Love don't hang out in a grand hotel Got no satin sheets, got no servant's bell Ain't in Bel Air on some big old yacht Ain't in a beach house on Monserrat
There's a house on the edge of town It's a little old, it's a little run down Full of laughter and tears and toys Crazy things only love enjoys
I know where love lives I know where love lives She's sitting on the back step in the evening air Sea green eyes and her chestnut hair
You keep your mansions of gold Buddy, I don't care 'Cause I know where love lives
-Hal Ketchum
I guess those would be cat toys. Issac and the Three Amigos have been out of the house for a long time.
Peg's sign arrived here yesterday--that's it out in the yard, down at the bottom of our steps. She bought a flag as well, one of those "Coexist" ecumenical banners. I reckon we'll hang it from the flagpole at Tara one day soon. We don't dare display it down at Wyldswood, where a couple of our neighbors proudly leave Trump 2020 flags flapping impotently in the breeze in front of their trailers, one flying treasonously above the American flag and emblazoned with the outline of an assault rifle. It's just nuts.
The ethos a community develops over generations affects everything from politics to an individual's health. My blood pressure has never been lower, and I get a little calmer every day in the midst of all these kind people in the blocks of leafy streets around me. There is the occasional Trump flag, but the vast majority of the signs and banners here celebrate love or pride month or simply kindness. It is infectious.
And not hypocritical, as near as I can tell. We've met so many nice folks in this neighborhood on our walks, striking up conversations as they enjoy the cool evening air on their shady front porches. Almost everyone has a generous front porch here, with a small front yard that allows interaction with evening walkers out on the sidewalks. There are lots of walkers here, puffing up and down Southside Hill. We are out there pretty much every night, covering a mile or so in a preprandial ritual we miss whenever we're away.
You lose this sense of community when there are no front porches, and no walkers. I guess in the South it's just too damn hot during the summers. This place certainly experiences the flip side of that--there's not much interface with the neighbors on an 18 degree January day. But the architecture and infrastructure of Southern communities is just different. Some places lack sidewalks altogether, and families are more apt to gather out back than on the tiny, nonfunctional front porches most tract homes include more for show than functionality. It's really hard even to find a tract home here.
We were talking on our walk last night about how very vulnerable this little bubble of kindness and civility has become in our modern era of capitalism-as-religion.
There is no getting around the fact that Corning is what it is in large measure because Corning, Inc. has remained doggedly loyal to its birthplace, keeping its corporate campus smack in the middle of town. Thousands of Corning employees populate these lovely neighborhoods. When natural disaster struck here, the company stepped up to pay for repairs. When the pandemic threatened to kill Market Street, its corporate neighbor helped keep it alive.
This swath of northern latitudes was once filled with towns like Corning, which were home to corporate headquarters nestled right next to their manufacturing facilities. So much of that is gone now, as companies were wooed south with the promise of low taxes, less safety and environmental oversight, and borderline slave labor. And a board of directors does, after all, have a fiduciary duty to its shareholders bordering on the absolute to maximize return on investment. But it has happened at the expense of an America that has lost most of its Cornings, and is now a miserable place to exist for many.
But for now, we'll let this place heal us, P and me, after a tumultuous and painful transition into this new life. I'll be a better lawyer back in Florida for it, because I won't walk around in a constant state of agitation at the ridiculousness that regularly affronts one back home. We'll just split time, and learn again to love the beaches and piney woods because we'll always have the refuge of our place here on the hill.
Time to get ready for a mediation, then a flight to Lawrence this afternoon with the beautiful Miss Peggy to see Issac and Olivia for the Father's Day weekend. It's all very good.
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