And nobody called the News…..

Two different snowstorms within a week have brought almost 50" of snow to this area, shattering snowfall records that have endured for over 100 years. In between these two storms, a local news station ran a story of a neighborhood whose street had gone days without seeing a snowplow. However, that was not the "news". The "news" was that the neighbors had taken the bold step of actually speaking to one another and then working together to now only shovel out the street but then to also shovel one another's cars out of the snow.

My initial reaction was "so what" but then I very quickly realized that I was looking at this story from the perspective of a person who's been living in cohousing, and not from a "real world" perspective. In the "real world", neighbors cooperate often as a last resort, when things get really bad - like when there's a record snowfall and the authorities fail in their promise to serve and protect. But I don't live in the "real world" - I live in cohousing. In our neighborhood, neighbors worked together to clean the streets, parking areas, and our central pedestrian walkway. Neighbors worked together to shovel out one another's cars. They did all of this because that's what folks here do, that's why they live here. They have chosen cohousing as a way a life, a way of life where neighbors care , help out, and look out for one another. "News" on the "outside", routine par-for-the-course action here on the "inside". Must be why nobody called the news....