Living in Indiana, we are familiar with the stubbornness of the people who live in Brown County's Nashville in wanting to keep their town a certain way. But on occasion an outsider like USA Today stumbles in to observe the quaintness of it all:
At a time when many small communities are competing for almost any sort of development to keep their economies alive, this town is doing just the opposite. Change is sometimes viewed as a threat here.
In downtown Nashville, which bills itself the Art Colony of the Midwest, there are no familiar franchises such as Starbucks. A CVS drug store, a McDonald's and a Subway sandwich shop are on the edge of town outside the "village district" where most shops are clustered. The CVS store's design was changed to match the town's aesthetics. Until this spring, there was a Long John Silver's fast-food restaurant in the village district. Its exterior fit in with the rustic ambiance.
How perfectly Hoosier -- what do you expect from a bunch of hicks? Can you just imagine such a thing in a big city, where all the real people live? Well, yes, actually:
A Chicago neighborhood is trying to restrict some big-name retailers from setting up shop.
Andersonville traces its neighborhood roots back to 1855. In recent years, it has been trying to recapture much of its historic charm.
"It was very important to us to look into some proactive measures to try to keep that character," said Ellen Shepard, of the Andersonville Chamber of Commerce.
Ann Christophersen, a bookstore owner in the neighborhood, said protecting the neighborhood character means fighting many big-name retailers.
In the wake of that awful school shooting, we've been reading a lot lately about those quaint Amish, trying to to preserve their old way of life amid a world of constant change. But there is a little bit of Amish in all of us. We want all of the benefits of change -- the technology, the better standard of living, the creature comforts -- but the more volatile it becomes, the more we want to protect our own little enclaves from its forces. For a much better description of this phenomenon than I can give, read "The Future and its Enemies," a book from a few years ago by Virginia Postrel, former editor of Reason magazine. It's worth the price alone to read her explanation of why Al Gore and Pat Buchanan are exactly the same.
