LETTERS: Embellishing the neighborhood

To the Editor: This was an overgrown strip with potential but in great need of more work than we could manage. It is now pruned, weeded and cleaned up, the overhanging oak trees are trimmed and a number of new plants have been put in, some from neighboring gardens, with 60-70 daffodills and narcissi bulbs and a fine aster bush. We are grateful to Civic House for making this possible. The work kicked off with a welcome from the principal of the H. C. Lea school, Charla Sussman. The school is directly across the street, and is next in line for serious greening and landscaping. There was a special sense of community interaction as the Penn students encouraged and worked with the students from the Lea School Saturday Science program. A group of University students were shown around the neighborhood by Liesel Baker, formerly adviser to medical students at Penn, who recently renovated a house on her block with neighborhood and Penn help. During a rest period, Robin Dorfman, past president of GCCG, gave a brief resume of the history of Community Gardens in Philadelphia and the important role of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Sylvia Barkan, long time community leader and professional photographer, recorded some of the exciting moments. Several community gardeners, and a daughter, a Lea school teacher and parent, also pitched in to make the afternoon a success despite the heat. Our great thanks to all the participants, and we hope you will come and see your daffodills flower next spring. Vivianne Nachmias Prof. Emeritus, School of Medicine President of the Garden Court Community Garden UCD and trash collection To the Editor: Every day, workers wearing University City District jackets putter up on their street sweepers and deposit bags of trash on the corner across from my house. The bags sit there and rot for several hours, and sometimes trash blows out of them and scatters down the street because they are not sealed. Eventually, other workers wearing University City District jackets come along in a van and pick up the trash bags. I have seen this ritual performed not only on my own corner, but all up and down Chestnut Street, and it probably happens elsewhere in University City, too. I would have thought that the money spent on the University City District was intended to improve the quality of life in this neighborhood, for instance by trying to check the sea of trash that constantly flows onto the sidewalks around here. But it's hard to see how this practice of using street corners for a kind of garbage postal service makes matters any better. At least in the old days before the UCD I could hope to look out my window some days and not see any trash on the sidewalk for a change. Now, though, I can be sure that the blue see-through bags of UCD trash will be there to greet me, regardless of snow, rain, heat or gloom of night, as the saying goes. Joseph Rosenzweig SEAS '99