Upstate New York seems to have enjoyed a relatively higher level of living some 20 years ago. Since that time, during my life, the community has been in a steady economic and social decline.
My generation and many of those raised locally in the last two decades were greatly influence by that collapse.
I remember the tumbling of Oxford store fronts and the not-so-spectacular rise of Wal-Mart. I barely remember the small businesses like Oxford Video. I remember them struggling. I didn’t really assimilate the true impact of things at the time, but I remember the disappearance of childhood friends, forced to relocate.
Before we had a county with two maximum security prisons and a Wal-Mart, there was Procter & Gamble and Victory Markets. In Oxford, just about everyone I know is employed by the state, either through the school district or Veterans’ Home.
They say that an early indicator of global warming can be detected by the melting of the ice caps. I have often wonder if perhaps upstate New York and other rural areas are preliminary indicators of increasing economic depravity on a larger scale.
This is all I have ever really known and so it can be difficult for me to even imagine my hometown any other way. The effects have unfortunately been a more pessimistic and far less enthusiastic view of the local affairs.
Through all this however I learned many important things. One of the most important I’ll probably ever know is the true value of community.
One of the most important things can be a one’s stance and contributions to their community.
The idea of local politics gives me the same pleasure I get watching a clever game of chance unfold. Strategy, reputation, and appearances are key to seizing that unknown opportunity by accepting certain degrees of risk, based on reward and loss outcomes.
This process may have the appearance of a popularity contest and there are those who begin with great advantages. Wealth, power, and heritage give lean to the side that processes them from the start. Their hereditary qualities explain why they’ve become so fiercely coveted. Most of us have to rely on the alternative tactics to make our marks. We must endure the curse of the common man by always trying to find a way to be more.
The decisions that we make within those parameters, combined with luck, determine who we are to not just everyone else, but to ourselves. I enjoy watching people develop and use their intuition. Interesting word, intuition. No one can tell you what it is. One can define it from a dictionary, but each person contributes an independent recipe of factors in producing its eventual effect. The hair that splits fight or flight, good or evil, gain and loss.
