Old Mrs. Worthington in the red brick house

I see lists on posters and bookmarks in the houses of some of my more sweet, granola friends up here in Toronto: How to Create Community. The lists are long and full of good things-

Turn off the T.V.
Go outside
Volunteer at the local library
Throw a block party
Vote
Listen to your elders
Ride your bike
Take back the night
Barter for your food
Start a compost pile

I like all these things and many more. What are we trying to get at? There are so many things that seem to go hand-in-hand with a vibrant, local community. Small stores run by people we know, access to local foods, bakeries that we like to sit in while sharing coffee with friends, bike paths that get us all around town, not needing to lock our doors at night, spending less money to meet our needs...

What do we feel less good about? What is slowly or quickly moving across America and the world and replacing these things? Divided highways that our children can't cross safely, Wal-mart, homogenized big-box stores, fast food from far away places, drug addiction on the streets and in our homes, car-dependent lifestyles, more noise and fewer quiet nights with crickets, subdivisions without sidewalks...

I'm sitting in a small-town library, full of books and wam indirect lighting. There is a bank of computers with high-speed internet access, but there is a pleasant librarian who seems to know many of the patrons by name. There is a wooden floor that creaks a bit. There is a quilt on the wall made locally. There are flyers for the big Ontario fiddling festival in town next weekend. There are plaques that give credit to Shelburne Rotary Club or the Royal Canadian Legion for their sponsorship of renovations. There is a feeling of integration.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I like these feelings of local communities. I want to create them in my own life and share them with everyone else. I want to sit on the porch when I'm 87, sipping lemonade and smiling at the families headed down to the park. I want to take care of others and be taken of, too. I want to fish in the creek and maybe even drink the water. I want to be able to compare this year's string bean crop with last year's, and the year before that, and the year before that, and...

Somedays I'm just dreaming, not knowing where I'm going but glad for the hundreds of hands and hearts of my friends who keep me from going too far astray. I carry a collection of pictures in mind of the place I'm headed, even though I've never been there before. They vanish as I approach, too, but I can grind up the clay and make new pots, or sew new clothes from the remnants of old cloth. It's enough to keep me going. Where is your future headed? Your life is a beautiful painting (mine happens to be an impressionist, pointalist view of the river like a 19th century French countryside). What will you paint next?