 It's a joy for me to be here and I think my dad is especially happy that I'm here. He is the historian for the town of Newcastle in New York and my mom also, they work side by side at the Chapa Qua Historical Society so I am a product of that household and we got a lot of history woven into our upbringing. But I will admit to you and to my dad that I am especially interested in how history and how we present and delve into history can be used as a tool for creating resilient, unique and thriving cities and towns. And so I call, there's this thing that I have identified as the secret for, everybody wants to know what creates a resilient, thriving, unique town or city. To me the secret is something that I call positive proximity and that's just come from touring for a long, long time in a lot of places, not in big arenas but really right out of the little cafes and church basements where I started playing. Positive proximity is the secret that I define as the experience that the state of being where living side by side with other people is experienced as a good thing, as a beneficial thing. So some sociologists will call that high bridging social capital, some call it high social trust. I call it positive proximity and what it isn't to me is some of these sort of magic bullets things that people say like, we have strong towns when we have strong leadership. We have strong towns when we have a business that comes in and gives us a bunch of jobs. We have strong towns when we just put aside our differences and just get along. Strong leadership isn't going to come to a place that doesn't have civic self-esteem to begin with. It will be much more difficult for strong leadership to come in to those places. A business can ask you to just lie down and give things up for them. So that's not necessarily a solution. And this thing about just getting along with each other, so we expect of one another that we're going to say, wow, I find your political views to be offensive and immoral but I'm going to hug you and we're going to spend the four free hours that we have during the week sitting side by side and talking about our roading sidewalks because that's our inclination. That's not going to happen. We need building blocks to help us find our way into the collective experience, even find our way into leadership because a lot of people back into leadership roles that they never thought that they would take but they just love their community so much that they step up. So when I was researching all this, I was like, okay, we need spaces, friendly cafes, certain kind of very people-friendly parks, dog parks, places where networks of acquaintances ships, what's called the strength of weak ties can be sewn together. We can find those common interests and have those conversations. Another thing is translation, what I call translation, which is good signs. A lot of people out here I think are part of creating good signs. I thank you. And also, you know those newspapers that are kind of warm and fuzzy and a little syrupy and they say really nice things about somewhat mediocre local theater? I'm in. Celebrating somebody who found a lost dog, I'm in. So that's translation. But the place where I found the most interesting, funny, cool world of possibility and outcomes was in what I call identity-building projects and so that's where you find yourself interested in something and out of your own self-interest or sense of what's important, you enter into the common space and you say, I want to build, you know, I want to create a trail to that waterfall, I want to save this library, this is my thing. And then you find people and you find things that I call more proximal than partisan. And then you build up, you weave together and build up things from there. So to me positive proximity is the secret sauce of how towns went from tumbleweed, I mean really kind of not having it together to where they are now. Winston Salem, North Carolina right after RJ Reynolds left. Not fun. And they said well we're going to bring it back, we're going to bring it back through culture. I was like, you won't, you won't. They did, they totally did. A lot of different things that they did culturally that made it a very rich feeling connected community now as far as I've seen when I've gone back. So I'm going to sing a verse of a song that explains why finding positive proximity is so important to me and so miraculous to me is Charlie. Charlie, my ex-boyfriend, loves those beautiful histories of tightly woven communities as expressed through stone walls and bridges and trains and barns and all of the festivals and dancing and music that comes out of them and rivers and things like that. So Charlie and I, that Charlie and I were in the middle of Ohio in the mid-90s when the big boxes had come along and sort of taken these faltering towns by storm and really sucked a lot of life out of the main streets. So this is a song I wrote to let Charlie know that I I saw him in his despair and then I, you know, of course, experienced that despair by proxy. So this is from a song called Bought and Sold. Well we're heading for a pass that you can leave and not defend where the downtowns hold the sadness of you can't go back again cause there you'll find the rust and dutters motel signs with missing letters cause there's a monster on the outskirt says it knows what your town needs then it eats it up like nothing and it won't spit out the seeds we can be the super shoppers we can say we're really smart we can say our town is doing fine without a beating heart we can even say the money saved is all our own it's bought and sold, it's bought and sold Okay then we go on to the military industrial complex, I mean it just gets worse and worse So I saw towns and cities come back and come back to something that I don't remember seeing before that downturn in the mid 90s maybe I just wasn't noticing but I just I I saw towns like I first saw it I remember in Keen, New Hampshire when they were trying to renovate an old theater and everybody was talking about how excited they were to bring life into this old theater but they were also talking about local landscaping projects and new businesses and ideas and looking at who who's really good at making a poster but too antisocial to really talk to otherwise that's okay you know and who's really good at being the front person who's the idea maker and who's the carpenter I I saw that happen and I started to think wow it's a there's some that these mechanisms these building blocks that are helping these people get to the next step and the next step so usually when I've spoken to groups I talk about these mechanisms of these building blocks this is also you know the mechanisms of building here I really want to look at that one category of identity building projects and and really emphasize that when you take the the projects that I isolated one is food you know your local food the identity through food culture history as its own category nature and waterfronts I just did as a as a pullout category when you infuse any of these things with history you're really okay I don't value adding that's that's a funny word that but you know you're really adding value you're creating a valuable experience with these identities that you're reinforcing in your community so if it's food you know when we when I lived in in Northampton Massachusetts we always heard about the prehistoric lake that created the silver corn that was our heritage and there were sit down maple sugaring pancake breakfasts in March it's how we were able to mark the time it was how we were able to identify ourselves in a lot of ways through that sense of history where I live now we have what's called black dirt country and we hear about how black dirt country created these fabulous onions or they're these small you know apples and they're very weird looking and misshapen but they're so sweet that you could practically use it as currency to trade with in the past that's a really wonderful way to add even more to that sense of abundance and identity that comes from our food culture the best example I have is is that Nashville where they were going to tear down what we call music row and I don't know if any of you have been to music row it's not glamorous but things went down there and people sought to save music row and when I've stayed in hotels overlooking these squat buildings I see lines every day so that people can look at these guitars and these old sound systems Nashville is a music town it's a music industry town but the love when I've been there and I can I can usually tell but the love of making music and writing songs together and digging in to what music is and what's so important about it is so alive that it's it races ahead of the industry part of the music and saving music row and keeping it there right next to the present writing rooms that people write in you know trying to write their hit songs I believe is one of the reasons that they're able to hold on to the rich cultural heritage of this music industry town in terms of nature you know I live in a beautiful tourist town called Cold Spring or a beautiful town that people like to visit I should say and I feel like we're missing an opportunity when you hike halfway up Tourist Mountain why can't somebody put in a sign that says the reason we have this really cool spooky quarry that looks like something out of picnic at Hanging Rock is because this is where they quarried the stone for the New York Public Library wouldn't that make your experience of nature all the more interesting and layered so bringing history into these identity building projects I think is really valuable and I think it's something I've really benefited from as a citizen and a traveler so I'll just say quickly you know this in your hearts but there are a few reasons that bringing history into our downtowns helps to build positive proximity and one of them is I would say spiritual which is that it creates a poetic way of being in our communities you know we love our functionality I love nothing more than remembering to get the peanut butter before 6 a.m. when I'm making the peanut butter sandwich the next day you know I just I love getting all my groceries however what I really love is walking back from the grocery store at a certain time in the evening when a freight train is coming down on one side of the Hudson River above the train station above the train is Target Hill which is where they practice exploding things from West Point next door and in the distance I can see Storm King Mountain which is seen as the historic beginning of the environmental movement in Hudson Valley and also something that was painted by the Hudson River School there's a moment of timelessness and connection that I have to my life and where I live that is so important to me and when historians step forward and help to preserve buildings create historic building codes that we all have to follow create signs that we can follow and create certain kinds of events that help us in our schools or in our towns that draw attention to historical things that we're proud of that's what creates a sense of poetry in my life and I believe also helps people to collectively say can you believe we live here we say that all the time everybody takes the same picture morning noon and night of Storm King from the front of the you know from the side you know from this one place where we all hang out and they say can you believe we live here look at this it's always the same picture but it's different lighting every time so I'm going to I would like to sing a song called Storm King to underpin this crossroads of culture, my life, my poetry and also the people who the historic people who made my region feel so special in this case Pete Seeger who lived across from Storm King Mountain so in my mind I imagined the two you know legendary dudes Storm King and Pete talking about us going like are they going to make it yeah I think they're going to make it I always have a stronger sense of responsibility to my region when I pass Pete's old mailbox and then I look up at Storm King Mountain over the Hudson the clouds will form a crown circling the rocky mountain top telling us the rain is coming soon as we sail the river up and down the Storm King has borne the seasons all worn them up on his brow he guides the watchful boats below I am the Storm King now he's bemused sometimes delighted he sees the trains the hikers on the hill in our progress and our industry may we grow better still the Storm King has seen us from above high up upon the starboard bow he knows the turning of the years I am the Storm King now the Storm King has borne the seasons all worn them up on his brow he knows the turning of the years I am the Storm King now the Storm King now so aside from that big valuable job of creating poetic resonance within our communities that draws us in and helps make our lives meaningful something that we feel grateful for another thing is that there's a certain way that people sort of gnash their teeth when their towns start to improve and suddenly, you know, things look better and more cheerful on Main Street they get very upset because suddenly people are selling $40 beeswax candles and things like that and things that they can't afford I've actually sort of stepped in and said well you're not going to buy aspirin there that's not the downtown's fault that's because you can buy this much aspirin for $3 at a big box store and this much aspirin for $5 that will probably expire before they sell it in the downtown so you're going to have a bit of fancy pants going on but when you have historic codes that people pay attention to in their downtown's and when you have a sense of the history and the historical context and loop your town's life through that historic awareness there's something that has happened to me, I will say, as a traveler I come in and there's some places that kind of put themselves out there as tourist places and I go, I do something that's not quite in the downtown as a tourist I pay my money, I do my thing or I walk around or I get my work done or I come to a place like Montgomery, Alabama where I walk around and I see a sign, you know, they have these beautiful sponsored signs that you read and you do really read them, the sign is sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha which is a historic Black women's sorority in this country and you read the sign and you read that this is the bus stop that Rosa Parks went to and you feel that, when you see that happening and then you see the way people are connecting their restaurants to the Mississippi River they're connecting their sculptures and their civic monuments to something that's living in the air as a traveler suddenly you become a visitor, not just a tourist but a visitor who's curious and who wants to support that proud place you feel it in the air with the citizens who live there so that's another wonderful way that history can help calm the rushing sense of commerce and things perhaps slipping away from us where we live we still have, it can be very emblematic, we can still just have these beautiful federal style buildings with the iron stars that we were trying to figure out the name the tie rods with the beautiful iron stars that are possibly just called something stars so you probably know what they're called but just seeing those gives me that beauty, that aesthetic, that thematic unity of how you represent yourself historically, your history just invests me as a traveler and the third thing that is I think really valuable and something that I know we're all wrestling with and I say thank you for wrestling but thank you also for the ways you haven't wrestled is that historians are really valuable resources for finding out which stories we want to tell we have everything from what we call prehistory to pre-colonial, to colonial, post-colonial to mid-century modern history to choose from and we can choose the stories that we want to tell about ourselves Nashville can talk about Music Row and all of the gritty stuff that went down there so that we remember our cultural roots and in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, which we're going to talk about more there's a mural that has a beautiful montage of history one of the central characters on the mural was a person who was a real mover shaker in the early 70s who came and she was just tenacious and very involved with drawing together all the history and she's an African-American woman and they made sure that she was represented on the mural because the history of Phoenixville was of being a very equal opportunity employer at their steel mill they also paid people very badly and probably created housing so that people would have a sense of indentured servitude towards the thing they don't have that up on the mural, they have that in the historical society because they don't want to forget that history they just want to represent what their modern values are now right now we're wrestling with how to have things that we have now in that the majority of us consider to be immoral, unethical by modern standards so the question is do we keep it in the public and have an interface with that in terms of a counter representation or do we take it down and put it in our historical society and put something else in its place it's a valuable way to wrestle and to have informed people who understand what these things symbolize historically and what they symbolize now is a very important thing in our communities because when we do have things that we're proud of that show us that going way back in Hartford we had Mark Twain who spoke up against slavery, enslavement and we had Harriet Beecher Stowe and you have these symbols that show that there's a through line of equality and American democratic values it too creates a certain kind of resonance and reminder of how we go forward I'm going to do one more piece of a song fittingly this is the ending of one of my songs this is the end of a song called New York is a Harbor and it's my love song to New York City this is the bridge going into the final verse we cheer for the heart of Joe on payday the dancing girl when she gets to Broadway the workers' lunch on a crossbeam in the sky so don't you let yourself forget the spirit lives on the island she's floating past the Roeblings Bridge and in the dark, their homesteads park to harlem's gate her souls were born on golden hordes she can hear them still and some last call she's been at Stonewall Inn to beat the morning's chill and New York is a harbor it was so then and evermore it holds the dream, tells the story a distant boat, a golden door it's New York, it's New York so I will finish also by saying that when we have positive proximity when we have life in our downtowns that has that foundation of understanding our history and seeing how it lives as a fourth dimension in our experience another really valuable thing happens you know I say resilient, unique and thriving communities I don't say the word prosperous even though prosperous can have a lot of meanings but there's no kind of and it's also good for your bottom line it's also good for your bottom line but very often people will come in from the outside because they know they will smell the rain coming off of the slate roofs they will smell the specially you know specifically sourced tongue oil that you've used on your wood they will smell the catnip that is in the historic reproduced kitchen garden of Betsy Ross they love that smell because with that smell will come in my experience the sidewalks that we work side by side to maintain the better schools that we've built through our citizenry over time they will smell the safe streets and the good self high civic self esteem and they will come in and divide and conquer if they can if the fabric has a place where it can be rent and they will come in with as wide a bulldozer as they can find to capitalize on what's going on where you are and make it inaccessible to some people and a big bag of money for them that will happen and I've seen that happen but what I've also seen happen is when towns have that fabric of high positive proximity they know they know each other and so they know how to communicate with each other and to fend off some of that more sort of marauding energy coming into their town and they will also really share and endeavor to protect the things the common space where they experience a wealth, a prosperity that is emotional, social, intellectual and poetic and they will experience what I call faith in the democratic process and I think faith in the democratic process is best stoked when we experience the democratic process as something we can participate in and that too helps us to lead to a more sustainable, proud and egalitarian future Thank you very much Thank you Dar, that was absolutely beautiful and it is so much fun to have you on stage here at Pass Forward You can really feel the depth of connection to place in both your words and your music and so I hope you know you're among kindred spirits Well, thank you for that So we actually have a little something in common which both you and I because by virtue of our jobs have a chance to travel around the country and see small towns and experience just maybe snapshots of life in small towns and now granted you have a lot more experience with a thousand communities plus to your credit, I can't quite claim that but what I really enjoyed in reading your book was a refreshingly positive look at the good things that are happening in rural communities because I think most of what we hear is overwhelmingly negative so I thought it was energizing to see a much more positive take and I'm curious at what point you felt the move to write a book to really capture these ideas I was like, somebody should write a book about this thing that I'm seeing where we're able to where we think of ourselves as feuding with our neighbors and feuding and escaping into our Balkanized Internet communities but actually that's true enough but actually there are hundreds of examples of places where people have kind of figured out how to skirt that they found positive proximity so they found their way and once they find their way into the center of town there's maybe two examples one in Minnesota one in Texas that I found where it went backwards and that cool little foothold of a neighborhood thing disappeared usually the wheel keeps on going forward the next thing happens and the next thing happens and so I thought there are mechanisms there are things that people do to make that wheel go forward and I called my friend Hal who went to Harvard and I said, you talked to me about how proximity is a real determining factor of relationships more than hobbies or values what is this thing that I'm finding, oh it's called social capital and you've got to read Robert Putnam's books and you have to read Richard Florida so I got in there and sure enough this thing that I would call social capital influenced urban planning is really what became my I'm going to write that book that's great and it's always I think interesting when you see the academic literature it says one thing and then you go out there and you experience it and it becomes very real one of the chapters I actually read it twice I really enjoyed it on Phoenixville, Pennsylvania which is an old steel mill town that sounds like the mill exited in the 80s and a lot of downtowns, a lot of communities pretty much left for dead and this I thought was a particularly inspiring story especially for this audience about how that community took their history and really used it in a way that helped to transform not just the quality of life in that place but also the economy of that place absolutely and I was so interested in these sort of mechanisms in a free-floating way of how people create this fabric this positive proximity sense of engagement that I just was like in Florida they do this and in Maine they do this and my editor went like I feel seasick you have to root each of these concepts in one place and I was like okay I'm an artist I don't know if I can do that I was like oh no I can totally do that and the first place I realized I could do it was with Phoenixville because there's an almost exclusive way in which going into their history was the foothold of how they came into the prosperity that everybody really envies right now so the first thing they did was to there's this woman named Barbara Cohen and she's shorter than I am and I'm petite and she's a force she was the wife of a doctor and they would go to medical convention she'd take pictures of all of the bridges made from Phoenixville iron in Iowa and you know she was already kind of bringing that energy and certainly when they had the downtown the downturn PEDCO the pencil okay somebody here must know what PEDCO is but it's five letters and they created this sort of discussion group and then they secured the historic district status from which they started to really go after saving buildings and renovating buildings through the historic identified historic codes so that was really the first thing that's very technical so that's not really as like person to person they were the neighbor but from there people started to put all these cool stories into the buildings that had historic residents specifically Blobfest which celebrates the fact that the Blob was filmed there and it's such a success and they bring in all these sci-fi people now and they talk, I was there during Godzilla week you know they have different themes and everybody gets in on the restaurants and the stores and everything and the mid-century modern furniture store brings its furniture into the lobby and everybody finds a little piece of the Blob to celebrate including the pride that they all have and the fact that the phoenix, the colonial theater in the middle of town was where one of the famous scenes was shot so Steve McQueen comes in and he's like guys you really gotta get out of here there's things coming it's like a blob and I'm like quiet man we want to watch the film like really bad acting and then the Blob starts to come through and they're like ah and they go screaming out on Friday night at 9.30 everybody at 9.00 everybody goes running out of the colonial theater they have this variety show and they're like okay now everybody gets up and screams and leaves the theater on mass that sense of fun and everything is and they also burn this giant phoenix at the end of the year which I think emotionally, socially certainly financially kind of renews the whole thing it's a financial very prosperous night but also yes it's a very cleansing beginning and they're like well of course we have a new beginning every year of course we come up from the ashes we're phoenix-filled and everybody wants to live in phoenix-filled now and it really was this one guy's like this is that's where I got my drugs okay let's just move on so it's a thing well I for one would love to go to Blob Fest so I'm gonna try and do my best to make it there on a more serious note one of the reasons that I was really drawn to this chapter was you take on two issues very directly that are very challenging and the first is that just about every place I can think of has a challenging history whether it's related to race, gender exclusion or discrimination or mistreatment of people who have seniors people with mental illnesses and actually all of that has played out in Phoenixville over the years plus in Phoenixville there are spatial patterns of segregation that really reinforce reinforce some of the divisions that have been present over time and it seemed to me while not being Pollyanna-ish about this that everything is all hunky-dory and perfect that that town was doing some pretty inspiring things in terms of leaning into okay we do have a difficult history and we're gonna choose the way that we tell that but then also making some inroads in terms of downtown changing some of those patterns of spatial segregation yeah actually I think you can be a little Pollyanna-ish about Phoenixville because it does show sort of how they use their assets their historic assets in the best way so they put the picture of I'm forgetting her name on the mural and right across from this depiction of all these people with African-American early 70s activists pretty central to it right across the street from her is a guy who started a traditional barbershop and he's an African-American guy and he's like I'm a single dad we have other single dads we sort of model our kids played around our angles while we cut hair and you think is it because they're doing things to show the egalitarian history no it's because his mom actually grew up there and had a good experience because there was something in the value system and they played it up you know and they play that up and also something that I really love there's this thing that I call the cannon thing and there's this one town that seems to have so much history the bones are there but I just don't see the town playing up and it does have sort of automatically a cannon a cannon in the middle of the thing and it's partially obscured by a tree there's weeds on it you can't read the plaque the cannon like is that the only history you want to tell so they know better than just to have the you know the military wear or the military statue they have a beautiful set of columns a phoenix fill a phoenix iron columns in front of this big meeting space that was one of the foundry headquarter buildings that represents the workers and they have bricks that you could buy commemorative bricks but also they have bricks that name the workers so they emphasize the worker history the history of diversity civic virtues yes the fact that it was the workers were kind of owned by the company store is a history that they tell it's not something that they emphasize and they're not trying to hide it but they're just trying to say phoenix fill is this to an equal future equal voices and so the other thing is that because there is such a a sense of participation it takes three weeks to build that phoenix out of wood pallets and there's this postcard that says it's that time again so everybody from all these different backgrounds come three weeks to build the thing many weeks to plan blob fest activities going on at the colonial theater a lot of public input to what goes on at that theater a lot of listening to the community to figure out what programming to have because they have so much stuff that people can get involved with there is a lot of conversations that then lead to an enhanced free the parks where you can go boating or hanging out that the river front is more open to all the school system is open to all and interestingly where you will have one side of the tracks the other side of the tracks because there is sort of that high civic self-esteem the other side of the tracks is not dangerous so I met the people who live on the other side of the tracks black and white and which can be a polarizing where there's a economic separation then it can lead to more self-segregation racially and all of the historical tragedy of that because the other side of the tracks is just affordable but also neighborly with lots of neighborhood potlucks and stuff there isn't that sense of to have a lower income means that you have to have more danger in your lives means that you have to have certain things that will add to sort of systemic trauma in your life as a citizen and so that creates a more equal experience for people as well so I am a little Pollyanna-ish about Phoenixville however I also consider that to be a gold standard to which I see other towns really aspiring well it's so interesting because it sounds like part of what you're saying is the fact that they've decided to represent everyone's history downtown makes it more compelling for the people who live there to engage, to participate to buy in and it also makes it more compelling for visitors yes yes and when you go to Phoenixville they have a lot of potters they have a lot of ceramicists there and so you go in and so they put that in one of their central cafes they have this exhibit of pottery so you're automatically even when you buy something you want to support this thing you sense that they are I mean to be honest I feel like I'm probably more respectful towards, hopefully I'm respectful towards every place but I'm more respectful towards places that show that self-respect and I want to be in the context and be a good you know Parker sometimes I get a parking ticket sometimes and I'm like well so I'm helping them out that's like me every time I go to Seattle I write them a check for $35 when I enter the city limits but you know it's going to go to the Puget Sound Cleanup Fund exactly that's right I should feel better about that investment in the city of Seattle okay so picking up on this theme of tourism there's a positive and a negative associated with the tourism and obviously brings dollars and investment which can be very badly needed at the same time in the sense of you know creating things that aren't necessarily for the community and the community having challenges with traffic and all that sort of thing so I'm curious in your travels how you've seen some towns address those tensions preserve their soul while still you know welcoming the towns that I think do the best are the ones who basically say welcome to our town we're awesome we totally can't blame you to come here and spend time here like that right off the bat that sense I think was a gardener some town in Maine that was like welcome to gardener the best town in the world like the best town in Maine and so you know putting that out there right off the bat actually does something I think but again what I have found myself saying is well there's a magic point and I would say this to people who are involved with you know their towns as historians and as Main Street people who are here there's this point where the town gets really cool but you're still in that fight mode and you're like we're not cool yet we're not cool yet you're cool you're cool enough for the developers to come in and know that you're cool and so if you can kind of capture that moment you can say okay how do we keep it cool and so you know how do we come how do we come this so that we can keep it so we you know you can talk about how the taxes will come back to the community you know those kind of conversations there are certain kinds of signage that you can put out I truly believe that when you say you're in a historic place it has this historic tradition that people come and go into a different frame of mind that now that's but I do see towns that present themselves like welcome you're really lucky to be here and this is why and we know why it engages travelers differently and really what I find in my community is I want to say I love you I don't love your cars and your cars create you know even when people slip down a crevasse and we have to go save them with our fire department we spend the money for that I'm like well I'm sorry that you wore the wrong shoes but actually now we have a group of people who tell you what shoes to wear like if you really want to keep people away just put in a little sign that says we don't have a lot of rattlesnakes just a few just a few in upstate New York downstate so I'm like just tell people that and then we'll go from 100,000 to 10,000 if you really don't want them here but you know do you really not like your tourists or do you just you know your visitors you just not know what to do with their cars you know that's okay they wear a lot of black but so do I so I feel proud of my town when I see visitors coming through I'm like yeah I don't have a problem parking well I think you raised a really interesting point though which is that people I think you can sense whether there's a sense of pride an energy a sense of momentum that you know things may not look perfect but this place is on a track to come back yeah exactly and you know there's literally like this one cafe in Pennsylvania said like come in we're awesome and you know other places you'll see like no bathrooms you know and so you know that sense of welcome I think paradoxically can actually affect how people because are going to come into your community now here's something and this is also just to sort of take to put the edge back on when a friend of mine in Phoenixville my friends said to this guy who's a great urban planner she said there was 15,000 jobs here in Phoenixville when the steel mill was open and now there's 300 3,800 local jobs 3,800 local jobs is a beautiful thing she's like but what happened to the other people he didn't have an answer and she circled back you know this is a documentary maker she's circling back what happened to the other people he didn't have an answer so it's not it's not a magic bullet to create local plus prosperity you know compared to the big factories so but tourism local visitors people coming through and buying value added local artists and things that's a help one thing that could also help that I've a little piece on is a general store if you create a general store that incorporates the history but that also becomes a bar at night then you have what I call the VR ratio the visitor resident ratio you have things for the visitors and you have things for the residents you have a sense of history but you also have a sense of utility so I'm a big champion of the general store which is something that a lot of less dense rural areas have really thought to do especially in the northeast those are so cool I think we are getting to the end of the time so I did have one more question though that I think will I hope resonate with the audience which is if you're in a place and you sense that there isn't that positive proximity what can you do how can you change that? Well you start with your own self-interest that was something I learned in Middletown, Connecticut someone said you have to be a black belt in community organizing to think that you're going to go in and organize around other people's interests so you start with something that's interesting to you another thing is to what I call think in bridges so I love Robert Putnam so much and as a thinker and as a humanitarian you hear the passion for bridging that he has not just creating social capital but the kind where you're different from me and so you know I live in this house I'm an Episcopalian you're Orthodox Jewish this is a lesbian couple who Quakers I don't know but we all love roses and we all talk about our roses and then we talk about other things lo and behold we all march into the community meeting to save our library and our town council when we think in bridges my example is let's say somebody started a really cool river space on your river for swimming and you're like I was on the swim team I want to have swimming lessons for low income people because that's a real economic separator who knows how to swim instead of going I'm going to talk to my big brawny college buddies about doing this go to the YMCA and see who can help you go to your senior center in fact that might be sort of this one oddling breakout thing I would say go to your senior centers to find the stories and the expertise and the volunteers and list somebody there go to the school system go to your local businesses and have them donate something and then when you go into the town meeting you can go in with all of these new relationships that will build other things going forward in the future in your community whether it be you know dropping yoga or better schools or whatever then you'll go together so think in bridges start with yourself but if you come up with a cool idea think in bridges and my last thing is just know how important you are as people who care about history my dad he accepted a volunteer award and he said some people don't think about history some people aren't interested in the history of where they live I am very interested in the history of where I live and what my dad has done to for the local graveyard and accounting helping people understand 100 years of people who live in the town and for historic preservation of buildings for keeping the historic society in our downtown school trips and everything has been so has been like a hearth to our community because of how he's brought history into the streets of our town so maybe the third thing is to just know what a valuable thing you can bring to your communities I'm grateful for it and thank you so much for being with us thank you so much for being with us thank you so much for being with us my last question can we get you to come to the main street conference I love the main street conference I love the main street people that is such a good organization oh my gosh so I'll take that as a yes absolutely Dallas May 18th so thank you all this has been great and have a wonderful afternoon I wanted to let you know that we're going to give Dar a little bit of a breather here at 230 she's going to be a tattered cover books signing which is here in the building right yes it is snowing it's a pop-up shop here thank you for clarifying really encourage you all to go and grab a copy and read that chapter on Phoenixville so thank you thank you