A plea for responsibl​e resolution of the Julie Bass vegetable garden situation

Regarding http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local/julie-bass-of-oak-park-faces-misdemeanor-charge-for-vegetable-garden-20110630-wpms

Kevin Rulowski’s email (supposedly) krulkowski@ci.oak-park.mi.us

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Dear Mr. Rulkowski,
 
I am writing today as a concerned Canadian citizen and public sector employee. I just recently came across the Oak Park vegetable garden story on Fox 2 Detroit and found it deeply troubling.
 
I have no intention to harass, crucify, or threaten you, nor do I believe that you are single-handedly endeavouring to have Julie Bass arrested for reasons besides the promotion of the best interest of the Oak Park community. I’m sure that I am not the first to write you with regards to this matter and I doubt you are a stranger to arguments that the litigation against Ms. Bass is erroneous, unjust, or ridiculous.
 
The article I came across was undeniably spun to make your camp appear incompetent and the last thing I want to do is add to the backlash of negative responses you must be experiencing as result.
 
But the fact remains that we are living in changing times. Fuel’s rising cost is driving up the prices we pay for foods of all sorts. Meanwhile, technology and industry mediate further and further our relationships with consumer products of all kinds, biological or otherwise. As result, more and more city/town dwelling North Americans face the gloomy predicament of being pressed to afford high quality foods for their families on one hand and being totally alienated from the means of food production on the other.
 
If Julie Bass’s garden appears as an uncommon sight for a front yard, perhaps it is due to its being a thing of uncommon beauty: an alternative to the financial strain and dependence on large industry which are “common”- and perhaps regrettably so.
 
Like yourself, I believe in the importance of standards. When held uniformly accountable to perform certain functions such as yard maintenance, people tend to rise more spryly to the occassion. A long row of traditional grass yards, each its own variation on the common theme, can be a uniquely pleasing sight. Let us not however misuse this familiar aesthetic by pronouncing it God among all other possible sights. Positive deviation is real. Every social advance of the past that we have come to know and love can be traced back to it and much of what we now consider “common” had to fight at one time to be seen as “suitable”. 
 
A common person, Julie Bass for instance, cultivating produce well within the public eye in her front yard stands to upset our expectations of what happens in American front yards. Some may even find the sight hard to swallow. The economic veil separating citizen and agriculture has a hole in it the size of her yard. Holes can be upsetting. Some types of beauty need time and even effort to digest. Indeed, sometimes beauty is upsetting. This was undoubtedly the case for the works of Matisse and Pablo Picasso: seen for a time as parricidal and blasphemous, but understood later as enabling the entire process of modern art.
 
What I am getting at is that Ms. Bass’s garden confronts folks with their own potential to work with nature and cultivate beautiful and otherwise expensive foods. In doing so it raises questions that, if they are not already, may become important to people in the coming years: question not only around gardening but also around what is beautiful, what is suitable, and even what is possible. The tried and true rows of manicured grass lawns are in no danger of losing their monopoly over the streets of America any time soon. Surely there is room for some positive deviation among these trusted shapes, particularly when this deviation comes in so enterprising and beautiful a form as a vegetable garden.
 
While I realize it is unlikely that you alone have the final say on whether the charges against Ms. Bass make it to court, i entreat you please to do what you can to prevent a decision that values predictability over enterprise and imagination. While your advocacy for uniformly pleasant looking, conventional front yards is in a way high-minded, I fear in this case that it would be realized at the expense of something truly enriching for the nieghborhood. 
 
You were quoted as defining “suitable” as something similar to “common” in your Fox 2 interview. I suppose the purpose of this letter was to offer up an alternative definition of suitable as ”what works”.
 
Kindest thanks for your time.
 
Sincerely,
Nigel Mojica
Vancouver, BC
Canada
 

from Guy Debord’s “The Society of Spectacle”

17 The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of “being” into “having” - human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated production of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from “having” to “appearing” - all “having” must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. At the same time all individual reality has become social, in the sense that it is shaped by social forces and is directly dependent on them. Individual reality is allowed to appear only if it is not actually real.