There's a man out there who calls himself Pat the Bunny. He used to have a folk punk band called the Wingnut Dishwashers Union. That band was great. Not because they're terribly talented or successful, but because Pat hit the nail on the head lyrically just about every song.
Wingnut has a song called Jesus Does the Dishes which sums up a lot of people's lives quite nicely.
"We're kids building models of a world that we might wanna live in.
Sorting feelings in our stomach- is this liberation or starvation?
But have we made it anywhere at all if the dishes are never done?
If we can't live without dishwashers, how could we live without cops?
And so you're asking me, who does the dishes after the revolution?
Well, I do my own dishes now.
I'll do my own dishes then."
That's self-sufficiency right there. It can apply to everything from doing the chores to running a country. Honest, it can. We've got a lot of problems in this world right now because we've convinced ourselves that we need politicians, cops, and experts for everything. We wait for someone else to do the things that need to be done. "It's not my problem," people say. "Not my job."
We complain endlessly about government funding for infrastructure, and the lack of maintenance on roads and public buildings. Well, we created our own problem by allowing all that bureaucracy to build. A theatre I was working in a little while ago needs a bit of TLC. It's owned by the city, which is a problem because there's only one person working there on the city payroll. He hasn't got the time to do things like repainting the walls in the lobby. I volunteered to put together a crew from my theatre group- we'd be more than willing to do the job, and it's not like it's a dangerous undertaking. Most of us have painted a wall or two before. We love that theatre and want it to be the best venue it can be. Did we go in and knock that paint job out in the four or five hours it would have taken? Hell no. As a city facility, only city employees are ALLOWED to work on the building in any capacity.
That's just plain stupid. The city will spend thousands of dollars hiring someone to do a job we were willing to do for FREE, and it won't happen for two or three years. It needs doing now, and there are folks who want to help. Let them, you bunch of ... well, dear reader, you can fill in the blanks.
I used to live on a suburban street lined with lovely mature trees. The catch was that the trees on the far side of the sidewalk were off limits. If one needed pruning, you had to call the city to come and do it or risk getting a fine for doing it yourself. I'm actually surprised they let us rake the leaves in fall! One of my neighbours was a fantastic gardener who bucked the law and spent a lot of time tending the flowers and plants in the park at the end of our street. It was the best looking park in town. She ended up getting a fine from a by-law officer for that.
An example of good intentions gone wrong: Mike DeFazio of St. John, New Brunswick filled the potholes on his street and got fined for it. Granted, he did it with gravel instead of asphalt, but the spirit was right. See a problem, fix it! Fined for fixing the road? Ridiculous!
Imagine what our cities could be like if we had crews of volunteers out there improving things. Broken play equipment in the park? No problem- there's a woodworking club who'd be happy to repair it. There's a group who'd like to start a community garden, but the city doesn't have maintenance staff to oversee it? What exactly do we need them for?
Oh, but those city workers are trained. They're experts. The only way to make sure the jobs get done safely is to pay someone to do it. Newsflash- a lot of those workers you're talking about are university students with no particular occupational training. It would make a lot more sense to run a training seminar for a group of volunteers who will be in the neighbourhood for the next thirty years while they raise their kids. People who care about the place they live, who aren't going to be gone next summer when they graduate.
Wouldn't it be nice to live in a place we're proud of? A place with memories other than "that's my mall, and that's my big box grocery store? That's the park I drive by on my way home to watch more TV?"
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