Guest Opinion

Farmers’ Market — the new village for today?

By Norma Sorenson

, Aug 13, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

I was walking through the Farmers’ Market this last Saturday and enjoying the “people vibes” that are so evident there.

It occurred to me that these popular markets may be the “new villages” of our modern day. We live in such isolation in our suburban homes, driving to the stores, maybe chatting with neighbors, if you happen to be out in your yards at the same time — maybe not.

We’ve given up the village plazas, the places of gathering that were the center of daily life once. We have gained privacy but with all such gains, there is a price to pay. With the telephone, we have gained easy access to others without leaving our homes. In the beginning, before the advent of caller ID and call waiting, we lost the ability to monitor who and when we talked to others.

With the automobile we have gained access to places much farther away than a day’s walk would afford. We have lost the intimacy of strolling through the street or town at a pace that affords really “seeing it.”

How many times have you walked around a neighborhood that you are driving through on a daily basis and seen homes, flowers, nooks of interest that are totally unnoticed at the pace of an automobile and with your eyes on the road? So it is with the advances of technology that are coming at a faster pace every day.

Are we aware of the losses that accompany such advances? Maybe it’s only when we’ve become accustomed to these advances and they are our new “necessities” that we look around to see what’s been lost.

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