My Garden Society — stewards of the oldest continuously operating  victory gardens in America, bitches! — gets requests from the local press a few times a year.  We are all media whores these days, and non-profits are especially grateful for the free PR a fluff piece provides.  Unfortuntately, we always end up with more nutter than fluffer, for some reason.    

I mean, we've just had a request from a popular television magazine to interview some of our gardeners for a piece on the victory gardens.  What a great opportunity to talk about all the exciting new energy folks are bringing to the urban gardening movement, right?

Oh, what's that?  Not just any gardeners, you say?  Well, we have some extraordinary young people who are bringing a whole new energy—- you don't want to talk to them, eh?  You want "quirky" gardeners, huh? Oh!  Like old ladies in sun hats pottering about amongst their peonies.  

"Quirky" obviously means very old, with a foreign accent if possible.  And yes, we've got plenty of those at the Victory Gardens.   

It's a sort of comforting caricature they're looking for, I guess.  Never mind that urban gardens represent a venerable movement linked to health and social justice causes that challenges assumptions about class, privilege, and land use — let's get a shot of the quirky old lady in the cute sun hat fussing over a bunch of begonias!

It's a little condescending, is all.  I mean, you don't call someone "quirky" to their face, do you?  Because then the spell is broken.  Because quirky people aren't supposed to know they're quirky, are they?  That's for you to know.  

So while I hope I'm wrong about this, the story you're likely to see on TV won't really be news to you or me or anyone.  And that's a little sad in a way, as urban land use, urban ag, and local food production aren't just for the "quirky" anymore.