New Lebanon

To the editor,

The newest concoction to drum up business in the Town of New Lebanon has emerged in the form of a museum of contemporary rural living. Selected business members of the community for whom I have had a long abiding, deep respect, many non-resident business owners, as well as regular homeowners, are preparing to demonstrate to tourists how contemporary rural living happens. Its title, Behold! New Lebanon implies that those who travel to see how we survive in the wilds of a rural town will be enlightened and leave in awe for how we could do it all without the benefits an urban lifestyle affords. Behold! It sounds like the Magic Kingdom.

Unfortunately, the creator of this museum, a recent permanent resident from New York City, failed to actually include the Town in the planning of something that is about the town! No letter was sent to residents asking for input, no survey was conducted to learn everyone’s talents and strengths and no presentation was made to the Town’s Planning Board, much less the Town Board. The latter was befuddled. They had never heard of this “Town project” designed to benefit the Town, when an official Behold! representative attended a Town Board meeting and asked them permission to allow oversight from Columbia County’s Economic Development Committee with financial donations from supporters, which includes Town Supervisor, Mike Benson.

In order to effectively project the concept of rural living, individuals will be stationed in their homes and businesses, prepared to prove rural living is the quintessential and fun way to get through life. Each presenter will be paid $100 each time they demonstrate contemporary rural living to tourists, as well as their equal, rural-living neighbors in town! Tourists will pay $25 for a day, $40 for a family for a day, and residents, who see their neighbors up close and personal every day for free, will be able to do the same thing attending Behold!, but will then pay a discounted ticket price of $12.50, along with an ID and proof of residency. A tour through the Hand Hollow Nature Conservancy, normally free by design, is also part of the rural museum, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, Friday the 29. But, if you want to walk that trail at 5:25 pm, it will still be free!

How will these curious tourists, and even curiouser town residents, get to all those wonderful rural places? A tour bus, that grinds its gears, belches diesel smoke and breaks branches hanging over a narrow country back road, will ensure everyone who paid gets the true experience of rural living. I’ve got some bad news. Tour buses don’t promote rural lifestyles nor provide an adequate portrait of how to experience country living. Adding insult to injury, Behold!’s notion that residents of this town should even pay one nickel to see their neighbors perform normal everyday activities, is hubris at its best. Requiring residents to prove they live in this town indicates that the New York City mentality behind this project is compounded by the fact that those in charge of this project don’t know many lifetime residents, outside of their exclusive group.

Most residents, totally unaware of this affront that has descended upon us, must be living under a rock to not know about it, as Town Supervisor Benson bluntly stated, or not know this privately arranged group has decided, without any consideration of other’s opinions, that the Town needs to be redefined to fit what they want in a stereotyped image of cutesy, simple, country folk, a portrait the rest of us under a rock, finds outrageous and totally unacceptable. While a rock may keep us in the dark, it also protects us from damage.

Nineteen years ago the movie “Before and After” came to the area. I was one of a dozen extras chosen to be on site at Darrow School for a scene that took place in the winter. We were told to dress appropriately for a winter scene, which was not difficult to do. A costume assistant from California, in charge of our group, reacted with horror because our winter clothing was nothing she expected, or wanted. Her facial expression said it all, as she snorted that we didn’t dress right. Perhaps out of embarrassment no one said anything, except me as I bluntly explained to her that we dressed with whatever was available in our closets and with total disregard for fashion coordination. She angrily told us we should be wearing LL Bean. When I told her she had the wrong idea about us, she walked out and didn’t return for the rest of the day.

This project’s creator, who reminds me of that woman and her opinion of what we should be, went one step further with a deceptive statement to the local reporter, saying she had “asked the residents what they wanted.” Yet, reiterating, she never held a community meeting with the entire town to inquire what our desires were nor expressed true interest in the Town as a whole nor wrote a letter to us. No communication was made except through the former Business Association’s website, which, if you didn’t have time to read it in its entirety, meant you were out of luck and uninformed, as our trusty rock would insure.

The demand that the rest of the town pay to view our neighbors living indicates that this project is about making money not about building Town morale or embracing the Town as a whole. The ridiculous fear and mistrust that the rest of us would sneak into the exhibits of our neighbors without proper ID would be laughable if it weren’t insulting. Requiring proof of residency from us, then demanding money from those not included in a “town” project intended to affect all of us, does not bring us closer together but divides us more than anything ever has. Behold! is sadly unaware of the deep poverty that exists in our Town or the class, and income divisions. New Lebanon is not about status or money or who you know at the top of the social ladder. Yet this project, intended to promote the community, and should include all classes and incomes, is really for the benefit of those who have contributed financially or invested their demonstration time to it.

It remains a tragedy that most of our Town residents are unaware they have been stolen and sold off because someone has decided that after 200 years, we suddenly need to be re-defined. Behold!’s creator misses the point that a tour bus won’t promote rural living but rather stink up and disrupt the peace and tranquility of our neighborhoods. We don’t want that on a country road. It has no place on a country road. The rest of us were not asked, but now the creator’s definition of “rural living” will include it, without consideration for its impact on us. The rest of the Town doesn’t count, and it should.

Three years ago, when I was New Lebanon’s Supervisor, Behold!’s creator asked me why I thought the Town liked me, a question shocking alone in its audacity. While I was stunned at the arrogance of the question, I see now why she wanted to know. It seems, like three quarters of the Town, with my 57 years living here, I don’t fit the criteria for what she wishes to promote as the rural image, which – exactly like the woman from California in “Before and After” – is what she desires to recreate from an urban newcomer’s perspective.

Rural living doesn’t mean specially selected people showing their wares to strangers or fast moving tour buses on back roads. Rural living means peace and quiet, free from all of that, especially diesel buses flying past your house, belching up the air and adding a noise which belongs in a city. Behold!, and all that it entails, has no right to define what we are as a whole, put words in our mouths or decide what is important and what is not. Collectively as a real town, we do. The entire Town should be embraced and promoted without regard to class or income. Her world really isn’t our world, and she needs to stop trying to make it so. In the online flyer, it is stated so definitively that we know it is summer here when the Shaker Mountain Barbeque opens. In truth, we really know it is summer in New Lebanon when the fragrant, brilliant colors of dozens of flowers bloom, vegetables are planted, fields are furrowed with real fertilizer for crops, daylight lasts until 8 pm, crickets chirp, fireflies twinkle and the red wing blackbirds, Baltimore orioles and finches return to the fields with their melodious tunes. That is summer, while the Shaker Mountain Barbeque is just another good place to eat in New Lebanon.

Sincerely,

Meg Robertson

former New Lebanon Supervisor