardens and the image and character of The University
Dear Bob, cc: Tom Rosenbaum
To say that I and my family and neighbors are distressed by the posture of your Administration toward the community garden at 61st and Dorchester would be a mild way of putting things.
I have seen enough of these sorts of disputes to know that there are surely more sides to the story than some have put forward. But what I'm even more sure of -- and this is based on both a literal lifetime of experience and observation and two generations of family involvement in the Hyde Park, Kenwood, and Woodlawn neighborhoods going back to my late Father, Marshall Patner's enrollment at The Law School in 1953, 56 years ago -- is that The University -- and specifically you and the Administration -- are handling this all very poorly and in ways that can reflect poorly both on you and on The University, in ways that raise questions as to how decisions are made by this Administration, whether in dealing with the neighboring communities or other matters.
The many aspects of urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s can and will be debated for decades more, but the heavy hand exercised by The University and its refusal to engage with the communities surrounding and housing it set The University back in a great number of areas and in ways that are still felt today as The University tries to understand why so many potential and actual faculty members and graduate students don't find Hyde Park attractive or vibrant. When we look back on such matters as the 1957 plan -- by the Chicago Theological Seminary, no less! -- to demolish Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House we shake our heads today in disbelief. (My Father was involved in legal moves at the time to protect the house.)
Rather than learning from these lessons in public and community relations failures, succeeding Administrations continued to treat the community in a high-handed manner through the 1970s and 1980s as local schools declined and more human and institutional bridges were burned. In the 1990s, the same sort of short-sightedness and tin ears led to such fiascos as the plan to shutter and then wreck the International House and to shift significant aspects of the character of The College. Those failed moves led to the collapse of a President and a Provost. Read or re-read the May 2000 Franke Report to get an idea of what happens when "The Administration Knows Best" and digs in its heels on matters where compromise is not only not a failure but a means to real success and leadership.
It was not until the Randel Administration earlier in this decade that the community started hearing things it had given up on ever hearing from The University -- about bulldozing and insularity and racial hierarchies and bureaucratic mindsets and failed master plans and closed doors. These statements and policies and programs that grew out of or ran parallel to them were not only gains on The University's moral ledger, they helped to advance genuine cooperation, sometimes for the first time, with many groups and communities that were beneficial to The University and its future in many practical ways as well. Former Dean of the Humanities Division Danielle Allen documented and discussed some of these moves in important works.
Now, sadly, and even shockingly, the clock seems to be rolling back to unpleasant and unhappy days and styles of behavior. A new "Vice President for Civic Engagement" seems cut from the same cloth as Julian Levi and Jonathan Kleinbard were in their days. "My way or the highway" and "There is no alternative" are neither civic, nor civil, nor any sorts of model for engagement. In marked contrast, Jack Spicer and Jamie Kalven are among the *best* that our communities have and their work (for free and as volunteers) on so many areas has been of paramount importance to the well-being of our communities. When such people as Jack and Jamie and the people whom they work with and represent are shut out -- or even demonized -- and a large and growing office of six-figure job-seekers with no community service record at all becomes an engine or plow rather than a place for genuine communication and creation of shared visions, something is seriously wrong.
Alas, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, Leon and Marian Despres, Robert Mann, my Father, and so many others whose voices carried some authority in talking to and about The University and the community are gone now. Fortunately, you are a person who knows what those voices sounded like and what they would have to say. In a matter of days or even hours you can get things moving in a direction where every party might not be happy every day or pleased with every single choice that The University makes, but where people of good will understand each other and work together to achieve just and sensible -- or as it is often said today, sustainable -- solutions and outcome. Where The University will score public relations points because it has actually done something good and not because it has used spin and lobbying and downtown connections.
Read Jamie's essay and watch his video below. Invite Jamie and Jack to lunch, just the three of you, and hear them out -- really hear what they are saying. And let them hear -- from you -- what you have to say. Take a walk together to and through the community garden. Take a careful look at this "Civic Engagement" business and who's working and setting the tone there before you are drawn further into same-old, same-old and the elitist boardroom groupthink that have characterized too many failed enterprises in Chicago. Read the Franke Report on the I-House debacle and the then-President's public announcement of a reversal of course on a mistaken plan. And recall, too, that Trustee Richard Franke ran his committee by walking around and walking into meetings with a notepad and a pencil, not with press releases or a phalanx or public and community relations bureaucrats.
Thanks for your time. I would be happy to discuss any of this further with you at any time.
http://www.invisibleinstitute.com/stories/garden/content/2009/10/how-gar...
Best wishes to you and your family,
Andrew
Andrew Patner
EX College '81, EX Law '88
Member, Visiting Committee to The Department of Music
Co-sponsor with Mrs. Irene Patner of the Marshall Patner Fund for the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic at The Law School
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30 October 2009
Subject: Follow-up on letter on the Gardens and the image and character of The University
Dear Bob,
I just wanted to let you know that I have been asked by a number of people if I might turn my letter to you this week into an "Open Letter" that could be widely published and circulated.
I explained to them that, while there is nothing secret about my views, I hoped to hear back from you before I would consider releasing the letter more widely as my purpose in writing to you was and is to write to *you.*
I'm certainly aware of how heavy your schedule is, but as this issue has a pressing time factor, and in light of the latest "Civic Engagement" appointment of Arnold Randall -- the Mayor's front-man for the ludicrous Olympic "bid" -- I hope that it might be possible to hear from or talk directly with you in the next few days.
I am sure that you saw the editorial in yesterday's Sun-Times. Wise words.
Best wishes,
Andrew P.
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I visited the garden and the Experimental Station in October. I was deeply impressed then-- I have never been to a place where so many elements-- the garden, the cafe, the farmers' market, the kitchen, the bike shop-- are so seamlessly and unpretentiously combined to provide a space for people to gather. From what I've seen, the Experimental Station and the garden are unique in that none of the good that comes out of it is forced-- it's a place to enjoy and for people to come together, and that's exactly what happens. Through the good times and resources available, the community can come together and grow.
Having kept up with most of the conversations posted, I am even more impressed now. I didn't realize that garden could produce so many vegetables-- this is an actual food resource, not just a space to gather. That's incredible.
I believe in this place. Like Shula Bien, I am from Maine and I've sought out a green space in the city. Garden or not, I plan to return and hope to get more involved in this cause.
Wishing the best to the Experimental Station and the Invisible Institute,
Zoe
Northwestern University
Dear President Zimmer and the Office of Civic Engagement,
I urge you to reconsider your decision to ask those who participate in the community garden to relocate elsewhere. You have heard and read what others say about how difficult that would be logistically, and what a profound loss--to them, Hyde Park, and the university itself--it would constitute. In the garden and the many other activities that are associated with it, people have invested themselves in individual, family, and community work of the most productive and satisfying kind. They have created a unique sense of place and an all too rare kind of belonging. They have recovered ground otherwise absent of all purpose. Since there is an alternative staging area for the construction of the new university building, a reversal of your original decision would benefit everyone. The university would gain great credit for having the courage to reverse itself and recognize the irreplaceable ally the garden and its gardeners are in pursuing the university's environmentally sensitive agenda and its goal of improved community relations. Not least among its many benefits is the garden as an untapped learning resource for the university's matriculated students, and its potential in the recruitment of future students. In these and the many other ways that the "the Garden Conversations" movingly show, the garden is as much a great opportunity for the university as it has been for those who have developed it, and who relish being a part of the community their work has created.
Edward W. Wolner
Associate Professor
Department of Architecture and the Honors College
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47303
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