Great decisions: think nature, think children

HOW TO MAKE FINE DECISIONS ON CITY COUNCIL
How do we know that a town is doing it’s best to preserve its soul? How do we know that the best decisions are being made for the deepest quality of that town?

Here’s my answer: we are making our best decisions when we are listening deeply to two groups that aren’t going to stand up and talk in city council meetings: children and nature. Take care of these two and you are going to have a town with soul, a town with heart.

Where does this lead us? To parks, parks, parks, and to paths for walking and paths for bicycles. A park is nature for everyone, the rich person’s estate for all to enjoy. This is the Plaza. This is the Overlook Trail. This is the bike path. This is the Garden Park. These are places a child is safe from the world of the car. This is a place a child can breathe fresh air, sit under a tree, see the blue sky above, get down on the earth and be a creature of this world.

This is why, without knowing it so much even, I put in five years of my life helping to get the Sonoma Garden Park going. I wish Pauline Bond’s name were still in it, I wish it were called the Pauline Bond Garden Park, but whatever it is called, Garden and Park (along with Library) are among the high points of civic creation, and this is a place which is of great credit to this town, to the children of this town, to all of us that want to connect with the food we eat in a beautiful, serene, hands on, and organic location.

I used to have this slogan for the garden: helping soul and soil. To help one is to help the other. To neglect one, is to neglect the other.