Skip to main content

Away from it All

Thanks to the kindness of a friend, my family spent Thanksgiving close to nature and far away from The Bubble. Sunrise and sunset views of the water were spectacular, the quiet was nourishing, the darkness at night was palpable. Wow--is night really that dark?

 

The tiny town which serves as "civilization" is about a twenty minute's drive away. Small shops. Narrow streets. Old sidewalks. Restaurants with individual flavor and personality. Store clerks who talked to you. It was all freshly decorated for the holiday season.

 

Beautiful, and, dare I say, sincere.

 

I wondered what it would be like to live there in the town, without a car. Or using a car only rarely. Could I do it? There's a little Acme grocery store on the main street, a pharmacy, too. Churches are walkable. Surrounding the main street are lesser streets that cross-cross neatly with old wooden houses, many with gingerbread ornamentation. Tiny well-groomed yards.

 

Wouldn't it be lovely? Small-town living?

 

After a brief conversation we all agreed that we just couldn't do it. It would drive us out of our minds.

 

How sadly addicted we are to being able to hop in the car and visit a million places within a few minutes. Our cars represent personal freedom, independence, a life-line to all our needs and wants. How could we survive if we couldn't get to Target? (How pathetic is this whole train of thought?)

 

To be honest, in this kind of a comparison Columbia/Howard County is at one end of the spectrum and St. Michael's is at another. There's plenty of room in between. As we strive for more walkability in our evolving downtown, it will not mean we will be forced to give up our cars and walk to and from the Acme with our grocery bags.

 

Getting away from it all gave us time to be together as a family. We enjoyed every moment of the low-key, chilling-out experience. But we also got a lesson on how dependent we are on the comforts of home, and how much that really means dependence on automobiles.

 

Hmm. I'm still thinking...

 

 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...
1 comment
Read more

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

  A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word.  Days passed.  They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts.  Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public.  So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that.  But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...
2 comments
Read more

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...
1 comment
Read more