What we need more of

There's an older black guy across the street from my office who lives in one side of a little duplex.  He goes outside on the porch to smoke (though I've never seen a wife, so I wonder who forces him).  He was just outside trimming his hedge with an electrical trimmer and, I must admit, it looks rather nice.  He doesn't seem to have enough money to paint his house, but whatever.  Anywhere people in a marginal area are working to take care of their homes and properties is a good thing, a small victory for order in the battle against the ever encroaching 2nd law of thermodynamics.

In affluent areas, on the other hand, people go way overboard trying to impose order on the landscape and thereby bracket contingency.  There, I think, a little chaos is good.