Can't We All Just - Get Along?

When I was a kid, our family had a collie named Prince.

One day, my sisters and I were frolicking in the yard with Prince, when we had a devilish thought: let's stage a fight for Prince's benefit! So, very abruptly and without warning, we started shouting, turned on each other, and started fighting.

No one was more surprised than Prince! His barking jumped an octave, and he tried to force his way in-between us. Failing that, he circled us, bit into the ragged ends of our blue jeans, and did his frantic best to pull us apart. Poor Prince! We relented, started laughing and quickly turned to pat and console our poor, worried dog.

I felt a bit like Prince when I read this story regarding Andrea Rosen:

As a member of the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association, she pushed developer Paul Petrovich to make changes to the residential and commercial project he plans in the former railyard next to Curtis Park.

Now Rosen is pursuing her own, much smaller development project in midtown Sacramento. And Petrovich, who says Rosen and other Curtis Park activists put him through years of hell with his project, is doing what he can to foment neighborhood opposition.

...Much of the debate seems to center on Rosen's personality. Petrovich, who developed the nearby Whiskey Hill lofts on S Street between 21st and 22nd, sent a fiery e-mail in November to the neighborhood association board calling Rosen "pushy" and urging them to "start with a white sheet of paper and demand what is best for YOUR neighborhood."

"I don't know know how to define irony any better than this," Petrovich said in a phone interview about Rosen's project. "The smoke had not even settled in Curtis Park and she comes in here with her bullying tactics."

I've known Andrea for years, and she's a real sweetheart. As a resident of Curtis Park, I quietly and vaguely supported efforts to hold Petrovich to a high standard with regards to the railyard. I mean - who wants a toxic neighborhood? - but I didn't follow the matter closely-enough to read the various, thick reports.

Nevertheless, a couple of years ago, I noticed a certain shrillness creeping into accounts of the activities of the neighborhood railyard activists reporting in the local neighborhood newspaper, the Sierra-Curtis Viewpoint. And the project seemed to be taking an unusually-long time to come to fruition. Petrovich was apparently being held to a high standard. Maybe too high? Hard to tell without reading the various, thick reports, but my vague support of the neighborhood activists waned to a kind of vague neutrality. After all, successful in-fill development in Sacramento depends on developers like Petrovich, and if we want to mitigate the city's humongous impact on the natural world, and keep Sacramento from growing across the Valley like some kind of adolescent octopus, we have to have in-fill development. Like him, or not, Petrovich really isn't the enemy. Maybe a friend, even.

So, now this new hullaballoo....

Echoing my poor dog Prince, can't we all just - get along?