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Jon Kennedy's 'Postcards from
the Nanty Glo in My Mind'
Privacy and culture
Jonal entry 1104 | November 25 2009
One of the "thoughts for the day" by C.S. Lewis on one of my diary pages in October was "Have you ever noticed what a fine line, crossed in a split second, separates the smugness of privacy from the vacuity of loneliness?" A number of threads for a variety of Jonal entries have been enlightened by that incisive observation.
On my last visit last month to Willows, California, the small town my brother Bob lives in about 35 miles from Chico, the nearest "city" in that part of the state, I was again amazed at how much Willows has changed since 1972. Unlike Nanty Glo it seems to have retained most of its population. But even more than Nanty Glo Willows has lost its soul, if the soul of a town is a downtown business district where people see each other and pass the time of day on a first- and last-name basis on a daily basis. Knowing I've written about Willows as a metaphor for Nanty Glo in the past, I didn't really want to write about it again, but the thought nagged in the back of my mind: is this the real indicator of the fact that American "culture" has either died or has gone into a coma?
For I have a hunch that "culture" has more to do with George Bailey's running down the main street of Bedford Falls (in It's A Wonderful Life) yelling "I love you Bedford Falls" as he ecstatically runs through the softly falling snow after a lifetime of pining to be away from his little home town, than it has to do with whether towns have music halls, an opera, or symphony and art galleries. Culture is, after all, about humanity—the human community—and there is more humanity in George Bailey's realizing of his love for the people of his home town than there is in works or art, music, or literature. And the home town as a cultural ideal as epitomized in It's A Wonderful Life has been dying away.
On my first visits to Willows in 1972 it had a department store downtown that would put Shadden's and Levinson's and Edelstein's to shame (it would have been a closer approximation of the old Penn Traffic). There was a Safeway in the next block, and drugstores, jewelry stores, and boutiques galore. All gone. There is probably a pharmacy in town now, but it's not a "drug store" in the old sense, and though Safeway is gone, there are two food stores. Some blame can be put on Walmart, which came in some time after my early visits to Bob and his late wife Lois when they had a thriving business of their own in Willows.
Willows' Walmart is smaller than Ebensburg's; it has no grocery department, but it's the place to go for just about anything needed if you want to avoid a 70-mile round trip to Chico. But many people make that trip every day and it seems they would rather do that than spend a dollar more to buy the same "hardware" in Willows. Trying to figure out this phenomenon—why we have shot ourselves in the foot by killing off our own culture—my best guess is that it's related to our desire for what Lewis calls "the smugness of privacy." I must admit I value "my privacy," whatever that means (though relatively less than many; I have never taken my name out of the phone book, and I intentionally have my email address splashed all over the Home Page, and I hang a lot of my private stuff out here to air). But an advantage of being in an urban center is to be able to spend most of my time not meeting anyone I know on a first- and last-name basis. I see the people from church on Sunday, only, unless we set up a get-together, and I don't remember ever bumping into any of them in, for example, the Safeway.
I know probably a dozen of the young staff members at my local Starbucks by their first names and they all call me Jon, but despite the fact that I spend a couple of hours there every day, only a few know that I'm a writer working on books or anything about what kind of books. I know about the same number of men I see constantly at the club (the "gym") on a first-name basis, too. One of them insisted on driving me to the airport once when I was going on a trip and told him, when he asked, that I was unsure how I was going to get there. I have learned his last name. Two others have become first- and last-name acquaintances, one of them becoming the financial advisor who set up my retirement fund and the other a former co-worker at the same company I was working at before retiring.
But I think people prefer the first-name-only approach because they feel it preserves their privacy. I suspect that the very popularity of Starbucks as an alternative to the old bars and taverns is that we want to get to know people, but not to get to know too much about them. I think this approach is the reason people in Willows would rather drive to Chico than rub shoulders with acquaintances downtown, especially among the people under 40. I think it's why almost no one under 40 seems to "plug in" to the Home Page, the best place to get together with old acquaintances in the old home town. We like that "distance" but, as Lewis suggests, we all experience more loneliness than we need to.
What do you think? Email me to jrk@nantyglo.com or if you want to keep your privacy, use the form where you can write without disclosing your identity. (Here I'll share a "secret": the form says your email address is required but it has no way of knowing if you're using a phony one.)
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
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The shopkeeper was dismayed when a brand new business much like his own opened up next door and erected a huge sign which read BEST DEALS. He was horrified when another competitor opened up on his right, and announced its arrival with an even larger sign, reading LOWEST PRICES. The shopkeeper was panicked until he got an idea. He put the biggest sign of all over his own shop-it read... MAIN ENTRANCE.
Thought for today
The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.
— C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)
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Jon
Kennedy's latest book is The Everything Guide to
C.S. Lewis and Narnia, now in stores, from Adams Media, F&W Publications.
From May 9, 2007 through July 2, 2008 his blog entries or "Jonals" were
articles inspired by readings in Lewis's work that didn't fit into the book.
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