Sunday, August 17, 2008

This County - This time in History

When I left Venango County in 1975, it was a very homogenous place. The Barrow Civic Theatre in Franklin did not exist. It was a sports store. The Latonia Theatre in Oil City was a furnature store. I don't recall a single art studio. No coffee shops to meet in. My sense was, if you wanted to be involved in the community, you had to be connected somehow. It seemed you had to be tied to the right family and you had to fit the narrowly defined "right type" in order to be part of anything significant.
Some exceptions I recall were shows by the Civic Operetta in Franklin. I volunteered to usher plays at the high school and experienced some wonderful shows. Lil' Abner, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, 1776, Fiddler on the Roof... And I was fortunate to have been part of Franklin High's Madrigal group.
A teacher gave me the very first copy of MS magazine. I still have it. There were visionaries here. Coincidentally, many of the people I remember from those experiences now live in other places. But some remain.
I left and became part of other communities doing many of the things I didn't think would be possible in Venango County. I was active in the Federal Women's Program, NOW, Women's Networks, and discovered amazing Lesbian Feminist activists along the way. I spent time in Woman Only space - Spain, NYC, Upstate NY, Spokane, Wichita, areas in New Mexico, Minnepolis, Akron, Chambersburg...
The greatest observation I would offer from these experiences and these communities is that empowered women bring creative solutions to community issues. Women in leadership positions tend to be more inclusive and more willing to think outside of the box. Women tend to be more creative. And the men who support the empowerment of women tend to be more creative and self assured.
This brings me to the greatest change I see in Venango County. More women are now in leadership positions than ever before. Even in conservative circles, women are at the forefront. That's a huge change from 1975. It is changing the "feel" of Venango County. It's changed the face of the county. There are more cultural and creative outlets than ever before that are open and assessible to everyone.
This is what empowerment does. This what inclusion creates.

1 comment:

Peter Greene said...

Greetings, Person I Probably Know Because We Were in High School Together.

The coffee shop portion of your post jumped because, to me, it highlights part of the economics of change.

See, I do remember a coffee house or two back in the seventies. There was one for a while back on the corner behind what is now Shop & Save. I remember a few other attempts over the years, but nothing close to the success we have now.

A community has a coffee house because people go there and spend money.Now there can be many different reasons that they don't (the amateur hour approach to local business is another topic), but the fact is-- if the business doesn't make money, it goes away.

It makes me crazy to hear someone complain about businesses closing in our down town sections as they get in the car and drive out to Wal-Mart.

Every dollar in your pocket is an economic vote. Nowhere else is the concept of "be the change you want to see" more appropriate. People can, for instance, be cheerleaders all day for the Latonia revival project-- but if they don't go there and drop off some money, all their cheerleading is just empty noise.

"Somebody ought to do that" rarely gets anything done. Waiting for someone's permission to try something new rarely gets things done.

(I should point out that this isn't a specific response to the person or the post; just the tangent that this post sent me off on)