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09/26/1999 Carson City Council 701 East Carson St. Carson, CA 90715 Dear Members of Council, I urge you to reconsider the action you are taking, or the City of Carson is taking, against my brother, Peter Rashkin and his garden. The message you are sending is one that is complete opposition to the message you seem to want to send with your own xerographic garden at the City Center. If you force Peter to remove his garden, you are saying that the only acceptable landscape in residential Carson is unnatural, non-native, water-wasteful and rigidly locked into discredited post-war ideas of suburban culture. I visit my brother often and I find his garden to be beautiful to see and to walk through. By contrast, the typical lawn is just that: a lawn. Fertilized, overwatered, unreasonably green; maybe a narrow flower bed along the house, also plants that don't grow in Southern California without extreme intervention. Is that really the only horticultural expression your city will tolerate? I hope not. I'm not suggesting that Peter's garden is the only alternative. It just happens to be the one you're attacking. And you're attacking it on the grounds that it isn't like the rest of the neighborhood, that is, it isn't a lawn. What are you thinking? I hope you'll think again. Yours truly, Bob Rashkin |