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February 22, 2006
Community at the Coffee Shop
The most disconcerting part of my day is when I step outside, onto Main Street. In the office, which is on the second floor of a big brick building, I'm surrounded by staffers talking about China (and curling), about a sale to India (and curling), about the catalogue for the London Book Fair (and curling).
Then I step outside into small town New England, where I'm not a global publisher but Tom and Rachel's mom, and a former School Committee member whom some people will never forgive for not toeing the line. Nonetheless, I'm a proponent of the tired but still worthy phrase, "think globally but act locally." Now that we're starting work on a Community Building Handbook (Ray Oldenburg, an author I have never met but have admired for over a decade, has agreed to edit it with me) it seemed that I should try to do something locally. Something other than walk to Pearl’s for a drink after work, that is.
So I’ve started going to a knitting group at the Coffee Shop every other Wednesday night. These are the new cool knitters--knitters who blog as we chat and look up patterns online.(Yes, Great Barrington now has wifi.) It’s a wonderful break, a chance to be with a completely different group of people, and has been just the encouragement I needed to pick up a daunting project I started last winter: an afghan that’s a map of the whole wide world. Now that I think about it, maybe my knitting and my publishing aren’t so different after all.
Posted by Karen Christensen at February 22, 2006 9:05 PM
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