If I were Brian Murphy...

Driving around town today I found a picture I would have loved to see on Brian's blog. I say his because I really doubt I could have done justice to it. There's a section of town about 10mins from where I live that is rapidly becoming even more gentrified than before. Parts of it were already expensive but zoikes are the condos flying up! This often means that the old apartments are coming down to make way for their high rent successors. At a corner where this was taking place I saw a sign advertising the upcoming residences.The sign pictures stacks of men's straw panama hats looking like extras straight out of an old Hollywood wardrobe. Grouped closely around to one side of the sign a dozen men in hardhats were taking a break from the day's work. In the background stood the apartments that were going to come down in favor of luxury condos. I wondered if the men grouped around that picture of graceful luxury would eventually be pushed out the area as property values rose in response to the work they were doing. Maybe they already had been. I'm grateful for the development that gives men like this work, but having had my eyes opened somewhat to the ways community development helps, enhances, or isolates conditions of poverty I wanted to know that these men had decent homes of their own -that they were not condemned to be continually awash in the wake of the wealthy. This I saw as I turned a corner in Homewood.