ThingsPondered

I live in a strange place: Berks County in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Why strange?  Strange because it has changed so rapidly over the last 25 years.  When I first regularly spent time here starting in the 1970’s, it consisted of a city (county seat) at its center and then a few villages sprinkled throughout the rest of its diamond-shaped boundary ( yes – this is the county of John Updike’s Rabbit series.)  Everything else was farmland.  Active farmland.

This agrarian county was so peaceful and wholesome that it was pretty BORING to the high school youth, who frequently moved away the first chance they got.  But then they somehow wandered back to raise their families.  It was very common to drive past miles and miles of cornfields to get to anywhere.  But things started changing, slowly, and initially on a small scale.

Who should I blame, if blame there must be?  Commercial lenders?  Definitely yes.  Those &*^$% money-grubbers kept supporting new strip malls or shopping centers when good commercial properties stood vacant.  The Chamber of Commerce?  Probably.  I served on a committee in the Chamber and could see that its vision of “good” or “progress” was and is to transform Berks County into a clone of King of Prussia, an upscale expensive highway-riddled fast-paced, did I say expensive?, sophisticated area in suburban Philadelphia.  The Chamber could not see the goodness that Berks County had, and so committed itself to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  The then-and-future residents?  Yes.  They lusted after the lifestyle of the afore-mentioned Philadelphia suburbs.

Twenty-five years ago, one did not use the word “suburbs” for Berks County.  There was big-city Reading, and then there were Leesport and Kutztown and Mohnton and Shillington and Mt. Penn and Bernville and Birdsboro and Hamburg and Morgantown.  Each was separated from the other by fields and farms.  Manure was a springtime fragrance along our 2-lane roads.  However since that time, real estate developers (I forgot to also apportion blame to them) have persuaded families to transform their farms into housing tracts.  We now have the vinyl siding suburban houses and the *%^#^& townhouse/condo horror zones.  We now use the word “suburbs.”

We now have barely any farmland.  Instead, there are more malls, and parking lots.  There are national chain stores instead of the independent locally-owned bookstore, hardware store and fabric shops.  There are franchises of every fast- and medium-fast food chains.  And the highways – bleccch!  Lots of macadam covers former vegetation.  Fields and woods are becoming scarce.

Curiously, there is a new trendy activity that Berks County communities are racing to create.  Guess what?  They want Famers’ Markets!  We have always had a few small indoor halls which open one to three days per week for farmers and vendors to sell.  But to be truly au courant, a community must have an open air market with local, and even organic, produce.  Sort of like the roadside stands we used to have?  Strange, this Berks County.

After Barack Obama was elected in early November, I decided to learn more about him.  Since he is a prolific writer, what better way than to read one of his books?  The one fate led me to is The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream  (2006).  I was impressed by both his comfortable writing style and his sensible philosophy.

You must understand that I am so completely disinterested in politics that I would probably choose enduring a root canal over watching a show such as “Meet the Press.”  I am just not wired to examine politics and politicians.  So, I am relieved that the book was somewhat readable.  It is a breath of fresh air to realize Obama is self-deprecating and can laugh at himself.

Over and over he showed an understanding and sensitivity to seeing all the sides of an issue.  This totally supports his assertion that “we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart (p.2).”  I feel that we are a lucky nation to welcome such a man to the Presidency.

At A Crossroads: Between a Rock and My Parents’ Place by Kate T. Williamson. 

This is a humorous diary in comic book form about the frustrations of a college grad who ends up living at home while writing a book and waiting for the next job, or next step, or next living space.  Although arranged as an interim stay, the residency stretches a tad longer than planned, therefore creating the need to make some adjustments and endure some oddball embarrassments and vexations.

Kate Williamson is one bright cookie who has been an artist for most of her life.  She is as intellectually scrupulous as she is honest and humble, self-deprecating in a bitter-sweetly funny way, and a natural to produce this graphic novel about the journey of returning home.  Just as Lauren Bacall was meant to be found by Hollywood, Kate Williamson was meant to combine her oriental artistic sensibilities in watercoloring and cartooning, her pithy humor, mots justes, and frank brevity,  to create this gem of a storybook.

Immediately, the cover art gives one a good feel for the yarn.  Kate has drawn herself despondently prostrate on the very pink carpet of her very pink childhood bedroom.  It’s not a fate she pictured as she matriculated to Harvard University.  Her particular adventure is flavored by the character of her childhood hometown – a nice enough place for growing up, but not a happening locale for a single.  She copes in her connections for social contact: reverting to play with little kids in the neighborhood, hanging with much older generational friends (also revealing a truly nice mutual regard and enjoyment of her parents), and some of that boredom-numbing filling of time with videos.  Many of us have been there, done that.  However, not as many of us have been able to catalogue our own adventure as it unfolded and recognize our pathos as gentle, ephemeral comedy.   

She gives hope to any of us who have faced a turn in the road, an unexpected intermission in the symphony of life, and the occasional accompanying feelings of isolation or defensiveness as we try to work past those speed bumps.  Kate’s ability to examine herself and laugh, all the while retaining confidence that this is a temporary, yet necessary stage, is enviable and inspiring.  She is a chrysalis who knows that butterflydom rests at the end of her road.   

Watercolor illustrations, great in their own right, fill this book.  Some of the best are seasonal nature scenes interspersed between the story pages, displaying the influence of Kate’s studies in Japanese art.  The detail of woodgrains in hardwood, variably fading wallpaper patterns ,  autumn leaves and tender spring buds are sublimely captured.

I have high recommendations for At A Crossroads: Between a Rock and My Parents’ Place.  Buy it as the perfect gift, but allow yourself enough time to read it first (and then maybe buy another copy for your permanent collection.)