Just look at these headlines. Arson. Burglary. Pornography. Poaching. H1N1. There's even a "Pot Plot." Certainly they must be about some far away big city. Someplace that isn't where we live.
I'm sorry but I have some bad news.
These headlines are all about GroveAtopia. And they all happened in the last month. I know you don't want to believe it, but I'm afraid it's true.
When big city things happen in our small town, it's different than when they happen in the big city. When they happen here, we take it personally.
This is not the kind of personally you might experience in the big city. There, if you take something personally, it's usually because it involves an issue you care passionately about. Perhaps someone has said something that you find either upsetting or inspiring. That passes for personal in the big city.
But here, when you take it personally, it's because it really is. It's because you or someone you know knows the people involved. You have to admit it doesn't get much more personal than that.
And frankly we just aren't used to it. Our newspaper, even the one in the bigger city up the road is not usually filled with this type of news. So when it happens like this, one piece of bad news after another, we actually bother to wonder why. And we bother to ask what we can do to make sure it doesn't happen again.
We do that because in GroveAtopia, making things better actually seems possible. Our community is so closely linked that we think our problems are worth solving because we truly think they can be solved.
Even so, we are hoping we have come to the end of our spate of bad news, because quite honestly we can only take so much of it.
And we will never, ever get used to it.
Hmmm, I live in the grove too and I don't know if we are both thinking about the same town? The headlines seam about right to me, I would be afread to walk around at night in this town. I've seen what happens in the day light, Don't get me wrong there are some great people in the grove, but this town is known for it's drugs. Some of the best pot in the country is grown here in town, and bought by the same grovers. LOL its all good baby.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious, why are you afraid to walk around at night in this town? Would you write more about the grove you know? It is not what I see when I look around. Most of the grove I see looks more like the one I talk about, but we all need to know more about the one you see.
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