Editorial 1.10, October 199, by Deirdre Helfferich Neighborhoods—Do You Live In One? In all this recent fuss over wells, water rights, and the Yellow Eagle Mine, one thing strikes me about the way people are talking about the problem: they’re talking like neighbors. And that includes how the people whose wells have been affected are talking about Frank Saunders of Yellow Eagle: as though he and the mine were part of the neighborhood. The undercurrent of neighborliness is perhaps the one thing that can help resolve this situation in a way that is beneficial to all. Neighborliness is what creates a neighborhood, and a neighbor-hood is a marvelous thing: it provides a context within which a person lives, a microcosm of the larger world, a sheltering extension of the kith and kin. Its value lies to large measure in the fact that it isn’t family, and it isn’t your circle of friends. A lot of noise is made about family values and the vital role the nuclear family plays in society, but you don’t hear much about neighborliness. This is a pity, because it is the neighbors who help when the family gets overwhelmed. Friends have a harder time seeing what’s up when they live on the other side of town, and family is often across the country. It’s the neighbors who keep an eye on the place when you’re on vacation, and keep an eye on you when you’re getting out of line. Neighbors can be busybodies and they can be lifesavers; sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Neighbors are the guardians of a way of life. Being part of a neighborhood entails a responsibil-ity to it. It’s not just a place where a bunch of people live next to each other. It’s a place where people live and—most important—have a genuine human interest in each other. Whether in a city or a small town, neighbors can be neighborly or they can be strangers who don’t know and don’t care at all what you do. Just because someone rents the apartment next door doesn’t mean that they’re your neighbor. A neighbor is going to be concerned if you lose your job, or if your water goes bad. More than this, they’ll offer you a hand when you’re in trouble. (They may borrow your tools for a year, too, but eventually they’ll give them back.) An important component of a neighborhood (versus a commun-ity) is geographic proximity. Communities are defined not by who one lives next to, but by who one does things with, and the kind of people with whom one hangs out gets determined by the kinds of activities one enjoys, not by where they happen. This isn’t exactly a bad thing, but one side effect is that you can end up not knowing your neighbors and never seeing them. People can end up associa-ting only with a circle of like-minded folks, rather than having to develop relationships with, for example, the crackpot inventor next door. They may stop having to exercise tolerance, and by virtue of an absence of local awareness, cease to have an effect on the place in which they live and simply camp out there. Or, as is sometimes the case, they may plow on ahead with plans as though other people don’t live next door. Just because a bit of tension exists between neighbors (a not uncommon situation), that doesn’t mean that things can’t end well. A recent bit of public furor over the paving of the medians at the intersection of College Road and University Avenue provides a personal example. A friend of mine and my husband were two of the major protesters in a small demonstration. They stood out there all day long holding signs that said, "Flowers Yes, Asphalt No." An acquaintance from the Golden Eagle happened to be one of the paving crew, and when my husband and I stopped into the pub at the end of the day, this fellow saw us come in and, pointing at my spouse, exclaimed, to the laughter of our neighbors, "There he is! The Supernerd! That’s him!" Definitely a small world. So my husband’s involvement in this little demonstration got noticed. And it had consequences. So, too, the activity at the mine, the organization of the well owners, and the way everyone talks to each other. While the dropping water table is a more serious matter than flowers growing next to the road, the principle holds. These will have personal repercussions. That is the advantage and the drawback to knowing people who live and work near you: you’re going to run into them and you’re going to have to face the music. And the only way it can remain harmonious is if everybody cares, whether they agree with each other or think the other has pulled a Supernerd. | ||
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