When you're up to your...

I was an A1C in the Air Force the first time I saw that quote, "When you're up to your a** in alligators, it is difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp."  I have felt that kind of desperation and panic a few times in my life.
I think the Rindge Charrette is exactly that kind of situation.
People have invited me and others who participated in and supported the Charrette to move out of town.  Now, there is all this hysteria about Agenda 21 and property rights surrounding those sessions intended to get community input.  We have been accused of wanting to turn Rindge into an urban area; reminiscent of towns in Massachusetts.  
Long before I moved to Rindge, there was a thriving town center.  It had a general store and I've been told, people congregated there to discuss the politics of the day.  Then they moved the old Route 202 to it's present location and the center became something of a ghost town.  Rindge lost it's "center."
The purpose of the Charrette was to try to find a new center for Rindge, and also create more integration with the college community.
I know there are people in West Rindge Village who liked the idea of revitalizing the village and making it the new town center, but they have been bullied into silence on the subject.  I am sorry for them.  I really am.  I don't live there, but if the people in West Rindge Village embraced the idea, I would have tried to help make it happen.
Fortunately, as I recall the Charrette, it also talked about revitalizing the old town center too.  So, maybe it is time to just abandon any ideas for West Rindge Village and focus on what can be done in the center to bring it back from obscurity?
Or do people really buy the argument that we are NOT a real community; just a place to sleep at night? 

‘Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss future.’

— John Fitzgerald Kennedy