La Casa Chica: Now THAT'S Neighborly

You have found your way to the virtual front stoop of "La Casa Chica," a fitting name for the kind of home I am wanting to create. I hope it will contribute to the growing sense of connection and belonging here in my Central-Cocoanut neighborhood, in the Newtown community of Sarasota, Florida.

La Casa Chica is "the little house," modest in size relative to the other houses on the block and in the neighborhoood.

La Casa Chica is "the enchanted house," with its 1920's Spanish eclectic architecture, its emerging tradition of front-stoop and kitchen conversation, and its resident puppy, Gus.

La Casa Chica is "the home of the beloved child," brought to life through the everyday presence of neighborkids, whose natural inclinations to be social and exuberant generate the special, neighborly spirit of the place.

La Casa Chica is a reclaiming of the legitimate role and relationship of neighbor, which is often less recognized than that of family or professional, but can be powerful and transformative nonetheless.

If Jane Addams were to drop by, I hope that she might recognize La Casa Chica as Hull House reinvented, a century later...

If Jane Jacobs were to drop by, I hope that she might recognize La Casa Chica as an effort to get beyond "the mask of pretended order" that is affecting our community, and to nurture the "real order that is struggling to exist."

If Donald Winnicott were to drop by, I hope that he might recognize La Casa Chica as a place where neighbors choose to get together "to do the things which you can do better than you can be taught to do them."

And if Timothy Leary were to drop by, I hope that he might recognize La Casa Chica as an everyday, real-world, neighborhood-scale embracing of his notion that "the universe is an intelligence test."

But mostly, I hope that my neighbors will drop by.

I am ready to be a neighbor.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Now THAT'S Neighborly

This has been a crazily stressful week for me. At the start of the week, I received the news that the home I still own (and was renting out) in Tampa burned down when the tenants left cigarettes unattended.

Later in the week, I received even more devastating news, which I’d rather keep to myself. Needless to say, this was not the time to have overlooked paying my electric bill, but that’s exactly what I did, and today the electric company turned off my electricity.

So…it meant a lot to me when I got a call in the late morning while I was working up in Tampa – it was the D’s mom, my neighbor Donna, letting me know that FP&L had turned off my electricity, and there was a pink notice on the door. She said she wanted to let me know so there’d be time for me to pay the bill and get the power restored before I got home from work at the end of the day.

Now THAT’S neighborly.

When I got home, Donna’s son Da’Sean met me at the door, curious about the pink notice. “What’s this?” he asked, and then proceeded to read the announcement aloud, which gave me a chance to tell Da’Sean the story of how his neighborly mom had helped me out early in the day.

Because of my neighbors, it feels more and more like home around here. Thanks.

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