Community - experiential, actual, existential
What has been your experience of community?
When your neighbor needs help, do you know.... or offer help?
If you need help, do your neighbors know so they can offer help, if they can?
Do you know your neighbors' names?
Address?
Phone number?
How else can we communicate?
This is not Family, this is all the others!
"Do I really care?"
Caring takes a lot of effort!
Please submit your memories: photos, writings, historical documents ... whatever you choose.
You must approve any necessary editing suggested, prior to publishing.
You shall be given credit for applicable submissions, publicly or privately, as you choose.
community@roybrittain.com
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This poem eloquently describes how life was when I was young.
CAROLINA MOUNTAIN
I remember when I was young.
We mountain folks had lots of fun.
We tilled the field and scrubbed the floor,
But had a path that led next door
To people who were friendly too.
In heavy work we joined hands.
Money was scarce.
Our love was great.
We even divided the food we ate.
We didn't live or talk or act
Like city folks, and that's a fact.
To some outlanders, we were a bunch of hicks
Who lived away back in the sticks
Who worked so hard, lived a life so bare,
To join us, they wouldn't dare.
Then pollution in the town
Began to get the runaround,
And people had to lock their doors,
Just couldn't trust no one no more.
Rising crime---robbing and killing
Began to get the top news billing.
Then our people, kith and kin,
They came just a-barging in
Looking for a little shack
Even if there's only a path out back.
Others, too, from far away,
Came and took a look,
Then came back to stay.
Now people around the world, it seems
Have found right here what made their dreams.
Woods, small farms, and clean, cold streams,
Elbow room with some to spare;
And, above all, people who care.
MYRTLE PRICE MASSEY MARSHALL
TABLE ROCK, NC - Where I spent most of my childhood photo by Kimberly Wright (edited)
