At its meeting on September 18, 2014, the Davis School Board
voted to explore "redevelopment" of the block it owns bounded by B, 5th, 6th
and C streets and that it uses as a headquarters.
Among people addressing the Board on this matter was C
Street resident Melody Boyer. She has lived just across the street from this
block for a decade and she reported on what she believes to be the current intensity of public social life in that area.
Her thesis was that public life there was already quite intense and that redeveloping the block along lines that have been contemplated might make it too intense, thus
destroying the very thing redevelopment sought to enhance.
While this was the point of her talk, I found myself more
interested in her listing of current types of public social behavior in the area. It is
rare for someone to undertake to describe the “obvious” and because it is not
done very often, there are a great many things too many of us do not perceive and
appreciate.
But here, Ms. Boyer does us the service of drawing a word
portrait of an important feature of Davis in the twenty-tens. I think she provides an excellent capsule portrait of a wonderful aspect of the distinctive
Davis of our time. I therefore seek to call attention to it by
uploading it to Youtube and making it the subject of posts here and on Old North Davis Chat.
Her talk runs three and one-half minutes. Enjoy it here:
Her talk runs three and one-half minutes. Enjoy it here:
