I Woke Last Night With Fists Clenched

I woke last night about 3 a.m. with clenched fists, the kind of tension that made me think if I had actually been sleeping for the last 4 hours since going to bed. There are plenty of events or situations in one's life to get upset or stressed over: a collapsed light pole left unattended and increased dumping in the Dunbar residential neighborhood near work in Kansas City; half the houses leveled, some recently bulldozed, on a friend's block on Brooklyn; shrinking payrolls and teacher layoffs due to state budget deficits; a car driver not giving me clearance on a morning run through residential streets; US admonishing the Mideast nations to not engage in violence to solve problems despite engaging in this approach for years; a co-worker's description of being blacklisted by police from traveling in his old Paseo corridor neighborhood; or a KC city council candidate describing police intimation driving through his own neighborhood.

Any one of these problems could raise a person's temperature or prompt a call for action. In the end the light pole is repaired after three weeks by city crew, but would not have been so neglected in another part of town. Individuals and groups are working with private and public entities to prepare bulldozed city properties  in Kansas City for urban gardens and farms as described here or depicted in the Urban Roots film (see below) about gardening in Detroit.

Some problems have immediate solutions, others require long-term planning and collective action.



After being awake for a minute, I realized my clenched fists were due to a two-hour struggle with a garden tiller, which I used the day before to prepare my vegetable garden for early Spring planting. So it turn's out my clenched fists were not due to the stress of the day, but I'm still upset about conditions in and around where I live and work.

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