Borrowing Good Advice

My last original idea died of loneliness and almost everything I write and say, both seemingly expressions of what I am thinking (please let me have that, okay?) are compilations, combinations, and conflagrations of insights and observations I've accumulated in seven-plus decades here on the ant farm.

I live in Norwich, Connecticut, one of those places in New England where the history comes from. I am, as the natives constantly remind me, NFH (Not From Here), though I'm from here NOW. 

We're a small(ish) city of about forty-thousand with a seven-person City Council that tries to make the best decisions they can and thirty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-three others of us who not only know everything but know everything better.  

In the course of my readings and ramblings, I've come across some pretty smart folks most of whom wouldn't be caught dead in the same room with me. Not that it keeps me from admiring them; it just means we won't be going shoe-shopping which is just as well as I don't think Norwich has a shoe store, anymore. 

Take Phil Levin, an entrepreneur, with amazing insight into the basic building block of a city of any size, large or small, the importance of picking your neighborhood.  

I love this part right here: "You are going to spend 1000x more time in your surrounding 5 blocks than you will in any other neighborhood in your city. Thinking about all the things that New York City has—or the next city has—is a lot less important than thinking about the things within the five blocks where you live.

Most neighborhoods in your city you might never step foot in. They might as well be on the other side of the country. But the things in your immediate vicinity are the things that are going to dominate your life. So picking and influencing your neighborhood is really important... the neighborhood determines quite a bit about our life and our happiness."

It's possible while he was changing into his sneakers and slipping into that sweater that Fred Rogers was trying to balance Sarah Saturday and King Friday right there in his own neighborhood. We could do worse, and I'm afraid sometimes we see that as the challenge instead of the danger.
-bill kenny