Last month, I initiated a call for ideas. What could make Concord cooler?
I received a variety of e-mails, earnest wishes for Concord, from its residents. The collected responses ranged from hilarious to sincere to REALLY?!-inducing. Here are some highlights:
How about a small business resource center? More downtown workforce housing? (Thanks, Maureen Downing). Eunice Vittum suggested an English tea room. Marcia Hewey wrote with a clever idea for a Halloween costume swap. I reads lots of demands for a music venue somewhere between the scale of the corner of a bar and the elegance of the Capitol Center for the Arts. There were several suggestions for a pool hall downtown. The range of ideas was broad and enthusiasm was high.
There was one humerous suggestion in particular (thank you, Matthew St. Onge), which stuck in my mind these last few weeks: Perhaps what Concord really needs, is a name change. “Con,” after all, is the prefix generally used to express working against something. St. Onge wrote that such a negative sounding name might be replaced with something more positive, like PRO-cord, in order to improve community morale.
Silly, yes, but without intending to, St. Onge hit upon one of the quirks of living in Concord that aggravates me the most – a persistent, verbalized, negative community image, that bears no relation to the city that Concord is.
Our sidewalks simply do not roll up at 5 p.m. It’s also not true that “you can’t do that in Concord.” “Nothing happens here” is further from the truth than Russia is from Sarah Palin’s window.
If you think these things are true, you need to leave your house more often. Concord is alive with events, activities, community initiatives, open studios and residents working to bring more of the same to fruition. I frequently find myself in the midst of a wee bit of torture trying to decide which events I can actually make it to. Is Concord all things to all people? Nope. Are there things that could use improvement? Heck yes. Are there omissions in our not-quite micro-urban landscape? Uh, yeah. But let’s not get off track. We can save that for another column on another day.
I don’t work for the city of Concord. I just live here. I take on the projects that I do because Concord is such a fertile ground for making things happen.
My standards are high. I was born in New Hampshire, but grew up in the Seattle area, a place ripe with the benefits of “the big city.” I spent several years living in Oakland, Calif., an area even more stocked with everything an adventurous person might seek in city living. I am not suggesting that Concord become Seattle or Oakland; I am simply clarifying that I come to this critique with a fairly broad experience of the world.
Quite frankly, I like it here, and I’m offended by the old, dead language of limitation.
There are things that long-time residents know about this city that I cannot claim to know yet. I’m still stocking my mental Rolodex with those nooks and crannies that every local knows by heart. I’ll dare to suggest, however, that I lack a certain baggage exemplified by those negative messages that people just repeat, over and over, as a reflex. When I look at this city, I see treasures and possibilities – treasures and possibilities that constantly have to fight against old thinking, to be seen and heard.
Concord is not the same city I moved to five years ago. The sidewalks do not roll up at 5 p.m. There are smart, resourceful people right here in your community doing interesting things, and looking to generate even more. Quit shooting them in the bum by dishing out old, stale rhetoric. St. Onge’s PR suggestion is ridiculous, but his sentiment is not.
Is there a plot to keep people from wanting to come here? Is it an ingrained inferiority complex? Is it just plain lazy? I have no idea, but I do know this: If you’re not interested enough in your community to learn about what’s going on, and you insist upon repeating the clichés of a decades-old reality that no longer exists, then perhaps you need to consider why you’re here in the first place.
Each of us has the power to shape perception of our community through language. How will you choose to use your power?
