Editorial: Making Friends

1734

When the first settlers arrived, they found a wild country. There were root and rock outcroppings interspersed with copious wetlands. There were no easy paths, no throughways. They had to walk and hack, avoid stumbling, blaze trails, and find fording places.

A mist rose off the water forming shapes that frightened. The newcomers thought the mist was the shroud for ghost or ghoul. They feared and avoided those areas.

There were real dangers: wolves and want. It was the want that came from nothingness — no roads, no manufactured products, no prepared foods, nothing at all except what they could forage or make with their own hands from the raw materials available.

It was tough, determined people who carved out small, isolated enclaves separated from the next settlement by dark, dense woods.

290 years later...

2024

Travelling from town to town in the last six months, it became clear that all eighteen towns in South Berkshire have similar problems and feel distinctly different. We share the same soil, the same river, and the same self-determination. Surviving the same arch of history left us with similar needs and inadequate resources to meet them all.

At the same time, each of the eighteen communities has a unique personality born out of a known and treasured history that resulted in pride of place, and a desire to hold onto its own ways. Sharing may solve some problems, but we are suspicious of joint solutions.

When a member of one community answered a call for help from members of another community, I listened as he was unceremoniously dressed down. How dare he intrude?

I watched as towns turned their backs on the need of the village down the road and sighed with relief that it was not happening to them.

I watched as one town spent time and money to outfox its neighboring towns so the inevitable consequence would fall elsewhere and not on them. And yet...we may have arrived at a fork in the road — a place where we need each other.

So, let's talk — just talk — over-the-back-fence style. Get to know what we each need and what we will not relinquish. Then — if we see them wrestling with a problem and they don't ask us for help — we could reach out and offer.

Carole Owens
Executive Editor

Photo: Jay Rhind