Comcast Cares in Elmwood and
Soverel Parks
4/26/14
These were two "sudden" events. The posters appeared on the City Web site only one
day in advance. The Alternative Press did not announce it until April 26,
the day of the event (not their fault- it's the old and slow City
Hall Public Relations back in inaction). The NEW City
Hall Facebook Page that is supposed to be replacing the OLD
City Hall Facebook page only "announced" it after it
had already taken place. The OLD City
Hall Facebook Page, that is suppose to have been phased out,
had more photos, but no advance announcement of the event on
either Facebook page. Perhaps there are too many bosses in charge
of public relations at City Hall, which means some of those extra
positions can be cut out of the budget.
In spite of the poor publicity, both events took place. I was
only able to travel to Elmwood Park, so I only have photographs
from that event. From the looks of the City photos posted on the NEW Facebook Page, the
same kind of thing occurred at each of the parks. Mayor Lester
Taylor and Assemblyman Tom Giblin both posed for the mandatory
photo sessions with some of the members of city council and
crowds of volunteers. I purposely avoided the photo sessions and
went to Elmwood park at noon to see how many of the real workers
would still be on the job. To my surprise and delight, there were
many young people hard at work in Elmwood Park when I arrived.
If you want to see the city's idea of who is important to be
seen at these events, you can see all the "celebrities"
pretending to work in the city press release of the event. None of the
Comcast volunteers were named in the April 28th press release.
It looks as if Comcast knows as little about
advertising events as our city. There is just a slogan posted on
the banner at the entrance; no Who, What, When. Where or Why.
Elmwood Park has two large concrete garden areas by the main
gates. I don't know if that is always what they were used for. I
seem to remember that they were used as horseshoe pits when I was
a child, but no one plays horseshoes anymore - it's probably too
dangerous for our modern times. The Comcast workers (I assume)
had taken charge by the time I arrived and were just putting on
the finishing touches of adding mulch around the hostia plants
and annual flowers on this eastern garden. I'll have to come back
in the summer and see how the garden looks when the twiggy hedges
have filled out.
Across from the western entrance garden you can see young
people being coached in basketball on the basketball court, but
the young people in green shirts are hard at work painting the
bleachers. In the foreground on the right, you can see that they
have already painted the wood and concrete benches that are all
around the edges of the park.
Across the big field, which was remarkably litter free, the
young people were being called to lunch at the field house, which
has been freshly painted, as you can see in the city's photos
with the posing big-shots.
I couldn't leave Elmwood without taking this photo of a
massive Northern Red Oak tree (New Jersey's State Tree) behind
the freshly painted park bench, to compare it to the one I
planted in my back yard on Arbor Day (4/25/14).
Years after I am gone, my descendants will be cursing me for
planting a tree of that size in my back yard... if it should last
so long. It would have been better as a centennial tree, but that's
another story. As I left Elmwood Park, I decided to go down the
street and visit Washington Park behind the former (now
abandoned) Washington School on the corner of Sanford and
Elmwood. I was fearful of what I would find.
I used the Kenwood Place entrance on the south side of the
school, facing Elmwood Avenue in the background. Three trucks
from the East Orange School District were parked and I saw four
workers operating trimmers and weed whackers on the grounds.
Rakes were out and a leaf blower which showed they had already
finished cleaning up the basketball court before I arrived.
Two of the workers were just finishing up around the field
house, and one more was out in the baseball field (there may have
been more workers, I'm just reporting what I photographed and
saw). Anyway, I was happy that Washington Park has not been
neglected and abandoned because many of the local children still
use the park after school and on weekends.
Now for the sermon. As happy as I was to see the clean parks
today, I saw them both before Earth Day when they really did look
littered and neglected. We need to change our culture so that we
don't treat our environment like a huge litter box for humans. It
starts with the young people. They need to see the adults around
them bending over and picking up litter - not just their own
litter, but other litter from selfish people. They need to be
side by side with the adult workers in the parks. We can't wait
for Comcast to decide they want publicity showing how much they
care, but our own School District should encourage the various
schools to send out volunteer students to join the workers when
they take care of the parks. The adults should handle the heavy
motorized equipment, but students can handle rakes and shovels.
It used to be called "community service" and students
got high school credit for it in the past. But they should also
learn to take care of the park just because it BELONGS to THEM,
is paid for by their taxes and their parents' taxes, and they
need to develop a sense of personal responsibility to bend over
and pick up litter so they can play basketball on THEIR clean
basketball court, etc. They should get after their friends and
playmates when they see them tossing litter on the ground at
THEIR park. That's what I mean by changing the culture. If you
agree, don't honk and don't tweet - just talk to your children
and set an example for them to follow. Change yourself first, and
they will change by imitating you. Don't expect big miracles, but
if you see someone picking up litter and tossing it in the trash
cans that abound in our city, say "Thanks!" to them
because they care for your city, too.