EDITORIALChange
Every community that goes through shifts in its demographic composition also goes through its share of resentment and conflict, and ours is no different from any other in that respect. Normally these kind of issues move below the radar of public dialogue but once in a while they do show up there. When they do, it’s our job to give voice to them. Recently our other newspaper The Olive Press was named in an anonymous letter circulated to some business owners in that town, threatening their economic boycott for “perpetuating the influx of New York City people to the area and driving out the locals.” We all have our own ways of interpreting what we see happening in our community and everybody’s emotional response is legitimate and they’re entitled to it. Our first take was that’s sort of like blaming the rainbow trout for high water in the Esopus because they’re not native, while holding the brook trout faultless because they are. Neither species seems to have much control over the rain or the City’s water releases. But then we thought, well okay, what if there’s truth in it? Are all the local businesses that try to accommodate our community’s economic changes actually undermining the authenticity of its culture? We don’t presume to know the answer but we think it’s a legitimate question. There’s hardly a business in the region that hasn’t changed the goods or services it’s offered over the years to reflect the changing needs of our full and part-time residents and the visitors our area draws. That’s a straightforward matter of survival for any small business, and most of us are grateful that much of what we need or want is available pretty close to home. So what’s the real beef? We think for some people it’s about change, any kind of change, and their emotional reaction to it. Those of us who grew up somewhere else hardly ever find a return visit very satisfying. Few of us like finding new things where there weren’t any, places that don’t strike us the way we remember them, or families who may or may not remind us of our own. Of course these are normal reactions, and telling ourselves that change is inevitable doesn’t alter the way we feel. Insofar as our own sense of connection with those places is concerned, probably the best we could hope for is that our feelings might be respected. And it’s no different for people who grew up here. Our communities are of course changing, but they aren’t changing in a vacuum. Much as some are pleased by a lot of what they’re seeing, others aren’t. But just as we are most definitely our own place with our own sense of place, we’re also a part of a region and a country and a world, all of which are undergoing the same kinds of change at a similar pace. And everywhere, the same emotional issues come up as people try to make sense of their relationship to their changing communities. Nobel Prize winner Gregory Bateson used to say that evolution is what happens when something keeps trying to do the same dance it always has, as the world around it changes. What really “evolves” isn’t say, a horse, but a relationship between the horse and the grasses it lives on. Over time, both are changed by the relationship so that both can flourish. An anthropologist, Bateson wasn’t just talking about species but about communities too. And what’s evolving here in Shandaken isn’t one animal that was born here and another that wasn’t, but a relationship between both and the cultural environment they share. And that’s changing largely from the big world beyond, not because some local storeowners are trying to make a living by appealing to our region’s visitors and the 45 percent of our homeowners who aren’t full-time residents. Boycott local businesses to try and stop the rise in our property values? If that’s a solution to anything, then what exactly is the problem? We asked Dan Leader who owns Bread Alone what he thought of the boycott threat he received. “We have 70 people on our payroll” he said. “All locals. I don’t get it” It’s true Shandaken is changing, and so’s just about everywhere else. In some measure it’s changing because people like what they find here and want to stay. Of those who’ve started businesses, often investing their life’s savings, few have done so with any expectation of making more than a modest living. Nobody’s moved to the neighborhood to get rich, and nobody’s likely to anytime soon. But Shandaken is the fastest-growing town in the county in terms of personal income and educational attainment of its full-time residents, and it’s not surprising that our local businesses are responding to that. We don’t however, think it’s something people should get bent out of shape about. Here at this paper against whom charges of citified sensibilities have been made, it’s always been our practice to run everything that comes to us from the community. In our columns and regular features, we tend to go with voices which are consistent and show up on deadline. We try in our coverage to anticipate what’s happening, to give people time to think about things and respond and maybe make a difference in what happens. We welcome change, just as we welcome a full and open dialogue on everything of importance here. Yeah, some amount of change is inevitable. A community’s not a time capsule or a controlled experiment in nostalgia. But how we change and grow responsibly is still, by and large, up to us. Let’s hope we can approach it as one community with many voices, as the alternatives are, well, bleak by comparison. |