{"id":310,"date":"2004-08-03T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2004-08-03T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=310"},"modified":"2004-08-03T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2004-08-03T14:30:00","slug":"the-dark-and-sordid-history-of-the-fence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=310","title":{"rendered":"The dark and sordid history of the fence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, I&#8217;m settling in to the new homestead: Baked some zucchini bread and took it over to the neighbors.  <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s now confirmed:  My fence is unpopular on all three fronts.  Each of the neighbors, when I bring up the fence, folds their arms and says &#8220;it&#8217;s your fence, Chris.&#8221;  One neighbor thinks it&#8217;s on her property (nope!  Survey, done by the city!  Right here next to the Deed!), back neighbor gives me crap when he sees me because it&#8217;s not straight in any dimension (sorry, gotta fix the plumbing first!), and the third one wonders why the previous owner needed to paint a perfectly good cedar fence.  <\/p>\n<p>But it gets better.  I can understand the side where the neighbor hasn&#8217;t kept up her property for as long as anybody I&#8217;ve spoken with can recall.  No paint, no mowing, no basic repairs, mid sized trees growing from the roof&#8230;I understand the motivation for the screening pine trees and the fence over there.  But the other side, the neighbors are nice, they&#8217;re obsessive about their neat lawn.  They&#8217;re kind and generous people, and they&#8217;ve been there 25 years.<\/p>\n<p>The Z. bread brought it out of them:  A few years back, they were thinking of selling the house.  Apparently, wham bam, a fence went up.  The prior owner of my house came over to them and said &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry about the fence.  It&#8217;s not you guys, it&#8217;s just that <drop to stage whisper>a black couple was looking at your house<\/end stage whiper>.  <\/p>\n<p>The response (at least in the retelling) was:  Um, if they move in, I don&#8217;t think that little fence is gonna hold them for long.<\/p>\n<p>My fence has its posts steeped in racism and petty mindedness.  My fence is the embodiment of centuries of distrust, doubt, and malice.<\/p>\n<p>My fence is evil, and must go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, I&#8217;m settling in to the new homestead: Baked some zucchini bread and took it over to the neighbors. It&#8217;s now confirmed: My fence is unpopular on all three fronts. Each of the neighbors, when I bring up the fence, folds their arms and says &#8220;it&#8217;s your fence, Chris.&#8221; One neighbor thinks it&#8217;s on her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}