Walden by Day, Bedford Falls by Night

There were two gatherings in the town square today, each drawing on different populations of our tiny hamlet. In the afternoon, the residents of Walden gathered for the Farmer's Market. Walden gets the downtown park every friday afternoon, and I have never seen a better gathering of organic, locally grown produce. It is also a great time for snaking. The Carriage House Bakery sells tofu curry pockets and pesto knots. An Asian woman with a thick accent, whose name I have never learned, sells dumplings and odd savories. This year she seems to be trying to assimilate more to local culture, and is selling more whole-grain snacks, whose health benefits she trumpets. Fortunately she is still selling those dumplings with the sweet red bean paste in them. Generally there is a guy with an acoustic guitar and two mics, one for the vocals and one for the guitar.

Tonight Beford Falls had their turn at the park, and we saw a different turn on food and agriculture. It was "John Deere Day." We saw no local agricultural outputs, but there was an impressive array of agricultural inputs. Well, really just tractors. tractors in various shapes and sizes but all the same color, that shade of greene John Deere has no doubt trademarked. The food was not local. There were stands selling coke and popcorn and pretzels. Kids from the high school were selling candy. I have noticed that the crowd at Bedford Falls gatherings tends to be about 10 years older and 50 pounds heavier than the crowd at the Walden gatherings.

To be honest, I like the music at Beford Falls gatherings better. Country bands playing standards: Hank Williams senior, George Straight, Chuck Berry and other pre-Beatles rock and roll. This is the real folk music, not because it is made by the folk, but because it has been shaped by the needs of the social setting: what the audience is familiar with, what works with the state fair atmosphere. The self consciously folk musicians at the Farmers Market are too dominated by Dylan and the image of the poet as romantic genius. You cannot underestimate the damage the sixties did to folk music.

My names for the two communities in Canton are not quite apt. Although "Walden" reminds people of the back to the land movement that populated this region with hippies, Henry David himself put nature on such a pedestal he could never be a good farmer. Any attempt to shape nature was beyond him. Michael Pollan said that trying to draw an environmental ethic from Walden was like learning about marriage when your only categories are chasitity and rape.

I don't like Bedford Falls as a name for the Red Sate contingent in upstate New York either. I don't recall anyone in Frank Capra's movies having such a fascination with vehicles. While at John Deere day I had a longish conversation about Corvettes, prompted by an effort to guess the year of one passing buy. Not five minutes later I overheard some people trying to identify the year a passing harley was made.

Still, I think people know what I mean when I call this place Walden meets Beford Falls. There are some interactions between the sides of the community. The Rotary Club is getting behind SLU's efforts to establish a sister village in Sri Lanka. With any luck I will be taking students there next summer to help with the rebuilding effort. It is a purely low level connection: US rotary club to Sri Lanken rotary club. There are values we all share.