Where the romance dies - #104
A small town reality check.
This week is going to be brief — those of you privy to the paid edition on Wednesdays saw that I was sick. I’d taken a Covid test that morning, tested negative, and then wrote the newsletter. After it went out, I started to clean up the kitchen, including the Covid test. Some 45 minutes later, the test was no longer negative.
Reviews on the internet are mixed whether that means I actually have Covid or not, but because we don’t have any more tests and Ben won’t go to town because he is terrified to accidentally infect someone (who can blame him), we’re isolating ourselves from the outside world and from each other.
Back in January 2020, Ben and I flew to a wedding in Washington D.C. A few hours after the reception and the bar crawl ended, I came upon Ben throwing up in the bathroom. I thought it was pretty funny that he’d gotten too drunk until I felt his head and realized we were not dealing with alcohol, but the flu. We had to get on a plane in about six hours.
We knew what was happening in the news, but it was early, and on the wrong coast. Ben wrapped his face in my scarf on the plane, a make-do mask in pre-mask times. When we got home, I slept on the couch. I wouldn’t let Ben touch anything. I wouldn’t come near him and I wiped down everything in the house while he had the worst flu of his life. I never got it. Two months later, everything shut down. Ben still thinks it was just the flu.
In the following three and a half years, neither of us got Covid. We lived in cabins in the mountains after all. We didn’t see a lot of people. We didn’t do a lot of indoor things. Until now. Well, at least I think. I would test again but we don’t have a test. So I’m just hiding in the second bedroom we’re lucky to have with all four pets holding me securely in place. I started watching Gilmore Girls and as of Saturday afternoon, I am on the final episode of season one. Season one was twenty-one episodes, an ungodly amount of television. I forgot seasons used to be that long, let alone first seasons.
There is a lot to find charming about this show: the endless cultural references, the seemingly always autumn/winter vibes, Luke in general, the bitchy French receptionist, people using phone books, and of course the extremely low stakes manufactured problems. 90% of the problems on this show would be fixed by calendars, alarms, or just taking a deep breath.
One thing this show does get right? The small town-ness. In that way, watching this show is almost like getting to leave the room I am sequestered in. In fact the town meetings in Gilmore Girls are held in a barn-like room not dissimilar to the one our general assembly meets in.
Our town met this past week in both a packed room and a packed Zoom, and we voted on an issue not everyone agreed with. It’s the only part about small-town living that I find… challenging? Difficult? Absolutely harrowing? Disagreeing with a general populace is one kind of difficult, but disagreeing with the people you see every day? I don’t know how you weather it over the years, and according to some of the long term locals, you simply don’t. There are neighbors who still don’t speak to each other over issues long since settled. Others chose long ago to never attend the meetings, but maybe it’s the Tracy Flick in me but I just can’t.
The motion we voted on this past week was in regards to doing a feasibility study around a solar array. Based on sheer guessing, it looks like the best site in this town for a solar array is… right behind my house. And I’m kind of jazzed about that! But of course I am. I’m environmentally obsessed with no plans to ever sell this house.
That said, solar arrays can be ugly. Does all the power go to us? Or does it help power the 10,000sqft homes over the ridge? Does this benefit the power company more than the people? Will home values plummet? These are all completely valid concerns. I don’t want anyone’s home value to plummet either! But it’s hard to vote for a climate solution you’re fine with having behind your house when it’s going to be behind someone else’s house too.
What is the right thing? What is the good thing? How do you ever and always balance the two?
I’m too sick to think about it in depth, but lucky me the town will be thinking about it for months if not years ahead. When you’re walking down the trail covered in golden leaves, drinking a chai you bought from a friend, waving to other friends and dogs you recognize, popping into the library to know all the staff before you head to the hardware store where they know exactly what you’re in for, it’s easy to get swept up in the romance.
But the romance dries up in the town hall.
In case you have any big plans to move to your own Stars Hallow, I’d only recommend it for the civically-disengaged or civically-thick-skinned. It’s only a matter of time before the motion is made to pave the dirt road and the town tears itself apart at the intersection. Hopefully I’ll be well and recovered by then.
Then again…
Thanks for your patience through weeks like this. It’s difficult to write something… every week for years? In theory, I should have just been like, “I’m sick, see you next week,” but I prefer to take time off for fun things, not phlegm things. Anyway, it’s a newsletter. It can’t be a banger every week. If it was, I’d probably have an agent. Love you all, and see you next week when my brain escapes from the cloud it is shrouded in.
If you’re new, here are some hits from recently:
Dear Kelton, as an old man who still tilts at windmills and televised city councils, I urge you to wear your civic involvement proudly. It, the angst you feel and your willingness and energy are the love that you feel for those others that you disagree with. And for the land you reside in. You may not always push a position but you are allowed to feel your involvement.
Hope you feel better soon. As for small town with town meeting government, these bad relationships are also relationships.
Good people can disagree and still be friends, though that is difficult when you start talking about solar arrays behind someone’s house and paving roads people want kept as dirt.
I’m not a believer that everyone needs to be friends, but I do believe we generally have to try stating civil. I do also know about disengaging.
After 20 years of being an activist, a state delegate numerous times, a person that organized signs, wrote citizen petitions and called congressmen, senators and federal agencies to change things for my former town, we have not engaged the past 2 years in our new, smaller Maine town (s). I will say that one major issue and town rift did have a good deal to do with us leaving - but it was ultimately much more than that driving the move.
I will say that the smaller the town, the harder it probably is to not engage...