Roger: Well, there is something there that needs explaining. My wife is

a keen gardener. She is also one of those innocents who notice things that

respectable people aren’t supposed to notice. Well, the first time we went

to Washington D.C., we spent most of a day strolling round the beautiful

National Arboretum in the northeast of the city.

After a while she asked in a puzzled tone: “How come there are no black

people here?” I hadn’t noticed (being impeccably respectable myself), but

she was right. It was odder still, since the arboretum is in a heavily

black section of this heavily black city. All right, perhaps it’s mainly a

tourist attraction; but admission is free, and if I lived within a mile of

it, I’d go there often just to relax and look at the plants. So… where

are the locals?