Day of Destruction, 31st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Outside, picking up my mail (daily ritual) from the box. Nothing worthwhile, but almost nothing is by standard U.S. Mail anymore - even my bills are sent electronically. There was a 2026 SEC season calendar, a promo by a local real-estate agent, which (I'll take it back) does come in handy as a refrigerator-door reference. That and a brochure for a home remodeler/handyman that went straight to the recycle bin.

The reason I bring it up, though, is while at the mailbox I ran into a gentleman walking along the street who randomly asked me if there were any plans to upgrade the park across the street from me. For those who don't know, I live across from a tiny (just a couple acres) nature preserve/greenspace, which is a kind way of saying an overgrown streambed, a deeply incised little valley not suitable for development, commercial or residential. It's the home to a nesting pair of barred owls, occasional foxes, and an unfortunate number of snakes and mosquitoes. I've seen deer, full adults with antlers, racoons, rabbits, opossums, and various songbirds. It's a nice buffer between homes, and most of the year I can't see the houses across the street from me for all the foliage.   

So I asked the gentleman what he meant by "any plans." He said plans to develop it onto more of a park, with some open space for walking or a bench or some other form of recreation. I also got from him that he was from out of town (out of state actually) and was just killing a little time before arriving at his daughter's house so as not to awkwardly arrive early.

I explained that I and most of the neighbors - all of them, as far as I know - like the park undeveloped and just the way it is. It's a  nature preserve, not a traditional recreational park, and it's for the owls and other fauna more than for us, although we enjoy the privacy and quiet that it provides. A couple of years ago, the City of Atlanta floated a proposal to build an elevated trail through the park - a multi-use walking and bicycle path built on piers to keep it at street level. The neighborhood fiercely protested the plans and defended the current passive use of the park as a natural buffer zone. The city backed off the plan, citing a lack of community support.

He understood, wished me well, and we went our separate ways. He got in his car and drove away.

Not fifteen minutes later, I got a call from my next-door neighbor saying another neighbor told her there was a car parked near her house and some strange man wandering about. She was out of town and had no way of confirming for herself or of judging the threat (or lack) that he posed. I told her I had just talked to the man and he seemed harmless enough, just killing some time - it's perfectly legal to park near a city park and kill some time. It's kind of what they're for. Unfortunately, the park he picked off of Google maps wasn't set up for idling away a little time. I told her he wasn't trying to sell anything and wasn't overly nosy, as if he was casing the neighborhood or something. 

The other neighbor told her the car had been there since 7:30 this morning, which would have been odd if he were just passing some time before dropping in on his daughter. It's one thing to spend 15 minutes at a park with no other amenities and another thing to stay there for ten hours. I don't believe he was there all day - I didn't look out at that spot earlier today so I can't confirm he wasn't there, but I can't believe that someone wanting to kill some time at a park wouldn't have moved on to some more accommodating park after he saw the limited offerings our local greenspace provides. Perhaps that other neighbor saw some other car this morning as she left for work, and then saw the car of the man I met when she got home, and assumed it was the same car.

We all see the world through our own learned mental models, the cognitive maps we use to understand the world around us.  I'm a far left-leaning progressive, and I see a stranger enjoying the park as a natural and understandable thing, something I might do in a similar situation. We are not so different. That other neighbor, not the one who called me but the Gladys Kravitz neighbor who had called her (if you're old enough to have watched the sitcom Bewitched) is a conservative and sees anyone in the neighborhood she doesn't know personally as a threat. I'm actually surprised she called my next-door neighbor and not the police. 

I see a group of (presumably) Mexican or Latin-America men hanging out near a Home Depot as hard-working immigrants looking for a chance to legally earn a little money, and others see them as "illegals" trying to steal jobs and interfere with our elections. Same image, different perceptions. No wonder our politics are so far apart.