The joys of Cambridge are many, although in my "leave the house only for 20 hours a week on campus" third-trimester pregnancy state, a primary enjoyment (after the blissful quiet) is the Cambridge City public access TV station, that airs shows like Democracy Now, Free SpeechTV, and quirky offerings were high school students explain why they chose a particular famous portrait as the inspiration for their self-portrait for their photography class.
Because Cambridge is so famously politically liberal, I was prepared to join neighborhood campaigns against corporate excesses, but thus far the only flyer in our mailbox asking us to join a neighborhood movement has been a campaign to prevent our elderly African American neighbor from raising chickens (now an illegal practice, but he was grandfathered due to his 40 year chicken raising history).
They provided an email to "complain" and I thus wrote:
I live on [street] where my neighbor (who my husband and I chat with) raises chickens. I have never been inconvenienced by the chickens and I object to the campaign to forbid my neighbor to raise them.
In my view, we need more gardening and raising of (manageable) animals, not less. I grew up with chickens and roosters crowing next door in Los Angeles in the 1960s. Raising one's own chickens is a healthy alternative to factory farming. Children's exposure to farm animals in the first 3-5 years of life decreases their chances of acquiring allergies. When my twins are born next month, I will certainly try to expose them to my neighbor's chickens (well, I mean, in a year or so). I realize that very few urban dwellers want to raise chickens; given that raising chickens can be seen as a community service, the grandfathering clause is a sound one.
A little too much time on my hands? Maybe I should find a way to put up barriers so the comment page of this poor blog isn't the dumping ground for marketing bots.
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