From the sense of disconnection many Americans felt in the days after 9/11, a Providence man is trying to forge a stronger sense of community, one block at a time.

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, September 11, 2005

BY JENNIFER LEVITZ
Journal Staff Writer

It's almost sad how uncommon the customs on Arnold Street seem. The neighbors exchange house keys and share a chain saw. They pitched in to plant pear trees that pop white blossoms in spring. They threw a Twister tournament.

OK, so maybe you don't want your wife playing Twister with Derek from down the street. But wouldn't it be nice to know your neighbors beyond a wave from the car as you pull in and out of the driveway?

Lorne Adrain, an author, insurance broker and father of three who lives on Arnold Street in the Fox Point section of Providence, wants to start a national outbreak of goodwill with his invention, National Neighborhood Day, on the second Sunday of every September -- today. His goal is simple: to inspire thousands of neighborhoods to cook out or hang out today and make the "little connections" that Adrain believes will strengthen communities.

"Before you know it, people start exchanging keys," he says.

The day is a grass-roots, Internet-based movement dreamed up by Adrain and pals from Harvard Business School after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when relationships never seemed more important.

The idea has caught on. There's no official count, but hundreds of after-church brunches, tree plantings and block parties are expected today from Mine Hill, N.J., to St. Louis to California, according to interviews and the National Neighborhood Day Web site, www.neighborhoodday.org. Those who live off West Broadway in Providence will garden and jam to the Tom Pascarelli trio. The Rhode Island Historical Society will lead walks in downtown Providence. Home Depot, CVS, Microsoft, and other big corporations will promote events, and provide basics such as paper plates. Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline last year signed an executive order naming the second Sunday of September National Neighborhood Day.

Garry Bliss, the mayor's policy director, calls Adrain "a visionary who's got an idea."

TODAY'S NEIGHBORHOOD DAY is particularly timely coming after Hurricane Katrina, which forced neighbors to help one another survive. In some neighborhoods, relationships were all that remained after the storm. Who wouldn't like to think he'd be checked on by a neighbor if a flood hit Rhode Island?

Adrain, 51, hopes to put National Neighborhood Day "in our blood, like Thanksgiving."

"If we come to that place, we'll also have a huge, huge well of goodwill created. When it comes to something like a disaster in New Orleans, people will feel different because they're more connected with their neighbors and they may feel more inclined to help, whether it's offering a room in their house . . . ," he says.

Adrain is the author of The Most Important Thing I Know, a collection of quotes from Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama, and other famous people. In 1999, he and his wife, Ann Hood, a best-selling author, moved into a red clapboard colonial built when George Washington was president. Their neighborhood is a friendly mix of Brown University professors, students and professionals.

But it's also a typical modern-day cluster, which means it's not so easy to actually know people unless there's an organized way to do so. It's transient. About 10 percent of the neighborhood moves out each year; new people move in. Maybe you know the people next door, but not the family six doors down.

'"We wanted people in our neighborhood to know our kids and for them to know our neighbors, just so it felt secure and comfortable and all those good things I think we all want," Adrain says.

A couple of months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11., he invited neighbors to a chilly cookout, not thinking nationally but just, he says, "wouldn't it be nice to know some neighbors?" In time, people knew where the babysitters lived, who owned a chain saw -- Adrain -- and who else wanted to do something about fixing the streetlights. Residents, including those on several blocks around Arnold, gathered for another barbecue party in 2002, a year in which Adrain and his wife were thankful that neighbors didn't keep to themselves.

Their 5-year-old daughter, Grace, died of a rare form of streptococcus. "A lot of neighbors gathered around and put their arms around us," he says. "It was very, very different than had we not known anyone around us. To have this huge loss in our lives, this hole in our hearts . . . the loss of Grace was one more reminder of the value of these connections."

Seeing the results in his own neighborhood, Adrain proposed the idea of National Neighborhood Day to friends from Harvard Business School Class of 1983.

One of them, Charles Cassidy, a 52-year-old consultant, and the former senior vice president of the State Street Corp. in Boston, thought big: if neighborhoods were stronger, communities would be stronger, and the world would be stronger. It's not far-fetched. Sociologists studying the turnaround of a Brooklyn community in the 1990s said neighborhoods are where people learn to be human.

Cassidy had been noticing that neighborhoods weren't as tight as they used to be. It wasn't that his neighborhood in Wellesley, Mass., wasn't friendly, with its cookie exchange and progressive dinner. But his children didn't roam around the block like he did growing up. Rather, everyone was driven everywhere.

"A LOT OF PARENTS bemoan the fact that we all used to. . . on a summer day go out the door with a baseball bat and fishing rod and be gone for the day," he says. "Now everything has to be sort of organized for our kids. I understand why it is the way it is; people say the world is not as safe as it used to be and maybe that's true. But if we all had stronger neighborhoods, maybe it would be a safer world."

If you're Hallmark, promoting a day is easy. But the organizers of the neighborhood day relied on word of mouth, sending 2,000 e-mails to Harvard classmates and associates. They pitched National Neighborhood Day to large national organizations, such as the Boy Scouts; some 38 agreed to promote the idea. The friends sought advice from the originator of national Take Your Daughter to Work Day. Last year, National Neighborhood Day became a nonprofit corporation and an official Providence day that Mayor Cicilline pitched at a national mayors' conference.

There's no exact formula for getting close enough to comfortably borrow a cup of sugar from the neighbors. Maybe you're in that awkward phase, stymied by that phenomenon that someone should study: If you don't meet your neighbors within a few weeks, you might never meet them. It gets embarrassing. That guy has lived down the street for six months -- how do I introduce myself to him now?

The Web site for National Neighborhood Day describes events held elsewhere, such as a California block that engaged in piata-bashing. The Web site includes ideas for gatherings and provides invitations that can be downloaded.

Around Arnold Street, the National Neighborhood Day seems to have cured the problem caused by everyone working so much and not having time to meet, says JoAnn Wooding, an interior and industrial designer who has lived in the neighborhood for 32 years. She knew everyone when she had young children and stayed home with them. Now, she says, "everyone works."

"It's been a joy to meet them," she says of her neighbors.

At the annual party, Lorne Adrain usually has several sign-up sheets going. Volunteers step up. At one party, someone offered to haul water daily over to the park to tend to three dying trees. Wooding organized a group to brighten the street with blooming pear trees, serving snacks at her house on "tree-planting day." There is now a directory of the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of the neighbors. Adrain says that if his son Sam, who's 12, tumbles off his bike 10 houses down, he can knock on a door and find a familiar face. Sam printed up the invitations and delivered them for this year's party. So today, neighbors plan to cart casseroles and bags of chips and folding chairs to the corner playground. One new face will be Annabelle, the 16-month-old girl Adrain and Hood adopted from China.

There was no word on whether Twister will be part of the day. "I'll tell you," Adrain says, "it's a great way to break the ice."

Digital Extra: Post remembrances to and celebrate the lives of those lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, at:

http://www.legacy.com/providence/Sept11.asp