May: Here is the list for the winter service day. Sixteen of us so far.
| CLASS 302 · Winter Service Day |
|---|
| Saturday, 9:00 to 12:00 |
| Group A: clean the park by the river (8 people) |
| Group B: carry food boxes to old people (8 people) |
| Wear an old jacket; masks given at the gate |
| Team leaders: May and Ken · bus to Taichung 8:30 |
Ken: I would rather be in Group B, but I cannot carry heavy things with my arm.
May: The boxes are two kilograms each. You will be fine.
Ken: Then put me in B. And tell everyone to bring a bit of water; the park has no water.
Every Tuesday and Friday · 17:30 to 19:00 · December to February
A hot meal is served to anybody who comes, rich or poor; this is a social meal, not a test. You do not need to show a paper or give a name, and nobody will ask you any question.
This is run by local people, not by the city. We are given food by three shops on Green Road, and an assistant from a national company brings one product box each week. Nothing is thrown away: what is left at 19:00 goes to the school breakfast box on Wednesday.
We are not a rich organization. What we have is a kitchen, a list of people who help, and two hours twice a week.
Dear Mr. Kao,
I am writing about the bench outside the town hall, the one facing the bus stop.
Last month a new bench was put there with a bar across the middle. I understand why: somebody had been sleeping on the old one. But the bar also means that an old woman with a bad back cannot lie down for the ten minutes she needs, and a mother cannot put a sleeping child beside her.
The problem it was built to solve was one person. The problem it has made belongs to everybody who waits there. Could the bar be taken off, and could we talk about the first problem another way?
Chen Mei
A city knows how many cars pass a corner each hour. It often does not know how many people sleep badly because of the noise.
What gets counted gets money. A road can show a number that rises; a quiet street where neighbors know each other cannot. So the road is built and the street is not protected, and nobody made a bad choice on purpose.
Some cities now count other things: how many children can walk to school alone, how many old people leave the house each day. These numbers are harder to collect and easy to laugh at. A society is bored by slow numbers and pulled toward fast ones, but a city becomes what it measures, and for a hundred years we have measured mostly traffic.