Something is going on next to the Greenway that I don’t understand. Parcel 7 is the parking garage on Congress Street whose offices and ground floor remain unoccupied. A public market is slated for the ground floor.

Parcel 9 is a vacant irregularly-shaped site near Parcel 7 on which Frank Keefe and his board want to build the Boston Museum.

Adjacent to both sites are the weekend Haymarket pushcarts. The BRA now calls the whole thing (and Quincy Market) the Market District, a fine name.

After talking with people who are involved and attending some meetings, I’m still baffled about many things concerning this small piece of the city.

My uncle, the newspaper editor, told me if I didn’t understand something, it probably wasn’t because I was stupid. It was because someone wasn’t telling me the whole story.

I still don’t have the whole story, but now I can identify questions I can’t answer. I suspect the situation arises from some traditional Boston pathological behaviors to which this effort has been subjected. It involves turf battles, neighborhood parochialism, old patterns threatened by new ones, and the blight of Boston pessimism.

So here are some questions.

• Why is the North End the only neighborhood represented on the public market commission?

Funny, I thought we all had a stake in a public market.  Charlestown residents might want to nip in for some berries on their way home from work. Beacon Hill and Leather District residents might scurry over since it is a hop, skip and a jump from both neighborhoods.

This location is not in the North End, no matter how much some people would like to roll back time and call it that. The Greenway makes just as much of an edge—thank goodness a nicer one—to that neighborhood as did the old overhead Central Artery.

But other Boston neighborhoods apparently don’t see it as any of their business. At the last meeting, one representative from the Beacon Hill Civic Association attended. No one came from the Back Bay, Charlestown, Chinatown or South Boston. Now I don’t know everyone in this town, so I may have been mistaken. Nevertheless, in this self-fulfilling prophecy, most Boston residents have no say, or apparently no interest, in the matter. Or maybe they are just bored with the public market process, which has taken more than six years to develop a good idea that everyone says they want.

• Why aren’t Parcel 9 and Parcel 7 being considered together since one could benefit the other? I know the official reasons. They were separated several months ago in the “Request for Proposals” process, and the RFP for Parcel 9 is due out this fall. But Parcel 9’s ground floor could help relieve the space crunch that dumpsters and storage for the Haymarket pushcarts will cause in Parcel 7. We’ll see if that can be worked out.

• Why are the Haymarket pushcart vendors so wary of the public market? Only one developer proposes to have public market vendors go over to Chelsea, the source of Haymarket products, to fill in during the winter, and that developer, I’m told by certain observers, is never going to get the nod. Only three out of ten Boston residents go to Haymarket at least once a year. A public market would complement the pushcart people and bring more business to them. The promised storage and dumpsters would eliminate the off-putting mess that now surrounds them. But it’s hard to change old ways.

• Why is there such hostility toward the Boston Museum? It’s the only proposal left standing on the Greenway, with three others abandoned. The museum was designated for a parcel over ramps. We now know you can’t afford to build over ramps. The museum wants to trade its ramp parcel for Parcel 9. Its preliminary design is wonderful—much better than any other. Their concept is interesting. Their location is on the Freedom Trail in the midst of all the market action. It seems like a good idea.

One Boston civic leader grumpily said such a museum wasn’t needed. Neither is the Museum of Fine Arts, but both enrich our lives. Some don’t like its entrepreneurial aspect, which means it is untested. (Sorry, Mayor Menino, but Bostonians are culturally averse to innovation.) Others say (pessimism again) they’ll never raise the money. The catch is they can’t start raising money for a building when they don’t have a site.  Meanwhile the other proposals for use—housing (which won’t work, people think, because of the noise of the markets) and office (boring) would be a sad outcome for this prominent space.

• The parking garage at Parcel 7 is another crazy situation. Father of the Big Dig, Fred Salvucci, said the state, under a written agreement, built the garage to replace parking under the Central Artery that served the Haymarket pushcarts as well as North End shops. Despite traffic studies, no one really knows how many Haymarket customers come by car.

In any case, the garage is full with some spaces apparently designated for North End residents at a reduced rate, and no one in downtown Boston would begrudge a neighborhood having a chance at parking. But they are also used by other favored groups and individuals—not the pushcart customers presumably—who may or may not be the right tenants.

Strangely, the Government Center garage next door is underused , said developers who tried to get something going there a few years ago.

These are only some of the matters I don’t understand.

But some things are clear. Lots of us want a well-functioning public market, and we believe that even in New England, farmers, fisher folk, cheese makers and paté creators are crafty enough to figure out how to keep it going all year. Supposedly we’re now on the fast track for the market, but I’m skeptical. And wouldn’t it be better to have an interesting museum next to the Greenway rather than boring offices or residences filled with people yelling at the pushcarts that they are making too much noise?