I was just thinking about what makes Sharon great. There are lots of things or reasons and especially people that make Sharon great, and here are just a few from today:
Ted Roeske, Dave Heacox, Joe Heacox, Deb Reyelt, Mike & Tracy Rand, Will Trowbridge, Tim Perry, Debbie @ Twin Oaks, Emily Bartram, Bob Loucks, Jack Downey, Terry Ryan, Clare, Joe Sterling, Kelly Sr., Karen Hansen, Mrs. Southhack, Joanne Wilcox, just to name a few. These are but a few of the people of Sharon.
Sharon is a town of great history, and sights, and places, but without its people..... Sharon is nothing but a museum. The more we continue to sell ourselves as just a weekend sleep-over, the more we become a lifeless museum, Sunday thru Friday afternoons. Sharon needs more affordable housing, a better business environment and a vision that sees controlled, planned, welcomed growth as a good and needed thing. A pond with water flowing in and out breeds life. A still pond brings weeds, evaporation, mud and death for certain.
Sharon needs to really look at where its headed, and do it soon. We have so built ourselves around the wealthy of late, and look to them for our answers to which their money cannot provide. I bet history, if studied well, shows that while the wealthy do help in many ways, it is the common man who made Sharon what it really is. Drive the common man all out, give them no place to work, to live, to eat or to shop and Sharon will just be a town of houses, not of homes and people. Then the building of the museum will be complete.
exactly!
ReplyDeleteRick,
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. The phenomenon you speak of is happening all over the state but is particularly acute in Sharon. The sign at the Millerton border might as well say: "Welcome to Connecticut -- The Museum."
My sense is that Sharon will devolve into a community of weekenders and geriatrics -- especially the geriatrics.
It's a perfect place for elderly retirees. Nothing happens in the town, so it's incredibly quiet. But very close by are dozens of doctors.
Too bad, really. But thanks for starting what I hope will be a productive dialogue on a proud old town.
I'm guessing this blog post might offend people too, Rick, but I'm with ya on this one. I always expect the fact that "nothing ever changes" in Sharon, and sort of enjoy that everything is the same between my visits home...but I had always hoped that if something *did* change, it would be the addition of new businesses, rather than old businesses vacating the plaza. (Although I did finally stop in at Twin Oaks yesterday, and enjoyed it very much!)
ReplyDeleteIt's always weird to hear you and my dad talk about all of the businesses that used to be in Sharon. I can't think of any other town in CT that's "devolved" so much. I do worry about what's going to happen to it. I'd love to move back to Sharon eventually, but at this point I don't know how I could afford it unless I rented (where?) or inherited something.
You're right when you say that Sharon's people are what make it great. Using that definition, I think Sharon is the best place in the whole world. It will always be my real home. But until I can get a job there without moving in with my parents or traveling >15 minutes to buy groceries, it's a place I can only visit.
Terry..as always, I concur very much with your thoughts. It's funny. Just a few years back, I probably wouldn't imagine myself saying we needed planned growth and some different styles of housing for different people in different situations, but I have gone 180 on that. And we need more than just a token house here and one there. Growth may not be the only answer, but it sure must be part of the equation. Allie: I so see your last paragraph as such a statement for the town fathers and P & Z members to just write on their bathroom mirrors and read daily.
ReplyDeleteSharon has righted itself from situations before that then looked grim. Here's hoping we see which way is up,and head there, while we still can.
Rick,
ReplyDeleteI found a similar problem here in Seattle. When I first moved here from Sharon I rented a home in an expensive Northern suburb. It was beautiful but lifeless. I never met any of my neighbors and nothing was in walking distance. I'm now in West Seattle and I Love it. It's a much smaller home in a middle class neighborhood, but what a neighborhood! When I first started my new garden my 88 year old neighbor came over and offered me some tomato plants he raised in his homemade greenhouse. Later a neighbor stopped by and gave me a bunch of seed packets of seeds he wasn't able to plant. ANd it kept going like that, everyone kept stopping by to talk. Also everything is in walking distance; groceries, bank, nursery, restaurants. I think that is one of the reasons people meet and talk, everyone walks around town. I was in Sharon for 13 years. Things were getting quiet just before I left two years ago. I would also love to move back to Sharon someday but I'm really enjoying the community out here. I wish there were a way to bring life back to Sharon? I guess wealthy citizens and large homes are a two edged sword?
Karen
KJ Lyons Design
Glad you found the right place for you Karen! Wealthy citizens and their homes of any size are fine. Its just we need room, I believe, for some more business opportunity's, be they retail or production. And houses where newlyweds can start out, and ones where families can raise their children, and apartments for folks of different incomes who don't need a house to contend with....(and a grocery store thats clean and stocked and not 15 minutes away.) I don't need it all at once, I just can't help but feel that we need to be laying the groundwork now, so it CAN come. If not, well we discussed that already.....
ReplyDeleteByzance just relocated to downtown Salisbury. Gee, wonder why ...
ReplyDeleteTerry Cowgill