I was surprised to have “re-imagine” received as a pejorative. I think that small communities do have to re-imagine themselves precisely because all models don’t work. But continue to believe that home-based businesses of the type allowed (see zoning ordinance) will simply not add up to enough assessed worth to create the tax base necessary to maintain the local schools or the infrastructure of the village/town.

It is fine for some people to have “work where location is not a factor”, but I think it is very important to have a part of the economy that does depend on location. I believe that it is important for the economy to notice the physical environment and use it wisely and sustainably. I dislike treating the environment as mere scenery.

As for both Richard and Jonathan’s praise of families with children. Obviously, raising children is an important way of perpetuating the community, but you have to realize that the category families with children is a minority in nearly every community, including this one. Most of the population is either pre-child-rearing, post-childrearing or not-childrearing.

Furthermore I talk to a lot of school teachers and administrators and they wish that more parents would get involved in their particular third place. Maybe it is just the people that I know, but I can think of several who are very, very glad to be done with the social aspects of school when their youngest child graduates from high school.

Trumansburg has more vibrant third places than most communities of its size. It is perhaps the main reason I chose to live here. The school is probably one of the most important ones because everyone goes there. The rest of the village is socially balkanized in a way that irritates (but ultimately saddens) long-time residents.

The Barney banner is an expression of this irritation and I believe that it has a double meaning. It is meant on hand as a straight question (Why, indeed, can’t we all get along?), but also, by citing an inane television character as a reference, I think that the banner is suggesting that getting along might possibly be an absurd idea at this point.

I have no wish to reimagine anything that happened here in the 1960s. I wasn’t alive in the 1960s. The 1960s are not part of my personal experience, and recreating them is not part of my agenda. I see things as they are now, I compare that to Trumansburg when I first came to know it, and I imagine what could be.

If that banner in the Napa store window was supposed to communicate what you say it was supposed to communicate, then it sure looks like an argument against the idea that business owners are better able to communicate effectively with a tone that residents will appreciate. If Dick/Barney wants to tease people who can’t communicate without misunderstanding, then is it a self-referential piece of art? How does it fit in with his support of a savagely partisan campaign? I don’t get it.

I don’t think you grasp the profound economic possibility in independent at-home businesses for young people, and the way that they present profoundly fewer hurdles than opening up a storefront. I don’t think that most people here do – and that includes young people. There’s no need to move to find work, when you can find your work and build it independently. Not everyone’s suited to that attitude, and it doesn’t fit the traditional economic development model, but it’s of growing significance. More and more work occurs without particular location being a factor. That ought to be a source of economic renaissance in small communities like Trumansburg – or for that matter, Ovid, Interlaken, Romulus…

For those of us with children, opening up a storefront business is an especially daunting task. At home businesses enable much more flexibility in schedule, and children require that.

Something you haven’t experienced is that families with children do have a lot of third places in Trumansburg – not just in each others’ homes. There’s a very rich social network, among children, but even more importantly and permanently, among their parents. It’s something that makes me laugh when Mr. Auble, from the comfortable distance of Interlaken and his business interactions, proclaims that no one here knows each other any more.

It is my goal to start up a storefront business on Main Street, eventually, but it’s going to have to be in addition to the two professions that I’m juggling currently. It’s also going to have to be done when I have a substantial amount of capital I can invest in such a project, as I’ll need to hire a day-to-day manager. The way I do business is not to start out on a bank loan – that’s a recipe for a business that’s too vulnerable to serve its customers well and too close to extinction have time to find its feet. A good startup needs freedom to develop without immediate income, much less immediate profit for reinvestment. I won’t open a storefront here unless I can do it the right way – no cutting corners or compromising on the quality I want to produce.

Storefront businesses are important, but good storefront businesses won’t survive here unless 1) The family car is outlawed or 2) We have a substantial number of residents who are able to do well economically through businesses they run in their homes that bring in money to Trumansburg from the outside world. I think that the second option is more likely. It does involve raising the standard of living in Trumansburg, but not by driving anybody out. Rather, there is the opportunity to lift up a lot of people who are already here, but it requires a more innovative economic development model than what’s been proposed so far, and it has to go beyond reinvigorating Main Street.

People say that Trumansburg has to get bigger in order to survive. I say that idea is based on a lack of imagination.

The types of industry that once made Trumansburg a more well-rounded economy than it is now polluted both creeks very badly. They were a source of employment, but the environmental price was high. I named specific artisan manufacturing enterprises that I think would be viable, acceptable alternative industries for a future Ulysses.

I am only enthusiastic about home-based businesses if their proprietors are using their homes as starting points. It would be nice if they wanted to grow their businesses locally rather than just get them to a certain size and them move them to Ithaca.

I was disheartened at the comprehensive plan public workshops to hear people say that we needed to provide affordable housing for young people, as if the reason young people leave is because they can’t find a place to live. In fact, they leave because there is no work for them here.

The economics of starting your own business are more difficult for present-day 20- or 30-somethings than they were for their grandparents. But it isn’t impossible. When local “young people” complained to me about the building of the Family Dollar and Movie Gallery, saying that locally-owned businesses should have go in there, I said, “Well, start one.” The universal response was “I can’t do that.”

I regard “working independently” has being emblematic of the problem of home-based business. In a functional small town people have to work interdependently to build what David Putnam (Bowling Alone) called ‘social capital’.

The late Christopher Lasch (The Revolt of the Elites) described the idea of ‘third places’. We all have work and home, but fewer of us have a ‘third place’ that is neither home nor work, but the site for interacting with your fellow community members.

Gimme Coffee! is a third place, but if you just go in, get coffee and leave, then it is not a third place for you. You have to hang around and catch up on other people’s lives, complain about the weather, pass along rumors, and generally build social capital.

The “why can’t we all get along” banner is supposed to be funny. It is teasing community members who can not seem to communicate with each other without misunderstanding each other. I don’t think the banner is that funny, but I do think that the teasing is deserved.

The question is whether someone truly engages the community at multiple levels, not where they happen to be employed. Indeed, I wouldn’t necessarily agree with it, but I think it’s possible to make the case that people who truly live and work in Trumansburg are actully more likely to be insular and parochial in their views than those whose jobs consistently expose them to a richer range of experience. But, I’m back to where I started: what’s the point of this exercise? Isn’t it really to try to prove that your views are somehow entitled to more weight because they’re more authentic? I think true T-burg authenticity is much, much more subtle than where one happens to work. The evolution of your so-called hypothesis suggests that you agree with me.

I also must contest your claim that people who do their business here find a more appropriate tone for being here and don’t upset people.

Do you really think that the Barney the Dinosaur sign in the window of the Napa auto parts sign is an example of appropriate tone that doesn’t upset people?

I get the sense from that sign that the owner of the Napa on Main Street doesn’t really give two hoots about residents like me.

I’ve worked with too many people in too many lines of business in too many places to agree to the idea that people who run businesses necessarily make better neighbors. Business owners are just as likely to be callous and crude as the rest of us.

“Real rural communities?” I don’t know what that is. Sounds like a phrase that’s awfully close to the idea of “authentic” to me.

I’m am sticking to my hypothesis. I think that working and living in the same community is the optimal condition. And by “working in the community” I don’t mean sitting at home and primarily communicating with people who are remote from the community.

Dave Filiberto is a grad student at Cornell. That means he works at Cornell.

John Levine is a computer consultant. He has absolutely no need for local resources in his work.

John Gurche has a studio at his home, but regularly reports to PRI/MOTE where he has an office.

There is hardly any commercial development in this town/village beyond retail and service. That is not a sustainable condition for a “rural community”. That is the recipe for a bedroom community.

Real rural communities should have industry in them. Both Trumansburg and Ulysses did between 1792 and WWII. Industry doesn’t have to be smokestacks and outfall pipes spewing. Industry can be something like MacKenzie -Childs, a pottery that employs >80 people in rural Ledyard outside Aurora in Cayuga County. Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream is made in North Waterbury, VT (pop 1,700).

Working locally has nothing to do with “authenticity” (which is a figment of everyone’s imagination). It has to do with simply being familiar to your fellow residents and being familiar with the economic and social dynamics (historical and present) of the town/village. If you “do your business” here, then you learn the appropriate tone for conducting business here. If you do your business elsewhere and trying using that tone here, you upset people.

Then there are people like me. I do an awful lot of my work in my house in Trumansburg, but I don’t have an office or a shop on Main Street. Also, I frequently travel out of town to do research. So, do I work in Trumansburg or not? It’s hard to say.

Year after year, exceptions like this are coming closer to be the rule. With the Internet, we’re seeing a return of cottage industry as a meaningful economic force, and places like Trumansburg can benefit a great deal from this shift.

If the Chamber of Commerce is shifting its focus to deal with this new small town business reality, I don’t see it. Economic planning in general is also overlooking this trend, and it’s a shame, because it’s something that people of all economic backgrounds in our village can take advantage of, given a little training and some creativity.

The new Main Street in Trumansburg is wireless.

You’ve hit upon something important. Posting more information on the web would help the village board a great deal.

For weeks and weeks now, the most recent meeting minutes posted have been from a meeting on January 8, 2007 – almost three months ago.

How can the members of the Village Board expect us to come to them and ask informed questions when they aren’t willing to share information about what they’re doing?

I’ve got three kids and work that requires me to take trips out of town. I intend to do my best to attend more board meetings, but I can guarantee you that I won’t be able to attend every one. There are a lot of other residents in my situation. We need more ways to get information about Village Board activities than just attending meetings.

this is clearly unacceptable. Again, how can the public follow the “rules” if they are not easy to get?

POST THEM ON THE WEB.