I remember thinking more or less the same things Will discusses when I first saw my first Walkman in California in the late '70s--"How can this person be so rude as to completely ignore the presence of others? How can she think that the rest of us are so inconsequential that the possibility of fleeting yet undemanding human contact is foreclosed?" Perhaps it is the Southern in me, but I think that even in public one must at all times be ready for civilized discourse with strangers, and even start it. I feel somewhat of a responsibility to do so as this art is rapidly becoming extinct.
We sadly have more meaningful relationships with our electronic gizmos than we do with each other. And the internet, like it or not, fosters this dynamic though it admittedly also allows for other kinds of communication, even if it lacks warmth and humanity.
You have no idea how out of place people from NO feel when we travel. New York and SF are both fine and exciting and fun and all that, but I'd have to be delusional to suggest that they are warm, accommodating, in a word, human and civilized.
The closest thing to NO I've seen in the US in terms of simple good manners and neighborliness is, you'll love this, Hawaii, especially Kauai
Yes, the unenforceable laws count. But they don't really exist anymore except in a few places, and I live in one of them. A respect for others and the availability of mannered and unencumbered human contact are a few of the terrific things this city can give back to the US but since they cannot be measured in dollars and cents, we are getting the upraised middle finger now that we are no longer a hot news item.
I wish Will had brought our plight into his column, but it's a good start. |
