Yes, there’s a lot to be pessimistic about. This isn’t an easy time for anybody in the United States of Working Too Hard Just to Survive, except the upper crust which made it that way with their aforementioned braying idiocy/crass greed. But here in Struggle City, there are some shafts of golden hope streaming through the dark clouds. If we were truly paddle-less and up the creek, there wouldn’t be seven people trying to be mayor. We’d have to make someone be mayor, like we make people be on juries. If we were truly a dying town full of broken souls, we wouldn’t see the kind of art and music we have here. If we were truly a thing of the past, a decrepit soon-to-be-ghost-town just waiting for the last holdouts to leave so the tumbleweeds could arrive, we wouldn’t have the smart, funny and creative people we have all over the city. We wouldn’t have people who give far past the point of pain to help their neighbors.
Don’t get me wrong. There are still too many people here who will wake up in the morning without a job, without enough to eat, even, and without much in the way of hope that the new day will change much of anything. It’ll be a while until we can’t call Kingston Struggle City anymore. But when that day comes, we’ll know something about ourselves. We’ll know we can take it.
