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POOP SCOOP

- - A Penangite writes from New York

SINCE the weather has suddenly grown warm in New York, life has moved into parks overnight, shortening the distance between strangers. Familiar shapes appear on park benches, inhabitants of the city sleep, eat or play outdoors and all the open spaces of the city become one gigantic living room. 

Every morning, I take my dog out to the dog-run maintained by volunteers in my neighbourhood. A dog-run is a New York phenomenon, an enclosure of sand and a patch of green where dog owners can let their mutts have a run and more to the point, deposit their 'poop' where their owners can scoop up with a poop-scoop, instead of on pavements and under shoes. Now a Penangite does not clean up after dogs, but we are known to be fast learners, and I have learned to dispense with the poop-scoop like a real New Yorker and go straight for the thing with nothing but a plastic bag between it and my fingers. Then I tie up the bag neatly so that the contents will not spill and place it carefully in the nearest bin. Carefully because the homeless inhabitants of the park adjoining the local dog run like to rummage in the bins for discarded clothing and the odd unfinished bottle of Coca-Cola.

I am used to wild-eyed and unkempt vagrants in Penang who are fond of exposing themselves lewdly and suggestively to teenage girls on their way home from school, but the local homeless look perfectly gentle and don't bother us a bit. One of them looks uncannily like Morgan Freeman in 'Shawshank Redemption'. He greets friendly passers-by with a 'hi, how're ye doin?' from his bench and is such a fixture in the park that I look for him when he isn't there. This morning he had a windfall. A couple of men whose terrier had just finished with the Morgan came by and one of them stopped. Kindness and springtime solidarity opened a wallet and handed a $10 note to Morgan Freeman, who said 'thank you' in a soft baritone. He turned it around in his hands with a look of bemusement before pocketing it.

New Yorkers are generous, and they can be moved to save their living space if the city will not or cannot cough up. Thus the 843-acre large Central Park was saved and restored by private individuals who donated $100 million to preserve this oasis of peace and recreation measuring 2.5 mi long and .5 mi wide. It had fallen into neglect by the 70's and become a haunt of hustlers and drug dealers. Today, there are joggers, bicyclists, roller-bladers and more sedate practitioners of health from sunrise to sunset. You can even find the ubiquitous Falun Gong by the Tortoise Pond or join a Tai Ch'i Ch'uan group. 

Outdoor recreation in Chinatown, where you can order Penang Char Koay Teow in at least seven Malaysian restaurants, centres on Columbus Park. The city maintains this trellised square equipped with benches and tables where the clicking of mahjong tiles drew me one late morning. Curious because gambling is not allowed in public places, I was astonished to find several tables of men intently playing, not mahjong as I expected, but dominoes the size of large matchboxes. That was the sound I heard. In a corner away from the noise, there huddled a crowd peering over the shoulders of two men deeply concentrating on a game of Chinese chess. Missing from the scene were competing song-birds and their devoted owners for otherwise this could have been Shanghai or Singapore. But Columbus Park hasn't always been so peaceful. It used to be the centre of an infamous red-light district where violent gangs with names like Dead Rabbits and Plug Uglies roamed the streets, not far from the turf of the Hip Sing and Ong Leong tongs. 

Creating and maintaining open spaces in competition with housing needs and commercial developers isn't a piece of cake. New Yorkers commit many hours and a great deal of resources to prevent the city from turning entirely into concrete. They have even managed to insist on a privately funded group within the mayor's office in City Hall called The Council on the Environment of New York which aims to ensure a greener and cleaner environment. Other groups are struggling to maintain garden plots which the city council wants to demolish to make way for buildings. 

To see how New Yorkers get their act together, please visit:

The Council on the Environment of New York, www.cenyc.org

Green Guerillas, www.greenguerillas.org

Earth Celebrations, www.earthcelebrations.com

- by Lim Miao Yiong

For old fashioned Penangites, how about following up with a "hard copy" magazine with equally high quality writing and prints and photos (old and new) capturing Penang in all its historical charm?  The internet is a little lacking in having that old world feel right in our hands. 

In any case, The Penang File seems a good, topical effort, a novel concept bringing old and new Penang to the cyber age.
 

Khor Kok Keng
Singapore