Communities need focal points to survive and to grow: locally run and owned businesses that are unique to the community and that provide an individual flavor and feel to a city. These local points are necessary for the community to continue to provide the multitude of functions that we expect from them and need from them to feel connected and to live full and healthy lives inside that community.
Read MoreThe summer before my junior year of high school I had the amazing opportunity to travel to the island of Antigua on a mission trip. The majority of our trip was spent inland where we were able to see the heart, soul, and reality of this beautiful paradise. Tourism drove the economy of this small island, but the people drove the tourism. I witnessed a unity within the individuals of this community that far surpassed anything I had experienced in my young life.
Read MoreMemorial Day is more than an extra day off of work, a long weekend at the river, flags in a lawn, or parades. It is not designed as a day to honor those that are serving but a day designed to remember those that have died while serving this country and protecting the freedom of its citizens. For this reason, it is a bittersweet holiday. It is bitter in the sense that those we love are no longer with us; it is sweet because we get to remember them. We get to smile and feel their presence.
Read MoreThere’s a quote about nostalgia from one of my favorite television shows, Mad Men. In the scene, Don Draper, the creative director at a Manhattan advertising firm, is trying to sell his pitch to Kodak. He invokes the word nostalgia and explains it like this: “Nostalgia—it’s delicate, but potent. In Greek, ‘nostalgia’ literally means ‘the pain from an old wound’. It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.” We all have memories from our childhood.
Read MoreAt some point over the last thirty years, our society became afraid. I’m not sure exactly when it was or what it is we have grown to fear. Is it the unknown? Is it our cultural differences? Something has made us collectively afraid. We left neighborhoods and cities for gated subdivisions and homogenous housing. Our front porches vanished and were replaced with garages, insulated from the world.
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