Seniority Preamble (Cross-Post)

(A comment to this blog post: http://anemicvolunteer.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-i-am-anemic-volunteer-part-1.html)

There is one important function to this seniority preamble in my opinion. It reveals whether an individual has lived in town long enough to have a reasonable chance of gathering why certain walls were built before advocating to tear them down.

The social necessity of testifying to one's term of residency is a nod to the cultural struggle occuring here in Norwich and throughout rural America to some degree. At its worst, that struggle flares up in the form of a Ruth Dwyer and the "Take Back Vermont" sloganeering of a few years back. At its core, the struggle is far less invidious, but probably much more important.

The rural agricultural traditions of this town and region are giving way to an urban/suburban ethos which values the physical rural character of the place, but runs roughshod over the rural character of the community and its institutions. In the past two decades this town has abandoned traditional town meeting, instituted a town manager form of government, and professionalized its police force and fire department. These changes aren't necessarily bad, but they signify a departure from the libertarian self-reliance and consensual interdependence of the community and institution which they replace.

I'm as guilty as anyone in town, spending some time on the town manager review committee and toiling for some years in an effort to bureaucratize land use regulation in town.

I don't think having spent my entire life in Norwich would have changed my views -- there have been plenty of life long residents behind these efforts as well.

I do think I've been around long enough to recognize some of the costs to these changes, enough to question those costs at least. And they aren't insignificant, but that's another topic.