San Marcos Writers Network

Since I’ve lived in Providence, Rhode Island, one the historic capitols of New England (being the six states east of New York), I have studied the inhabitants through my windows and on the sidewalks.  Something notable in this part of the country is the extreme concentration of structures and the centralization of communities.  Only a few miles from downtown you will find yourself surrounded by natural land, but once inside its perimeter, the City swallows your senses.  It isn’t the same feeling as a New York or Los Angeles downtown or business district.  Historical buildings as old as the American Revolution are dropped in along with huge developments, plants and mills – many of which are abandoned – pharmacies, convenience stores, and endless rows of tightly squeezed houses offering all the living space of Old San Francisco but none of the charm.  The city itself seems to disregard the virtue of green space.  Urban sprawl has no visible alternative here, no matter how much one may be needed.

The children of Providence must not have fallen far from the proverbial apple tree of their father.  I say this because wherever you go, you will see careless misuse and disrespect for the land, concrete jungle though it may be.  The parks and waterways sport new trash everyday.  Small tokens of consumerism sprinkle the streets and old buildings waste under the haphazard patina left by squaters, the homeless, and “artists.”  We as a country may be on the downhill slope of a growing depression, however I see no excuse to mistreat your own home.  Then one day I witnessed exactly how attitudes are nurtured here in the great Northeast.  I was sitting having lunch in my apartment, looking out the window and watching the families wait for their children to offload from the city bus.  It is bad enough that kids are picked up and escorted one or two blocks in their parents car, and that they somehow need city paid bus attendants for the sole purpose of getting the kids out of the bus.  Then I saw a mother (or some ambiguous authority figure) standing on the corner with a little girl who was eating food from a styrofoam take out tray.  The child walked two steps to a drainage grate in the street and held out the half eaten tray and plastic fork and looked to her adult.  I imagined the question was whether or not to drop it or more likely “do you want any of this before I do?”  The authority then seemed to motion, “go ahead” or maybe, “stop bothering me!”  The kid dropped the trash in the gutter (joining it with it’s kindred litter) and then skipped around the sidewalk until they picked up another child, walked directly past the site of unmitigated littering, and loaded into a car and left.  I was disturbed not just about the act of littering their own streets, small as that may be in the grand scheme, but also by the lack of resposibility taken by the parent.  Why bring trash with you outside when you’re going right back inside?  Why not take the trash with you when you go?  After all, the car was only two steps away.  Why live engulfed in your own waste?  It is confusing and enfuriating to me to see an entire community, possibly even an entire culture, with so little respect for their home.