The over-zealous activist had a litany of complaints...beginning with the usual local thorns in everyone's side... for starters, she said, the schools are failing our children... In this enlightened age, mind you, behold the outdated curriculum, the dog-eared books, such systemic favoritism of a dying and whitewashed canon, those incorrigible teachers and their obstinate clinging to the familiar, a dearth of sustainable classrooms, low morale, weather-beaten, dim, dank compromised interiors, a broken district's unacceptable inadequate funding, a declining tax base - full of childless tax-payers who are fed up paying for other people's kids - unconscious intentional bias directed toward marginal outlier populations...a lack of understanding, a lack of sensitivity in a city distracted city by homelessness and food insecurity, rising rents, zoning restrictions, housing prices, too many condos and not enough homes, free cannabis (a boon?) and lax standards for industrial hygiene... Traffic congestion and the absence of new construction... Add onto that the under-funding of health care, opioid addiction, child neglect and a shortage of mental health facilities, elder care, hospice care, weekend clubs for teenagers, community centers, dilapidated roads and bridges, too large of a fossil-foot-print, the exorbitant costs of higher education...The choices so stark and so clear...and the problems so easily solved...
On a well-traveled corridor of the East coast - where tourists drive northward every summer on a sleepy (and sometimes dated) old thoroughfare that meanders (roughly speaking) with the shoreline - there lies a coastal village renowned for its posh homes and proud inhabitants - and at the center of this village which boasts of a main street, a historic library and a stately boat landing, a garden shop can be found nestled among costly domiciles - just a stone's throw from the private academy and the gourmet ice cream shop. Set upon five acres of serene commercial flatland - the property houses multiple plants and trees and flowers - providing an oasis of greenery for anyone conjuring up daydreams of bucolic bliss. Set apart from the store - a no-frills wooden edifice - were greenhouses, rows of plants and flowers, larger trees in back and an old modest mansion of a house - still occupied by the family, Estabrook, which had owned the place going back three (3) generations. Th...
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