Us and them

I couldn’t hear a word she said, but the exaggerated arching of her lips and the violence of her hands spoke loudly enough.

“That’s on you!” she screamed at the dislodged puzzle piece my car had become smack in the middle of the intersection of Jefferson Highway and Bluebonnet Boulevard. I was now blocking traffic, a sitting target of righteous rage for a line of cars longer than the signals directly above me were ever designed to direct.

Ahead, traffic was blocking more traffic as stacks and stacks of drivers sat boiling, immobile, each in our own little pressure points just waiting to explode like fireworks of frustration.

I hadn’t planned on driving to Lake Charles on this August day, but that’s what my usual 10-minute commute felt like as I inched my way to work on what would soon be dubbed “Carpocalypse.”

When a single accident and isobutane leak throws the entire city into gridlock, two things are evident. First, our street grid forces us to be far too dependent on the interstate for commuting. Second, officials and drivers alike are ill-prepared for this scenario. As a whole, our parish is not as proactive as it could be.

Whether at work or in our private lives, failing to plan really can mean planning to fail. At the very least it equals added stress and anxiety to any given situation.

Few things are more stressful at home than having to quickly clean up for company with the speed and laser-like focus of an Olympic decathlete.

Get the laundry off the floor, the crumbs off the couch, the kids’ fingerprints off of everything. Why do we do this to ourselves by waiting until the last minute?

Back in July, when the city had to prepare for the distinguished guests of the International Planetarium Society, a clean-up day was organized to address “issues such as litter, landscape maintenance and public safety.”

The Downtown Development District made sure everyone was invited to the party—via email, with details on trouble spots and general action points.

While Keep Baton Rouge Beautiful does its best with the resources at hand, the whole endeavor had an air of desperation that felt eerily familiar to me—and to others, I’m sure—as if to say, “Let’s clean up quick before we embarrass ourselves in front of the guests.”

Traffic and litter are just two pressure points in Baton Rouge, and this month’s cover story delves into others. According to a recent report in Psychology Today, stress leads to more collectivism and passive and active oppression and alienation of groups viewed as being different—never the recipe for a healthy society.

It is up to each one of us to engage more fully and more often in improving Baton Rouge.

My hope for this possibility was bolstered recently while walking the paved footpath that runs the length of Stuart Avenue. The once-manicured bushes had become an absolute Amazon, making passage difficult. But there, crouched down in front of me, was a man, his shirt stained with sweat, his orange Crocs blasted to camouflage with grass cuttings and dirt, clipping away at the overgrowth.

“You gettin’ paid for that?” someone shouted from his car. The man just chuckled and kept on trimming.

“Maybe the city will take care of that one day,” I said, passing by.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said, wiping a forearm across his slick forehead. “That or the people.”