12 AWP Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 April 5–11, 2019
Our neighbor’s transgressions
EDITOR
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The sound of the skateboards
was loud on the
street, and it was after
just after 11 p.m., on a Saturday
night. I was walking
my dog.
A neighbor, also walking
her dog, grumbled and shook
her head. “These skateboarders…”
I laughed awkwardly.
“Oops. Those are my boys,
and their friends.”
“Well…”
Clearly this was not what
she had expected. She expected
a fellow grumbler, aggravated
at the annoyance of
disrespectful teens.
I didn’t get angry. Nor did
I wholly defend my children.
What I focused on, without
hesitation, was the importance
of making peace with the realities
of living in a city; with
coexisting alongside even the
most annoying of your neighbors’
habits.
It is a constant refrain from
me, that idea of how we must
take a long deep breath and
put up with the sirens and the
babies crying and the perpetually
defiant independence of
these damn teens.
Believe me. My patience is
tested on this as, most likely,
is the patience of my neighbors.
But I imagine that at one
point or another, each and every
one of those neighbors,
just like my teens, just like
me, might themselves need
a bit of understanding.
Maybe their cat sneaks up
the stairs and into my apartment.
Maybe their construction
job sends fumes through
the floorboards. Maybe they
have a baby who cries at all
hours. And if I am doing my
job, if I am working in whatever
way I can to calm and
collect myself about the trials
and tribulations of city living,
I tend to be able to get there
fairly easily, to that place of
understanding.
We are living in close
proximity. My kids were actually
headed off the street,
toward the park, where she
had suggested they go, but
they needed to get there. And
the poor infants who she was
worried for, who were woken
from their slumber…
“Well,” I told her, “I raised
my kids to deal with the noise
when they were babies, and
they’ll sleep through anything
now. So…”
Unfortunately, silence is
Garden for good
Tracy Morgan gives back
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I apologize to my neighbors
fairly routinely. For the
parties. And the drums. And
whatever else they have heard
or had to deal with.
As I explained to my fellow
late-night dog walker, my
boys skating by loudly with a
wave, “it’s all about how we
communicate with one another.
And understanding that
we have to put up with some
stuff in the city. No one’s ever
going to be perfect.”
I explained that I was happy
about these boys, out having
fun together versus staying
at home, quietly, with headphones,
in front of video
games. She seemed, maybe,
to understand.
But I don’t know how
she felt as she walked away.
Maybe she was still super aggravated,
and I’d given her
even more fodder for her theory
that all of these insensitive
teens clearly get their insensitive
behavior from their insensitive
parents, which is indeed
one way of seeing it.
Or, maybe, just maybe, she
heard me as I kindly objected
to vilifying these kids (and, by
extension, their permissive parents)
and she went home and
imagined a neighborhood
where we all give each other
a little leeway, maybe even more
than a little sometimes, so as to
get more leeway in return.
Radiate positivity always.
It will return to you.
That is the fortune I chose
out of the box at Naidre’s cafe
before I wrote this. Hard as
that can be, and false as it can
feel sometimes, I choose to
believe that it’s true.
And I hope my neighbors
do, too. No matter what, we
don’t completely control the
actions of those around us.
And so we have to breathe, and
move through some things,
and assume best intentions.
Otherwise we could be angry
all the time at someone
for something. That would be
easy enough.
Fearless
Living
By Stephanie Thompson
Continued from page 1
By Natallie Rocha
Brooklyn Paper
Call him the Original
Gardener.
Actor and comedian Tracy
Morgan and the cast of his
show “The Last O.G.” visited
a community garden
in Bedford-Stuyvesant last
week. The network behind
the show, about an “Original
Gangster” who returns to
his Brooklyn neighborhood
after years away, teamed up
with the do-gooder group
GrowNYC to build and
plant 30 new garden beds
at the Hattie Carthan Community
Garden. The March
28 event celebrated both the
renovations and the launch
of the sitcom’s second season
on the Turner Broadcasting
System.
Morgan, who grew up
in the neighborhood, joked
around while he and his family
packaged fruits and other
produce for soup kitchens
and food banks. For locals,
his appearance demonstrated
hope for the community, said
one witness.
“Tracy Morgan didn’t
have to come back, but he
did,” Dorian Vaz said. “The
best part of the event, besides
Tracy Morgan of course, was
to see people coming out as
a whole and rising up.”
Vaz, who travels across
the boroughs with City Harvest
— a group that supports
community gardens throughout
New York City — said
he is optimistic about the
growth of this particular
garden and believes it can
help transform the area.
“The community is coming
together and not looking
washed up,” Vaz said.
“There’s still hope. When
you see a rose grow out of
concrete, the world is yours
and it’s growing.”
Comedian and star of “The Last O.G.,” Tracy Morgan,
and his wife Megan Wollover at the Hattie Carthan
Community Garden in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Photo by Stefano Giovannini
The Lafayette Avenue garden,
which opened in 2009, is
one of the largest in Brooklyn.
It is maintained by Bedford-
Stuyvesant residents like Ernest
Anderson, who has tended
plants there for eight years.
Anderson, a Korean War veteran,
said he grew up on a farm
and that gardening keeps him
connected to his roots.
“I wanted to put my hands
back in the dirt again,” he
said.
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