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Volume 114, Number 324 - Tuesday, October 13, 1998


Returning to Middletown with a fresh perspective
by John Friedlander

Thanks, I feel welcomed back.

I've lived in Middletown for eighteen years, with the exception of the last nine months, which I spent in the Pacific Northwest in a town strikingly similar to Middletown. Roughly equal population, a university, a semi-compact downtown, a river border and challenging issues of growth are a very few of the similarities. Starkly different ethnic make-up, environmental issues, and prevailing attitudes are a very few of the differences.

After so many years here, my vision of Middletown had become clouded by habit, blinded by too many trips down the same familiar paths. My extended time in the west is now helping me see Middletown with the eyes of a visitor. Beauty I hadn't noticed before is now jumping out at me. Problems to which I'd developed immunities now seem important again, and somehow more solvable.

This new perspective seems healthier to me, and I hope to hold on to it for as long as I can. After all, we shouldn't take our homes for granted. Our attitudes about our surroundings and ourselves define the feeling and atmosphere of Middletown. If we ignore the opportunities and the challenges of our hometown, we will end up living in a place less vital and alive than it could be.

In this column I plan to examine some of the contrasts I'm noticing between Middletown and the place I lived in the west. I'm not going to identify the town out west, because that would be a distraction. If I give too much away or you somehow figure out where I was, email me privately. If you're right, you'll win whatever ceremonial Middletown trinket my pocket change can afford me. More important, I hope you'll begin to see Middletown without the haze of over-familiarity that might be hiding the value of what is already within your grasp.

To all the friends who have greeted me, those who never knew I was gone, and those I intend to make, welcome back home to Middletown!

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