Tuesday, September 26, 2006

As someone who lives in one of those Brookland bungalows that author and scholar Richard Florida speeds past in the Sept. 18 Business article "The City as Modern Muse," I invite Mr. Florida to take a longer look at this neighborhood, which exemplifies the best of his theories. I'd like to challenge his notion that this Northeast neighborhood remains somehow unknown to people across the city.

I'm well-versed in Mr. Florida's ideas of the creative class, because I teach them as part of a writing seminar at George Washington University. But I'm also proud to know what it means to live in a place of character and authenticity.

Brookland has a proud history of artists and intellectuals -- from the poet and scholar Sterling Brown to playwright and novelist Jean Kerr to author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Actress Pearl Bailey and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche also called the neighborhood home for a while.

That legacy lives on; I've been excited to find through Brookland Area Writers & Artists an active arts community filled with poets, painters, novelists, musicians, sculptors, printmakers, collectors and gallery owners, and all the people of this community who treasure the artistry of these sidewalks, these old bungalows and the mix of people who know what it means to live deeply and truly, with roots old and new, in an authentic place in the District.

CHRISTY J. ZINK

Washington