Cindy on November 30th, 2009
“Our national myths often exaggerate the role of individual heroes and understate the importance of collective effort.” – Robert Putnam
Taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather this month, I took a late afternoon bike ride through our subdivision. As I waved at neighbors who were fastening holiday lights to picket fences and evergreen branches, it occurred to me that “community” always tops my annual gratitude list. My family and I have lived in the same neighborhood for more than 20 years, and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.
I know several people who crave more exotic adventures or like to move to before it’s time to repaint the living room. Americans are highly mobile — and often out of necessity. Our jobs force us to transfer. Or we follow the sun to warmer climates and better economic conditions. But wherever we live, most of us long to live in safe, strong communities where civility is valued and practiced. We want to be neighborly, notes Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.
I couldn’t agree more. I enjoy visiting local diners “where everybody knows your name.” I prefer shopping at the same grocery store and claiming a favorite booth at local restaurants. One of my favorite jobs — though it paid poorly — was writing for my hometown newspaper and meeting readers in line at the post office.
Feeling connected to a community is as essential to me as having food and shelter, and I’m fortunate enough to live in a place where residents are making an effort to meet one another – and where creating a safe haven is a top priority. And it’s not as if my neighbors and I are stuck in a nostalgic time warp. We know from experience that neighborhoods, like families, are far from perfect. We know that “building community” isn’t simply a matter of throwing a great block party.
Michigan has suffered twice as hard during this tough economic recession, and our subdivision has seen an increase in theft and vandalism. Which is why we got serious and banded together. We began meeting in kitchens and living rooms to brainstorm a few solutions. For starters, we joined our city’s Neighborhood Watch Program, and then established a neighborhood e-mail chain to help keep everyone informed and connected. In the process, we started learning each other’s names as well as the needs of our immediate community.
Of course, creating a real community requires extra effort — and modern life typically conspires against it. When we’re not multi-tasking at the office, most of us are cloistered at home in communion with the TV or the computer. Building a stronger, friendlier neighborhood demands that we move outside our comfort zones and get involved. It requires that we log off our computers and visit a local park or attend a town meeting.
There are many small steps you can take to strengthen your own community bond. For starters, support neighborhood merchants and restaurants, and subscribe to your local paper. Learn more about local issues and politicians. (If others complain that the government isn’t working, suggest they help fix it.) Make a favorite dinner for a new neighbor and offer to share tools or your snow blower.
As anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Cindy La Ferle
– Photo of Main Street, downtown Royal Oak –
Cindy on July 22nd, 2009
I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Special Note: On break from blogging this month, I’m running favorite pieces from my essay collection, Writing Home. This piece reflects on the importance of real neighborhoods. Feel free to share your thoughts on “community” in the comment link following the essay …
It had been a little while since we’d been together. But despite the unseasonably cool weather for June, the talk was as warm and familiar as the coffee mug in my hands.
This time, we were celebrating the high school graduation of one of our kids. It struck me, as I glanced around the room, that no matter how much time passes or where I move in the future, these folks will always feel like home to me. They are my old neighbors.
My family and I moved a few blocks south of their Royal Oak enclave a while ago. And as much as we enjoy the neighborhood we live in now, I have to admit I left part of my heart, not to mention a spectacular lilac bush, in our former back yard.
I was pregnant with Nate when Doug and I moved there. Obsessive new homeowners that we were, we spent our free time renovating and decorating. It wasn’t until Nate needed playmates that we started connecting with other families on the block. As another mom told me, children turn your street into a neighborhood.
Unfortunately, that street was a shortcut to Woodward, one of the busiest thoroughfares in Oakland County, and too many drivers were oblivious to our residential speed limit. It wasn’t unusual to spot carloads of teenagers (or clueless adults) speeding past our house en route to the drag strip at the end of our block. And how could I forget the inebriated savage who stumbled out of a car and relieved his bladder on the new pine tree I’d just planted next to our driveway?
Naturally, we wanted to protect our kids as well as the peace of our carefully groomed street. So we banded together — about a dozen of us — to devise a plan. We would storm City Hall and demand that our officials close our street. My husband, the resident architect, drew up plans for diverting traffic. All of us took turns hosting civic meetings in our homes, not realizing at the time that we were actually cementing a lifelong friendship.
Of course, the city had no intention of redesigning our street. As a token gesture of compromise, we were given stop signs, which mysteriously disappeared a few years later. But our “town hall” meetings didn’t stop. Instead, they morphed into coffee hours and block parties and semi-annual dinner outings.
You hear a lot of talk about community these days – why it’s not as easy to cultivate and what we can do about it. Blaming our corporate work ethic and the time we spend on the Internet, sociologists claim that neighborly activities like pot-lucks and plant exchanges are remnants of the Victorian age.
Not so, in my experience. My family and I learned the secrets of community building in our early years as homeowners, thanks to a handful of neighbors who cared about something bigger than their own backyards.
Today, the little ones we were trying to protect from traffic are licensed drivers. Some, like the one whose graduation party I attended last week, are leaving for college in the fall. But they all seem to appreciate the friendships that grew around them years ago, and they promise to keep coming back to celebrate.
– This essay originally appeared in June 2003 in my “Life Lines” column in The Daily Tribune (Royal Oak, MI) –
Cindy on July 14th, 2008
I wanted to look for NeHi Pop and Burma Shave signs and drive through the kind of small towns that Deanna Durbin and Mickey Rooney used to inhabit in the movies….I wanted to see America. I wanted to come home.” — Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
Practically everyone I know has tried to convert me. My family has taken me on fabulous trips to some of the most incredible cities in the world — London, Paris, Rome, Glascow, New York City, Boston. I’ve admired the great museums and portrait galleries, photographed the landmarks where famous people drank or slept, oooohed and ahhhhed the awesome architecture, sampled the famous restaurants, shopped the world-class department stores and … complained about the god-awful traffic and wished I could go home.
All-knowing friends and editors try to shame me for being so provincial; for favoring quirky rural villages and small college towns. I should know better. But that’s just who I am. I’m the sort of person who cranks up the volume every time John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” is playing on the radio; the sort of person who admires Henry David Thoreau for truly believing that his own neighborhood in Concord was the most fascinating place on Earth. And, yes, I like living in a town where everybody knows my name.
Which is why I was honored when an essay of mine was chosen for Hometown America, a new collector’s anthology of writings just published by Ideals (a Guideposts company). The essay was selected from my own book, Writing Home, and it’s the one about the neighborhood kids who’ve grown up with my son and become part of our family. Other excerpts in Hometown America include pieces by Faith Andrews Bedford, Garrison Keillor, Chris Bohjalian, Susan Allen Toth, Philip Gulley, Edgar Guest, Marjorie Holmes, and many other writers and poets with whom I’d love to shoot the breeze on a front porch. — CL
