The Quality of Suburban/Urban Values

It's one of those days when you get by on sheer inertia. We've got a mini heat-wave, a high of 31 degrees and high humidity - 100%, in fact. Rather de-energizing. Might put a lot of people in a bad mood, trying to cope.

But look here, we went out for our usual morning ravine walk and found, unsurprisingly, that it was a whole lot cooler down in the ravine. There was an appreciably stiff breeze, and the fresh green leafy canopy kept the full force of the sun from baking the landscape down there. From baking us, too.

Later, we went off to pick up a few items, like rust-proofing paint, and while at Canadian Tire yours truly succumbed to plucking a few flowers; a flat of watchakallthem; spider plants, a smaller one of impatiens, a pot of red flowered phlox, another of deep pink Icelandic poppy - all of which were irresistible, since I have yet space for these things, little bits of bare garden just calling out for colour and texture.

I merely obliged, planting them, despite the heat.

So why'm I kind of ticked off? Well, I shouldn't be, it's none of my business in a sense, other than that all that prowling traffic of die-hard expeditionists who go off looking for garage-sale bargains were turning around in our driveway, hence putting our little dogs at risk. One of our neighbours is selling the family house.

Never did get to know them very well, they kind of keep to themselves. Nice people, though.

Seems as part of the package the real estate company provides you with these nifty large signs to be posted wherever possible (in this case in a two-mile radius of our street, engaging the interests of too many car-shoppers) that an !important! garage sale is taking place at this precise address.

So from early in the morning until heated mid-afternoon there were the cars tracking up and down our normally quiet street.

The driveway of the garage sale in question was burdened with all manner of gently used stuff common to any family of two children outgrowing clothing, sports equipment and clamouring for new stuff.

And what about this? their/our neighbour directly across the street from them, decided to take advantage of all that signage and the resulting traffic, themselves enthusiastically hauling all kinds of clothing, household goods, children's toys from their four onto their own driveway, as well.

A powerful incentive that, to rid oneself of unwanted objects and make a little money on the side. To which I say, bloody damn.

These are people - both houses - who are wedged on the edge of the upper-middle class, they don't need that extra money. All those household objects, children's toys and sports equipment should be taken over to the Sally Ann or gifted to any of a number of area charitable organizations which could make good use of them.

The tawdry idea that one should dispense with the unwanted by selling still-usable items for whatever profit can be realized is a miserable one, and people should be ashamed of succumbing to that kind of nasty allure.

What amazes me particularly is that one of the women of the two households in question works for an NGO, she spends a lot of time in Bolivia, doing humanitarian work, married a Colombian, so she knows something about poverty and need.

She and her neighbour are anything but poverty-stricken, they need nothing more than they already have, but in this area, in this city, even in this neighbourhood there are people struggling to get along, who could use a little help.

How can these people be so blindly oblivious to their greed, to the relief they could provide in recognition of other peoples' needs?