So what are all these “Letters” about? Two a month for 6
months. A cantankerous old codger, grumbling about everything? A misguided
notion of what the Village has been, or should be? I guess I’m interested in
what it is, at this moment: Roughly 13,500 people, with a median age of 65, few
children, most of us retired, all of us nursing ailments of various types, both
physical and emotional. We all, I’m assuming, are looking for happiness. Here,
now, while we finish out our lives.
There are some basic requirements, as I see it, to get where
we want to go. I think we need to see ourselves as a community. A community is
more than a Facebook page, or 9 golf courses, or 11 lakes, or security gates.
It for sure is more than a corporation. We surely want more than making a
profit and following someone’s predetermined plan. I sure don’t want us to be a
group of same-minded people, isolating ourselves from our surroundings. Heaven
forbid that we should all have the same religious beliefs or political
ideology. Boring.
We are a group living in the same area, to be sure, but it
should not be a place where we all think alike, pray alike, or vote alike. The
magic of a community is that we care about each other, regardless of our
differences. Unity is not some type of abstract sameness. It is forged in
solidarity and compromise and caring, always seeking the common good.
Running Hot Springs Village as a corporation is wrong, on
many levels. To continue to do so, I am convinced, will do more harm than good.
So I write, hoping to set the groundwork for community, not corporation. It
annoys some, amuses some, and hopefully makes sense to a few.
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