This morning, many city employees descended on the park for seriously cleanup. I would be delusional if I would believe that this is in response to the article that I've sent to Sun-Times on the Earth day.Usually, only thanks to those who earned community services hours the park gets cleaned. Today it is different. Today it is a massive “group project.” I remember seeing an announcement and signs forbidding parking on the one-way park road for the day, and it was easy then to put two and two together. The city is putting up a huge “STREET SHOW” tomorrow. Street show? In the park were a few remaining wildlife creatures are struggling to survive after just hatching their young? Where people come to escape from noise and stress seeking peace? I feel that city park district is lost, that no one who is in charge of the city parks knows how to preserve and care for the beauty of parks, including Marquette Park nature preserve.
The good news are that these park cleaners will have a job for quite some time after the event is over. I’ve seen how this park looks like after the celebrations and unauthorized picnics. I am guessing that the workers are temps. They have to actually go into the murky dark water up to their waist and with their bear hands scoop up the filth and garbage that accumulated there for at least a year. I was startled at the sight of it and just could not believe what I am seeing. Is this one of those shovel ready projects? There is no way no how unionized regular city employees would ever do it. Perhaps these people are glad that they have a job, and they can’t afford to think about their own health risks?
I can’t describe what I felt at that moment. It was someone’s treasured pet. It was a creature full of LIFE. I remembered that some time ago a neighbor was sending out fliers with the description of the beloved white dog. Perhaps this was how her pet’s life ended? I protectively drag my dog’s leash closer to me. A sudden thought crosses my mind - someone can torture and destroy my beloved Roxie too.
Only a few ducks, geese, some birds and squirrels witnessed the gruesome scene under the tall trees. And only those who did it know exactly why they did it. Now, that poor lifeless rotting body is the “garbage” that these men are dragging out of the lagoon along with gazillions of bottles of alcohol (no drinking alcohol allowed in the park), plastic bags, cans, rags, and other filth reflecting our civilization. I will not say in public what my wishes are for those who so viciously killed the dogs. It is not hard for me to imagine that they could kill people in cold blood too. Yet, I certainly am sending my personal uncensored message into the universe directed exactly at such humanoids.
The park is practically my “back yard,” and I am very grateful to those who clean it. The sad thing is that all of this sudden massive effort today is just for the show - a temporary solution for a tremendous problem in Marquette Park
Give or take a few more years of such mismanagement and abuse of this still beautiful patch of wild nature (wild flowers, trees, wide skies, wild birds, squirrels, migrating birds), and there will be no more life in this park. It will turn into another garbage dump reflecting our “humanity.” I look at some little kids playing in my neighborhood and I feel very sorry for them. They will never see the rose garden, or pristine clear water in the lagoon with the healthy wild birds leisurely swimming around. They will think that it is a O.K. that this park looks the way it looks today - full of garbage, deliberately broken and dying trees, algae infested water and dogs without their heads in the lagoon. What will be the future of the Marquette Park lagoon?
Daiva S., A.K.A. Average Citizen
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