To be honest, it is probably easier to drive. The sidewalks are made of red bricks which are buckled and weed-filled in places. Cars are legally required to stop for pedestrians at the crosswalks, but cannot be relied upon to do so. The gardens of some houses have branches and shrubs that block the sidewalks and mean that passers-by have to pass by on the road. But - if you manage not to trip on the paving, avoid being run over by errant drivers, and don't have your eyes poked out by the stray rose bush - walking around Cambridge can be a lovely way to spend a little time.
Maya, Iola and I have taken to going for a walk in the evening, after the dish-washing has been finished (and Maya's recovery means that this has returned to being a collaborative activity) and before the bedtime story. We have our favorite gardens in the neighborhood and stop by their fences to look at and smell some of the flowers. I would think that this was eccentric if there weren't so many other people here who do the same. Many of the people who are in their gardens take delight in curating their flowerbeds on our behalf. There is the man on Upland Road who has a cardinal's nest in one of his shrubs and who spends time updating the girls with news of the cardinals' progress. There is the old lady who loves to pause from her weeding to ask the girls how their day has been. There are many dog-walkers who stop for chats while the girls pet their dogs - and the girls are now experienced enough to know which dogs they can cuddle and which they should cross the road to avoid.
Walking around the neighborhood on a Sunday night has added bonuses: it's the evening when people put out any furniture or books that they no longer want. We've picked up a range of things from our evening walks - today I brought home a huge folder of colored sugar paper for Iola's art, last week Nathan acquired a batch of science fiction paperbacks. We've also collected a few larger items: an old-fashioned telephone table which just needed a bit of a scrub and a polish, a desk-chair which now sits out on our balcony.
We've the space to bring things home from the sidewalks because we recycled a lot of our own things before we moved here. A year ago we moved from a large house with five bedrooms and endless shelving to a tiny two-bedroomed flat. This meant that we had to reduce our "stuff" by more than half. As part of that downsizing, we gave away about half of our furniture through Freecycle, donated more than 500 books to Amnesty International, raised nearly a thousand pounds for Barnados from the children's toys and bikes, and donated two vinyl LPs (out of Nathan's collection of more than 700) to the local Oxfam. It felt like a good thing to do - the furniture would still be used (and we met some fascinating people while engaged together in activities such as dismantling trampolines or pushing sofas into the back of borrowed vans), the books would still be read, the toys would still be enjoyed, and someone somewhere would acquire two recordings of authentic Greek dances from the 1960s.
In the area where we now live there isn't a culture of charity shops. When we left England, there were charity shops on every high street. These accept used items and then sell them to raise money for whichever good cause the store represents. Most are well worth a visit. Me and the girls still have items of clothing which had been 'gently used' before we got them (or, in my preferred terminology, we have 'experienced clothing'). We also had a much broader assortment of jigsaws and books than if we had only bought new. There are some thrift shops in Boston, but I haven't seen very many: it doesn't seem to be part of the culture in the way that it is in England. Several of the thrift shops which I have seen are privately owned and run as a profit-making enterprise rather than as a means of raising money for charity. But the street recycling is another way of free-cycling or rehousing things which might be useful for someone else.
After our walk around the neighborhood, the girls get into their pyjamas and we settle down for our bedtime story. We're reading Roald Dahl again at the moment. Incidentally, his daughter lives around the corner. Perhaps I ought to start walking past her house on a Sunday evening.... you never know what might find its way out onto the sidewalks.
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