A Different Kind of Deadness

I saw this article on a hospital website. It's about a woman on their staff who moved her family from Beirut, Lebanon to Newton, MA.

She remembered seeing a CNN story featuring Newton as the safest place in America, so she set her sights on the suburb.

Naturally, the transition has been a bit jarring. "It's so much quieter," she says. It's so quiet, that when they first moved in, they thought their neighborhood was deserted. "We never see people on the streets or kids in their yards or on the porches," she says. "And you don't hear people, either. It's scary, it's so still. Sometimes we'll see a light on in someone's house so we know there must be somebody in there."

How strange to move from a community alive with children and families and activity, even in the midst of danger and violence, to a non-community where, if anyone is home there is no connection to the someone right next door. I am tempted to think it would be more unnerving and depressing than potential bullets and bombs. At least then you would have proof others are alive and want to stay that way.



I read a book a while back about the development of the suburbs during the post-war boom, Home From Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler. A recommended read.