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A Little Car Tour Pour Toi!

It’s the holiday season, and nowhere have I seen such an preponderance of luminous holiday cheer than in our new community of Ravenna (which, by the way, was named by our founder’s fiance in 1799 after a city in Italy).

As many of you know, our “new home” here was built in 1810 and is one of the oldest residences in a town that boasts a preponderance of beautiful historic homes of all shapes, sizes and conditions. The through-line of these historic gems, for me, has been the discovery of a community the likes of which I’ve not seen in ages: There’s not a subdivision within sight of town (to my knowledge), and the old-timey feel of tree-lined streets, garden patches and 400 kids showing up at my front door for trick-or-trick has engendered in me a real interest in this town,  its history and how it has managed to maintain such a 1950s sense of neighbor-hood in a world that is moving much too quickly for anyone’s taste, if I may be so bold.

To digress a bit for accuracy’s sake, the median household income in Ravenna was $35,000 in 2009; this is not a wealthy town and it is gated no more figuratively than it is literally. What it is, however, is a diverse town, and somehow it seems to hold together through the range of income brackets. Perhaps a big part of the reason is because Ravenna remains a small town where people seem to know one another and where manners seem to count, for the most part.

While the purpose of these snaps is to give you a glimpse of small-town holiday cheer, what I really want to say is that I love this town for so many reasons: For the 80-something-year-old couple who live next door just because I love the mix; for the chef at Mimi’s who always remembers to ask us how the renovations are coming along; for the 18-year-old server at Guido’s who never fails to stop by our table just to say hello; for the kid who came around to sell us a discount coupon supporting local schools because he seemed so damned sincere; for the neighbor’s plumber who stuck his head over the fence to say hello and ended up coming in to check on a concern for us; even for the hourly workers at the local fast-food joints, who are 90 percent seriously nice, ultimately polite and actually smile at me. Where do you get THAT these days??

So, this one is dedicated to communities near and far that, in this day and age, somehow manage to keep it civil, personal and feeling like home.

Happy Holidays,