It is getting close to the holidays, which, for my wife and I, means a trip. We get out of town for Christmas instead of try to choose between our five families (two sets of divorced parents and my sister with the only niece and nephew). It works well, but it means I spend the weeks leading up to when we leave frantically trying to get everything done.
That was the story this last weekend: we went to New York to see my wife’s family. That will be the story next weekend, when we take my niece for the weekend to give my sister a break. And then we are headed to Mexico for a few weeks of thermal restoration.
So my LPJ work is likely to be spotty until I get back. Or, if I wind up taking my computer, it might just have a different flavor.

I wanted to get this out there, however, before I get busy again. (Lots going on today. There were several drug related arrests this weekend, and the third person allegedly involved in the home invasion was arrested. Busy day.)
I was in New York, at a birthday party for one of my step-in-laws, when someone asked me what I do. I described working for the paper, and they were interested in Berlin. I described the city as best I could, including its challenges, and several people sat in rapt attention. My description of a pace of life and a world where everyone knows one another obviously uncovered a nostalgia many of the urbanites had worked to bury. I described many of the things I describe on here, and they were amazed such a place still exists.
Berlin has problems: landlords, jobs, drugs, poverty. But it also is so special. I really do think many people in Berlin don’t realize it is because they don’t leave often enough. They don’t spend enough time in the high speed world, where it’s more important to avoid eye contact with a stranger than it is to avoid bumping into them.
I like leaving Berlin, because every time I come back. I drive into a town that feels like it is perpetually waking up, never moving at the full speed of the day. It is a treasure, and when I tell people about it they act I’m talking about Narnia or Atlantis. That pace, which Berlin takes for granted, is what so many people are yearning for. I can’t help but enjoy the fact that I get paid to come up and slow down every day.

The next year or two will the years to watch in Berlin. The prison will finish construction, Clean Power will start building, Laidlaw will apply for EFSEC review, Fraser will reach an agreement with someone to supply cheap energy, Jericho Mountain State Park will have hold its first ATV festival and the blue line will finally run through town. I can’t imagine a better time to be reporting there.

I’ve recently had both pro- and anti-Laidlaw people mad at me for the way I approached their subject. My wife was accosted yesterday by a man who heard her last name and didn’t like an article I’d written. Someone else told me they were looking to expand their business in the area and really appreciated my reporting on other successes around the city. I feel like I’m pissing enough people off that residents must be reading the paper. They care enough to comment; that makes me feel successful.

No one I know wants Berlin to fail. People fight vehemently for their vision of the city, but they all have the same goal. Like Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C., factions in Berlin are battling each other, thinking the other side is wrong and evil, but both with a passion for their city, all because they want to see the city thrive.
It’s important to allow diverging opinions and contradicting viewpoints to be heard, otherwise there isn’t honest debate. But in many ways opinions are moot, because we are single actors, in many ways just bystanders. I interview people each week opening and running businesses in Berlin who don’t have time to attend city council meetings, chamber of commerce meetings or school board meetings. They are fighting to bring more life and success to the city in other ways; ways that include the words open for business. They are the wave that will push the city into the future.
I look at Berlin and I am hopeful. Regardless of what I or others think are the big issues of the day, there are people who don’t care about what is said in the paper or on the Internet. They are loyal to the city, and they will fight for it to the end.

I’ve been thinking about this moment in Berlin’s history, which, as Mr. Charest has said, is when the city must reach maturity. The story of Berlin is a smaller version of the story of the United States: once a manufacturing superpower, it hasn’t built anything in years. Honestly, I have to believe Berlin can remake itself, because both it and our country will have to to survive.
I want to tell that story, and not just on LPJ or in the Berlin Reporter. I’ve been thinking about doing a documentary on the city, telling the story of the entrepreneurial seekers who see more in Berin than just its past. This crossroads is truly exciting, and it could be a parable for the nation. The “big issues” as but a backdrop for the passion residents have maintained through countless setbacks. The irrepressible spirit of the city amazes me, and I think it is a story worth telling. The next year, I hope, will paint a clear portrait of what a community can do for itself, defining its future and without neglecting its past.

May you live in interesting times — an apt description for the residents of Berlin. It is also true around the country. Berlin can be the anecdote for the nation. I want to be there to see it, and to tell it.