Changing the world

Spent the afternoon with my friend Alex, who lives in the gray house at the center here, in Portland's Hollywood district. He talked about his neighbor, the one who plants and tends this spectacular urban garden. She's a single mom with three young daughters, a recent immigrant from some Spanish-speaking country (he never asked which country, she never said). She works long hours as a waitress, can barely make the mortgage payment, comes home weary and goes to her garden, where she seems to get younger and lighter as she digs and pokes about. The girls help her on weekends, grinning and singing to themselves. He says they're the most cheerful family he's ever known, joy dancing off their hair-ends.

"Look at this," Alex marveled to me. "She's changing the world more than I ever did with all my politics and demonstrations and civic awareness. She just makes beauty, free for everybody who walks by. What more can a person do than that?"