My father — a shrewd judge of character, even if he never quite understood my sexuality– used to say that you could judge people by how they treated children and animals. Or maybe that was Mark Twain. Not important.
I feel like our vote last night to fund a relatively expensive new Parks levy here feels like that. Like we’re taking care of the parts of us that don’t have a direct impact on our GDP.
Look, I can’t tell you that the discourse here is the political equivalent of a drum circle (But man, do we love our drum circles). There’s plenty of grousing about the death of Old Portland from the “Let’s go back to how it used to be” crowd. There always will be. The past is always viewed through the blurry lens of nostalgia.
Today, though? I’ve “only” lived here for 20 years. What gets into your Civic DNA, though, is that we listen to ourselves, not the helicopter gloom-and-doom articles from that New York newspaper. And yeah, occasionally we turn protest into cosplay. Or a dance party.
I remember a wise woman (my best teachers) in my past. She was part of a conversation about a family’s choice of where to live, and of course the inevitable question becomes “Is it a good place to raise children.” She answered that with a question of her own:
“Maybe. But is it a good place to raise adults?”
I think you know my answer.
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