Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Yet Another Last Chance?
I've mentioned before that where I live now is not where I was born. I was born in New York City. My parents and many of their friends moved to New Jersey when I was little more than a toddler. Jersey was one of two places that Eisenhower-era young married New Yorkers (YMNY) moved to when they had a few bucks.
When YMNY had MORE than a few bucks, they moved to Connecticut, actually to the Gold Coast, not the part of the state in which I live now, east of the Connecticut River and almost in Rhode Island. Until the two casinos came along, this part of the state was known for Mystic, which was on either side of 95 North as folks went to Cape Cod for their summer vacations.
There a lot of old towns and villages in the new england without capital letters-built along the banks of the rivers that were used to drive the turbines for the textile factories that disappeared in the late Forties and Fifties as cheaper labor in the Deep South shifted the industrial footprint only to be destroyed, itself, by even cheaper labor half a world away.
Part of that Global Village 'what goes around, comes around' phenomenon we mistakenly think of as 'The New World Order' when the only orders around here are for fries and a shake.
This new england doesn't suffer from Future Shock, but present shock. There are many people here who hold on to the past so tightly, believing it will return, though they know not how, that they literally and figuratively cannot grasp how much life and times have changed or how far behind they have fallen.
They watch with a mixture of suspicion and hope as every 'new' person or 'new' idea is presented as The Next Big Thing, and when that definite article proves to be less than advertised, and their feelings change from disappointed to deceived, they neither forgive nor forget.
Much of what I’ve seen in Norwich in the decades I have lived here is a changing of the direction of the circles in which we run, as if the running were a plan of some kind. We elect new brooms to sweep old dust-or choose old brooms to leave the dust alone. It seems to make no difference, least of all to the dust.
We were talking about downtown revitalization when I arrived here in 1991, and we're still doing it-and that's NOT accidental. People prefer problems that are familiar to solutions that are not. In nearly every election, we’ve had a chance to try a new path, for state representative, Congressman, Governor, Senator-you name the office- but we’ve steered clear of any and all new ideas.
Those of us who didn’t grow up here will never be “from here” no matter how long we live in Norwich. Yeah, my kids went to school with your kids, but I didn't go to school with you, and that's what counts. To some extent, every discussion about this city becomes ‘this is a Norwich thing, and you don’t understand.’
Maybe, but here’s something all of us can understand about those of us not from here: we are less wedded to a past we never had and are more willing to risk our present for a more desirable future for ourselves and our families. It’s the New Math: the less you have, the less you have to lose.
It’s not that, as a city, we haven’t meant well in Norwich. We have had hundreds, if not thousands, of people, on a variety of committees, commissions, agencies, and boards, each with a tiny piece of the economic development puzzle, struggling to make a breakthrough and somehow hit a game-winning grand slam home run.
But just because it hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t mean it won’t. And how many times over the years have we been told, or told one another, “Norwich is on the move,” and “Norwich is turning around,” or “this time for sure.”
To be clear: Norwich is a city of great starts. It's the middles we don't do very well, and I’m not sure we’d recognize a successful end if we got bitten by one on ours.
We're headed towards municipal elections this fall for seats on the City Council, Mayor, and the entire Board of Education, and I've yet to see a hopeful or helpful comment or a semi-constructive, concrete idea by residents and those seeking election that has ANY specifics.
Rather, we're the a$$holes on the bar stools near closing time, eyes glued to the big screen and telling one another how we'd do it if only we could be in charge, but will never lift a finger to help anyone else at any time who has offered to help. How about instead of Put up or Shut up, we try Show up or Give up.
-bill kenny
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