{"id":305,"date":"2004-03-18T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2004-03-19T00:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2004\/03\/18\/a-feeling-of-insignificance\/"},"modified":"2004-03-18T20:33:09","modified_gmt":"2004-03-19T00:33:09","slug":"a-feeling-of-insignificance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2004\/03\/18\/a-feeling-of-insignificance\/","title":{"rendered":"A Feeling of Insignificance"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I was reading the Boston Globe (on-line) today and the front page had an article about a town in Maine that will no longer exist beginning this summer. Natural disaster you say? No. Planned reservoir flooding? No. Toxic waste site? No.<\/P>
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This town has 25 people. TWENTY-FIVE! They’ve discovered that they can’t meet the required 7 people in attendance at  town meetings. In fact, at the last meeting, they had to wake a sick person out of his bed so that the meeting could take place. The town’s records (births, deaths, marriage, etc…) are all stored in a drawer in the town clerk’s house because the town hall is made of exposed plywood and not structurally sound. Did I mention that the town clerk is also the overseer, school committee member, tax collector, treasurer, registrar and deputy fire warden? Damn – and I sometime complain that my life is too stressful.<\/P>
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There’s something about small town life that appeals to me, though. I like the idea that I’m part of a community. I mean, you’d have to know your neighbors in a town that small. <\/P>
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And then here I am in Boston. There are more than 25 people living on our floor alone in this building – yet I couldn’t tell you the name of one of them. I’m nobody here…but if I lived in Centerville, Maine – I could be the entire government. I could be the man!<\/P>
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Well, one thing I wouldn’t be in Karl-ville would be restaurant chef. Here’s tonight’s dinner: chicken perogi’s with asparagus.<\/P>
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\"\"<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reading the Boston Globe (on-line) today and the front page had an article about a town in Maine that will no longer exist beginning this summer. Natural disaster you say? No. Planned reservoir flooding? No. Toxic waste site? No. This town has 25 people. TWENTY-FIVE! They’ve discovered that they can’t meet the required […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}