Where everybody
knows your name

“The key to happiness upstate is importing everything… from food to friends,” a recent article published in “W” said about living in Sullivan County. Actually the article sort of mixes Sullivan, Ulster, and Dutchess county together in a piece that says upscale is upstate and not the Hamptons.

But after reading the August edition of “W” I have come to the conclusion that the magazine and the article simply miss the point.

“W” is a fashion magazine published by Fairchild Publications Inc. Filled with double-page advertisements for fashion designers from Giorgio Armani to Yves Saint Laurent, it encourages its readers to aspire to fine goods and services. It presents a world that I have no use for, and undoubtedly miss the point of, because of my own sense of rural values and life choices.

Throughout this large format 214-page slick and beautiful magazine, I find the sense of style and success in dichotomy with the sense of self. On the one hand it unabashedly elevates the rich and the famous (and the designers they wear) while it reveals the intimacies of the single life of Dennis Quaid who has found that life is so much easier when “you finally get beyond ego and accept that the world just never syncs up with what we want it to be.”

Which is, in the end, the point of it all. What do we want life to be? What does being in sync mean to us?

For me, and many of us who have chosen to live in this rural piece of world, being in sync is not about being in style. It’s about living a life that makes sense. It’s about being at peace in our homes and in our environment. It’s about the relationships that we are able to maintain and about our commitment to community.

And it is the lack of understanding of the commitment to community that is most distressingly absent from the “Moving On Up” magazine article.

Moving into any community is not about building a compound, importing friends and food and feeling isolated and superior from the surrounding world. (That, ironically, is more a statement of the life status seekers are escaping.) Moving on up, even just for the weekends, is about finding balance. It’s about developing an understanding and protective attitude about our natural surroundings. It calls for an appreciation of the inherent integrity of the subject at hand, not unlike the knowledge that is necessary to appreciate the work of a brilliant fashion designer or the essence of a fine wine. It necessitates a respect for the inhabitants and history of the community.

Delving into this communal knowledge is rewarding and it is there that this area shows itself to be exceptionally special. Many a New York City theater professional has remarked that the audiences they find in Sullivan, Wayne and Pike counties are warm and responsive. The theaters are filled with people who want to be engaged and entertained by their theater experience, not critical or bored by it. Actors, singers, musicians and artists find relief in the rural performance experience and a renewal of joy about their chosen profession.

The arts community as a whole is supportive of itself. Driven by joy, it is possible to support and nurture each other, without competition and ego battles.

So to the readers and believers of “W” magazine I say welcome. This place isn’t about fine goods—although we have supplied the rest of the world with natural resources for decades. Ironically it’s about knowing our neighbors, saying hello in the supermarket and enjoying what it means to live in a small town where life and people can maintain a healthy balance of interdependence. (Did you ever have a dream of being a fireman? Our volunteer emergency services always need a hand.)

And to those of us who came here long ago or never left, take a look at “W” magazine (I have a copy here at the office) and take pleasure in the knowledge that we live in “New York’s hippest hideaway”—some of us full time!

Laurie Stuart, Editor