Only the Dead Know Brooklyn

Sycamores, McGorlick Park, Brooklyn

When Tom Wolfe heard his cabbie say, "It'd take a guy a lifetime to know Brooklyn t'roo and t'roo, an' even den you wouldn't know it all," that became the title "Only The Dead Know Brooklyn." 

Personally, I think the cabbie got closer to the truth. Brooklyn is for the living. Cruising down the avenues in Greenpoint this weekend what struck me most was the life--people at sidewalk tables outside cafes looking happy to be alive but most of all, happy to be in Brooklyn, happy to have friends and to be meeting new ones. The striking thing was how friendly everyone was,  a trait many people not from New York would think foreign to New York City. But those who think New Yorkers tough, unfriendly, unpleasant do not know the New York borough of Brooklyn.

People in Brooklyn mingle: They greet each other on the streets, wave across streets to each other, hug each other, introduce kids to friends, laugh together. 

Brooklyn women: lots of young mothers, in pony tails, leggings and T shirts, with a Bohemian look I used to associate with The Village. You see young white women in causal and warm conversation with old Black men, white men laughing with young Hispanics,  as if inter racial dialogue were the most natural thing in the world. It's Starship Enterprise incarnate. If ever there were a poster for multiculturalism, Brooklyn is it.

And the parks! Sycamore trees, with their multi-hue bark, kids chasing each other around benches filled with old men carrying on voluble conversations in languages I could not recognize.

In Greenpoint, you hear Polish everywhere, constantly. Behind the counter at Syrena Polish Bakery twenty something women go back and forth between English and Polish effortlessly, for the most part, although surprisingly, some of these young women do not have much English, meaning they are either new arrivals or they grew up in Brooklyn not needing English.  Or something. Most likely, they are new arrivals. Kids would have to learn English in school. But it's fun.  

Down the road in Coney Island, there is a Russian speaking neighborhood, Brighton Beach.

Friends in New Hampshire deride Lawrence, Massachusetts, because "there are people there who don't even speak English!" They wrinkle their noses: "All you hear there is Spanish."  What would they think of Greenpoint or Brighton Beach? Those people ought to learn English!  They ought to assimilate! They may even be, Heaven Forbid, illegal! A thirty minute drive from the whitebread men in their plaid shirts and suspenders hanging out in the hardware store at Hampton, there is a multiethnic town, Lawrence, where Hispanics from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and others from  Haiti and Jamaica live among recent arrivals from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Greece. 

Most of this immigrant community is likely drawn because they have family in Lawrence and the United States immigration laws are constructed to reunite families, as opposed to draw in people with particular skills or education. And some of this immigrant wave is clearly attributable to the generous provisions of Mass Health for healthcare. New Hampshire offers next to nothing for health care coverage, even to its native population.  In New Hampshire, you're on your own, in more ways than just health care.  What it means to be a community in Massachusetts, I'd infer is that we take you in, provide you with the basics--healthcare, education and ultimately, you bring your talents and energy to build our economy. In New Hampshire, I'd infer, the idea is: swim or sink but don't expect your neighbor to help you.

Of course, there are plenty of people from New Hampshire who are cosmopolitan, who travel to Europe, Asia, and even New York. And I know at least one New Hampshire citizen who drives up to Manchester to tutor an immigrant in English and help her negotiate for a visa for her daughter back in Somali. So non governmental charity is alive and well in New Hampshire, but again, if you want to offer that to your neighbor, you're on your own.

If Donald Trump ever took a walk through Brooklyn, he might change his mind about immigration and the value of mixing cultures and races and ideas.  If for no other reason that good bakeries, I'm all for mixing. 

In Providence, Rhode Island, there were amazing Portuguese bakeries at Fox Point.  That part of the state is heavily Italian, but the Italians appreciated the Portuguese bakeries, and the Portuguese ate at the Italian restaurants on Federal Hill. 

And another thing--getting people out of cars and on the sidewalks or on bicycles frees the mind. You see this in Portsmouth and Durham and New Market, people walking, mingling.  In Connecticut, where they arrange the towns around a central green space, usually flanked by churches, people actually mingle. Too often, in New Hampshire, we drive by each other--except at the lakes and mountains. There you see people outside of their cars. 

I guess you can't ask of a rural state the same things you see in cities, but at least you can think about another way of living.  We don't all congregate at church on Sundays any more. 

Where do we actually mingle?

Is it possible to be a community, if you are a rural state?