Articles from the Neighborhood Newsletter

by Steve Johnson (Jason Street)

I read a statistic analogy recently that created a dramatic image:

Enough office waste paper is thrown away each year to build a 12-foot wall between Los Angeles and New York City. Naturally, I envisioned our little corner of the US map, and wondered how our neighborhood fit into that picture. While we wait for spring to turn the natural world green, what’s happening in our own community? Are we more or less “green” than our neighbors, and how do we compare to other cities and towns in the rest of the world? I wonder how efficient or wasteful we are as a society, and how much we give and take from the planet. I consider Arlington to be progressive, and we’re in good company. One recent poll rated Boston the third greenest city in America, largely because of the efforts to promote bicycle travel, and the restoration of green space over the Big Dig. Cambridge, far ahead in bike travel, was ranked number six, and San Francisco number one. But what about the rest of us who can’t seem to avoid using cars?

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By Virginia Gregory (Norfolk Road)

My husband and I moved to Norfolk Road in 1960 with two small children. Three more children were added in the next few years. Our turn-of-the-century Victorian house at 62 Norfolk Road was perfect for raising a large family, lots of nooks and crannies, places like “cubby-holes” in the attic eaves to hide and pretend. None of our neighbors had a pool for summer fun, but the lawn sprinkler provided endless hours of cool delight for the children. Later we joined the brand new Winchester Swim Club so that children would have swim lessons. Dot Stein and Pat Erickson often carpooled with me.

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By Dolores Schueler (Brunswick Road)

I plan to transition out of my role as a primary distributor of the Neighborhood Newsletter, but still plan to work for the Newsletter in some capacity. Fifteen years ago, when the Neighborhood Newsletter was just being reborn after a hiatus of a couple of years, I saw Nils Fonstad out delivering newsletters on my street and offered to help. He and Bill Berkowitz were taking on the entire delivery, so I offered to help revive a distribution network that had been in place in the Newsletter’s first incarnation. Since then, the Newsletter has enjoyed great popularity, and finding help has generally not been a problem.

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From Goldenseal, a magazine of West Virginia traditional life:

“Every Saturday afternoon, Ivan [at 90 years] packs his violin and banjo in his car and drives the half mile to Bowman Ridge Community Association Center. . . . He makes the coffee and sets the potluck table for the weekly ‘Bowman Ridge Opry,’ an open jam session of bluegrass, country, and traditional artists….

“There’s no cover charge for this gathering of friends, which gets under way by 7 p.m. and goes until 11 p.m. every Saturday, regardless of weather, crowd size, or lack of pickers. …Like the other musicians, he does it for the camaraderie and smiles. ‘If you can get them people sitting back there grinning like a butcher’s dog, you know you are doing something right.’ “

by Judy Weinberg (Venner Road)

The downturn in the housing market has certainly been front and center in the media this past year. There is no denying that the mortgage crisis hit many homeowners, and the rapid increase in house prices in the past decade caused inflated prices that were just ripe for a correction. Why did this happen? A lot of this can be explained in two words: easy money.

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