I'd like to believe he was attempting to define home as more of a feeling than a specific location but having slept, heavily, through a number of American Literature courses during my college years I could be very wrong (and not for the first time) but I am well-rested (if that counts).
I thought about Frost, New England's poet if not poet laureate, on Sunday while sampling the 2nd Annual Peruvian Festival in Franklin Square. All of the Global Norwich outreaches are marvelous opportunities to meet people who are both just like and also completely different from us in a fun-fueled environment of music, food, costumes, and customs almost always in bright sunlight and beautiful weather. You cannot help but have a good time and that as Martha Stewart says, is a good thing.
One of the more salient points about Norwich of which I was reminded again on Sunday is not just how many different kinds of people and traditions we have in a relatively small city but how well we get along with one another when allowed and encouraged to just be people who live in the same area.
I've suggested before that the farther out in space you travel the more alike we all look like back here on Earth but there's been too much talk lately suggesting people with whom we disagree should be making travel plans and that's not only the wrong idea but it's not who we are as a nation, state, and/or city.
There's been far too many headlines and stories that could lead the faint of heart to think we live in a fractured and fragmenting society with too many irreconcilable differences and unbridgeable distinctions with loud-voiced people who seem to delight in exacerbating all of that synthetic discord for personal and/or political gain. Sunday reminded to say out loud and to keep saying it, "just look at Norwich."
When I was a kid one of my least favorite neighborhood games was what I called "for me to look good, you need to look bad." (Also known as a cut battle) None of us growing up had much (or thought we did when we actually had everything we needed, a family to make where we were a home) and so when you could crow about something you had and no one else did, or mock somebody for the way they looked or dressed or what kind of car they had, you'd feel better because others felt worse.
As an adult (or a person in an adult's body) I recognize that tearing others down in order to build yourself up isn't just destructive but stupid.
And again, I think back to Sunday, watching every kind of people running power lines, not just for their food, drink or crafts stand, but for the one next to theirs because each of us wins when all of us win. As cliche as it sounds, it's true: teamwork makes the dream work. And while that may not be a part of anyone's definition of 'home' at least not yet, it is an integral value of the country we all live in and of the city we should enjoy sharing.
-bill kenny
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