Country Kids swallowed
by Urban enviornment
Now I know what they mean by the old saying that went something like: ‘Once they see the city you cannot keep them on the farm.’ For the last two days we took our grandchildren (Graf Kids) to the big city of Chicago. My grandchildren are not really country kids in the true sense, since they were born in Green Bay and have only lived out in a rural area for the last few years. But as I have mentioned before, present day country kids, like the three children of similar age across the road who grew up on the family dairy farm, are very similar to urban kids: play lots of sports, go to modern schools, have busy schedules, and easy access to media and video games. Despite all this they are still somewhat fascinated by Milwaukee and were really fascinated by Chicago. A friend in Chicago was our tour guide. He knew the right buses or subways to take to wherever we wanted to go. The noise, the number of people, cars, buses, stores, tall building and screaming ambulances fascinated my grandchildren while it left me a little bit on edge. I had to remind myself that this big urban city was full of Growing Power gardens. Will Allen’s, the founder of Growing Power’s, daughter actually directs Growing Power in Chicago and this city, unlike Milwaukee so far, has made a real commitment to growing organic healthy food. For me the whole city was a large department store (we did visit the big Macy’s department store on my wife’s suggestion); it was just was too much for me to handle. However, the transition from rural to urban to big-type urban was very natural for my grandchildren. Now if only the Hancock Tower, pictured here, were a vertical Growing Power Urban Garden Tower, (a kind of building that is presently being envisioned) we would really be bringing the country to the urban. The counterpart to this would be to build affordable housing in the country and to connect the country and urban centers with high-speed affordable transportation. Than we could have urban kids growing up in a county environment in the city and in rural areas.
When I got home tonight my friend Andor, who I partnered with on the G.R.A.F. system last summer, called me. We had not talked for a while and he was full of all kinds of new urban growing ideas and suggestions. He give me a whole bunch of sites to visit and names to people to talk to about growing in the city. At the end of the conversation I felt somewhat like I do in the big urban city or department store. It was just too much. When we bring the country into the city, we need to take the children’s view and keep it simple, asking childlike questions, “Why are there so many people in such a small space?” Otherwise the urban will overshadow the country and swallow it up.
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