Sunday, September 29, 2013

Looking for community trying and trying to find home at home.



Over due for a post one of those times where I maybe have too many things to write about and it leads me to no writing at all. So here we go not sure what is going to come out. Hopefully it wont be drivel. The week before last first we went to Cambridge NY (one of my favorite towns) to see my favorite duo the Fabulous Beekman Boys at one of my favorite bookstores Battenkill Books. So it was a night of favorites it is always strange to visit a town you love that you are not from. Josh and Brent who were as charming as I knew they would be started talking about keeping small towns viable and made comparisons between Cambridge and their town Sharon Springs and it turns out one of the things they have in common is that they are one stop light towns. So this got me to thinking about towns and more importantly community and maybe that is why its taken me 10 days or so to write this. I don't really have a town I live in Northumberland which lies along the Hudson east of Saratoga and Wilton north of Schuylerville and south of Glens Falls and Fort Edward it encompasses a huge area and is comprised of tiny hamlets that must had some meaning in the past but are just signs now. Bacon Hill is my favorite one...Gansevoort I guess has the most trappings of a town we have a Stewarts (or course) a church and a few small businesses but no stop light. Yes not even a one stop light town. Will a railroad crossing pass? So I envy people who live in one stop light towns.

When I moved to upstate NY I am not sure what I was looking for I think I wanted to live close to Saratoga but in the country and maybe find some small kookie town to call our home but I wasn't really given a choice when I fell in love with the house that we eventually bought and I don't think I noticed that it didn't come with a town or for that matter a bathroom on the second floor. Oops. But who could pass up a house on the Hudson in the middle of dairy country the nearest house about 1/4 mile down the road and a historic house to boot with roots firmly planted  in american history? Not I that's for damn sure. But I do wish sometimes that I had more of a community something like Sharon Springs but then I realize that I am lucky where I am 20 minutes from Saratoga 15 from Glens Falls 25 minutes from Greenwich and 35 minutes from Cambridge so in a way I just happen to live in the middle of it all in the middle of wonderful upstate new york which I love living in everyday well almost everyday I really hate February nothing like getting in the car to go to a job you wish you didn't have to go to when its 25 below out now man that sucks.

When we first moved here 9 years ago we opened a tattoo studio and were immediately surrounded by new friends and  people who probably just wanted to be associated with the then very cool and hip local tattoo artist. When we closed the studio a few years later the friends we had made evaporated and apart from my parents and their very cool septuagenarian set we don't have many connections. Unfortunately to make matters worse I work about 40 miles to the south and the connections I have made there are wonderful and nice (I spend more time with my friends at work with just about anybody else and many of my co-workers are truly wonderful and amazing people) but the connections as strong as they are don't survive a 40 mile ride to hang out much. But things are looking up on the friend front since we have started farming in our small way we have started to make some friends and connections and hopefully these bonds will and can be strengthened over time. I hope so. Not that I need or want a huge circle of friends but it would be nice to find just a few like minded people to have over for dinner and enjoy a glass of two occasionally. So recruitment is open come on over.

2 comments:

  1. It is hard to meet like minded people out here in the country as even if you know farmers, they are all chemical farmers, they don't even plow or disc the soil. There is nothing to talk about, they use man altered seed and drug animals that aren't even sick. It is a lonely place.

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    1. It is even harder to meet like minded people close to civilization. I don't know if all the cool people live in other states like Oregon, or is it just the grass seems greener elsewhere?

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