Photo of dogwood buds by Flickr user *Psycho Delia*. Published under Creative Commons license.
The signs of spring are all around us, faint but definitely present. Seeds are sprouting and new life is stirring. After far too much time spent dormant, the time for growth seems finally to have come -- overdue, perhaps, but heartedly welcomed by most everyone.
Clearly I’m not writing about the weather, or anything related to the seasonal calendar. My snow shovel is out of the garage and parked on the front porch, kept handy for the storms that surely await us here in the Catskills, as we lurch into December with winter at our doorstep again. No, I'm using Spring as a metaphor for something different, something totally unrelated to the Earth’s annual journey around the Sun. I’m referring to life in the Catskills, and some faint warm winds of change that I’ve been feeling blowing through these parts of late.
First the mandatory disclaimer: What do I know, anyway? I’ve only lived here for ten years, not nearly long enough to have any in-depth perspective on this area. Then there is that small matter called generalization. To the extent that I have been observant, I’ve been observing my own hamlet of Phoenicia, and to a lesser extent the Town of Shandaken which Phoenicia is inside of. The Catskills are obviously a whole lot bigger than Shandaken; one size doesn’t fit all, we’re not all cut from the exact same cloth.
So I suppose I'm actually only writing about Shandaken now, though I strongly suspect this subject is germane beyond its borders. Readers living in other towns reached by the Watershed Post: Please feel free to write in with your impressions on this topic, as seen from your geographic vantage point. And Shandaken readers are always welcome to respond with your own opinions, be they supportive or wildly divergent from mine. I figure anything that gets us engaged in real discussions about our town has to be a net positive, even if I'm way off-base.
I notice Shandaken changing. Change can be good or bad, depending on where you stand, but usually it’s some combination of both. For me, the changes I’m noticing are mostly positive. They reflect increasing local vitality and an active, beating pulse in our town. Vitality is the enemy of decay, and decay is the enemy of the lives we want to have in the Catskills. Decay means more than buildings rotting away, though it includes that. Decay begins with stagnancy, and deteriorates from there. Decay is a mood as much as anything else, a sense that the best days have all passed. Communities in the Catskills have been struggling against this for decades.
My last dispatch, "Nostalgic for our present," was about protecting something very special about Shandaken’s present for our future. But it won’t be possible to preserve our way of life for long if we can’t preserve a viable local economy. One way or another, folks need to make a living to keep living in Shandaken.
So what are these signs of change? I’m seeing early signs of what urban dwellers often refer to as gentrification. When that happens in large cities, it is usually a mixed blessing at best. An influx of new, creative energy into an area tends to drive property values and housing and commercial rents higher. There’s some good in that for sure -- it beats the hell out of continuing decay -- but once it passes a nebulous but somehow tangible point, long-time locals can start being displaced. Neighborhoods change when they are gentrified; they get spiffed up, their former glory is refurbished, they start to become trendy and desirable for people with disposable income to visit, and in some cases move into.
Shandaken has a long way to go before I might worry about the possible negative side effects of gentrification, and by and large I think that is true for most if not all of the Catskills. We are nowhere near the verge of becoming the Berkshires West, and that allows us time to be proactive. It gives us a chance to protect what we like most about the Catskills the way they are now while embracing new opportunities that may start coming our way.
I used “gentrification” above because that’s a concept that most of us are already conversant with. But there is another term that has been gaining favor in recent years, one broader in scope and deeper in meaning as well, and that is “the creative economy.” John Howkins published a book by that name in 2001, and now thinking along those lines is taken quite seriously by economic planners. A lot of time and funding is being directed towards developing and supporting the creative economy in western Massachusetts right now. They are well ahead of us on that curve.
Something both the creative economy and gentrification have in common is the effect both tend to bring about: invigorating entire areas, neighborhoods, towns, or regions. That effect is more pervasive than the upside gained by wooing a major employer to locate inside a community, for example. It re-brands the identity of a locality in a positive way, and puts it on the map, so to speak, in enticing colors. Cumulatively, it makes an area more desirable to more people, and once that happens, money tends to flow into the local economy in numerous and diverse ways.
We don’t have that in Shandaken now -- not even close -- but we do have some movement in that direction. Small, individually inconsequential changes eventually can add up to something bigger. I look at developments like the Phoenicia Festival of the Voice starting up. I notice the coordinated and promoted Shandaken art tours that now happen regularly. I see Phoenicia getting recognized as one of America’s ten coolest small towns by a national publication. I watch Mount Tremper Arts becoming established. I see creative endeavors launched a few years back, like the Pine Hill Community Center and the live Cabaradio events it produces, putting down roots and surviving.
Meanwhile, new regional media efforts trying to be inclusive of the Catskills have begun emerging. The Watershed Post is one of them. So is WIOX, our new radio station located in Roxbury.
I’m also aware of a very deep lineup of superb musicians living in our area that only grows deeper with each passing year. That is often the precursor to a musical “scene” developing that eventually wins notice on a larger regional or even national scale. Janet and I have been “watering” one small shoot of change inside Shandaken for going on three years now: Flying Cat Music and the shows we produce at the Empire State Railway Museum. I guess you can call it an intentionally not-for-profit business that just aims to bring great music into town, and that part has been working well. This past Sunday evening, some musical strands came together with the most recent Flying Cat concert at the train station: Mike + Ruthy, a great musical act with deep Catskills roots that is rapidly building a strong national following.
There is nothing about anything that I’ve touched on here to indicate with any assurance that something meaningful and lasting will eventually come from it. Similar initiatives have come and gone before, with little changing as a result. Still, call it a sixth sense, or maybe just a suppression of common sense, but I can’t help feeling that Spring may be closer than we think.
Tom Rinaldo writes the Dispatches from Shandaken column for the Watershed Post's Shandaken page. Email Tom at tomrinaldo@watershedpost.com.
