(Editor’s note: A longtime reader of this newsletter/blog sent a note while on vacation. His approach to this summer’s vacation is unique. It was nice reading about his experiences and observations. So, we decided to share it with our readers.)
My wife and I are currently on summer vacation. Once school was done for the year (my wife teaches young severely autistic children in the public school system) we boarded an airplane and flew to Maine to begin our great American road trip summer vacation.
This year we decided to spend our summer here in the United States seeing and experiencing America by driving a rental car from Maine to Michigan, down the Mississippi to Louisiana, and then across the South to Florida where we now reside. Along the way we will stay in small towns, see both major and minor sights, and get back (hopefully) in touch with the real America. Which brings me to today.
Today we found ourselves in the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire, home of Mt. Washington (the highest peak in the Northeastern United States), beautiful mountains and forests, and many lovely small towns, You would be hard-pressed to find a single chain restaurant, hotel, or store here, just as you will never take home your purchases in any bags other than paper (plastic bags being an absolute no-no here). And today being Sunday I decided to show my wife how many small towns here in New Hampshire spend a rainy Sunday afternoon.
At 1:30 pm today we were seated in a single-screen movie theater (dating back to 1915) in a town called Bethlehem New Hampshire. As usual for Sundays in Bethlehem an older movie was playing for the townspeople to come see with a town discussion to follow the movie. The movie today was All The President’s Men, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as the two intrepid Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein as they covered the Watergate break-in story which eventually led to the resignation of the President of the United States.
In an introduction to the movie a local journalist for local NPR posed this question to the 50 or so townspeople (and us) attending the movie: let’s watch this movie together and then discuss if this type of journalism could occur today. If yes then why is it not happening, and if no then why not? And then for the next few hours people enjoyed their popcorn, sodas, beer and wine (this is not Alabama) and watched Redford and Hoffman together with a who’s-who of other famous older American actors (all male by the way) tell the story of Watergate as only Hollywood could.
What followed thereafter was remarkable in a day and age of polarization, ugliness, and partisanship on steroids. About 50 Americans, some young, some old, and some in-between, of various backgrounds and educations, engaged in a lively, candid, and most importantly polite exchange of ideas on the topic of the afternoon. Comments and questions touched upon topics of money in media, the rise of the billionaire class in America, news versus entertainment, Fox News, Joe Rogan, Jeff Bezos, and as one older citizen asked humbly but poignantly: “How or where do I find the actual truth today?”.
The thoughts and opinions given today are irrelevant. What is relevant, at least to me, is that in a place like Bethlehem Americans can still come together, pick a subject inspired by, in this case, a movie, and have a civil community discussion on a topic relevant to our lives today and do so without argument, without rancor, and without hate. Americans many years ago used to engage in activities of this nature all the time, before the internet and before social media and before we arrived at the point where we did not need each other so long as we had access to our computers, our phones, and our tablets.
To say I found this afternoon refreshing is an understatement. To say that some part of me today found a part of America I used to know and apparently never really appreciated would be spot-on accurate. We dwell on many negative things on a daily basis, but today I wanted to share with you something positive. Something good.
Something………..well something American.