It was a strange invitation for an independent author to receive: “We want you to have a booth at this event, but you can’t sell books.” But it was free and they would buy a few of my books to give away.
The event was organized by Together Place peer-run recovery center, in collaboration with Food and Medicine and Wabanaki Health and Wellness. The goal, they said, was to bring a sense of community to an underserved area of Bangor, Maine. The very community where Stephen King grew up.
I don’t know what it was like when Mr. King lived there, but today the area between Talbot Park and Coe Park is a rough part of Bangor, Maine. It’s the kind of place where old convenience stores are boarded up and covered in graffiti, the kind of place where you’re not surprised to find a used hypodermic needle in the grass.
But not that day. That day, the sun was out and the trash had been cleaned up. The park was filled with people. Kids climbed the jungle gym and jumped in the bounce house. Adults, set up tables and tents, stocked books for the book swap, or limbered up for the fun run.
Everyone talked about the raffle. The price of entry was simple: one idea. Just one idea for how we could improve this community and you could win a tee-shirt, a book, a gift certificate.
What is a community?
Community is one of those words we all use, but may not really be able to define. Merriam-Webster, my preferred dictionary, says community is a “unified body of individuals.” But the word can be used to talk about the people or the place. It can mean a smaller group inside a larger group, or a “body of persons” (what?) within a larger society.
So a community is like a set of nesting dolls. Open it up and you’ll find a smaller one inside. Except, that’s not quite right because people can belong to multiple communities at the same time.
Consider my friend Christopher Packard, author of Mythical Creatures of Maine. He’s an organizer in the author community, responsible for resurrecting the Maine Authors’ Book Fair. He’s also a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a community of people who love and live history. He spent the first half of the event dressed in historical garb, running between the sword combat exhibitions and our local author tables.
So when we talk about building our community, what exactly are we building? Is it our infrastructure, our relationships, our empathy?
Maybe all of the above.
How To Help Build Community
All I know for sure is that I felt like a part of a “unified body” that day. When I watched the circle dance as Firefly the Hybrid played a long-lost song of the Wabanaki people, that was community. When Morgan Talty, author of Night of the Living Rez, encouraged everyone to write and tell the stories inside them, that was community. When I talked to a woman about the loss of a loved one and how to help a child through it, that was community.
So maybe community isn’t something we are. It’s something we do. It’s a choice to turn toward our neighbors instead of away from them.
Everyone has an opinion on how to solve the problems of the drug epidemic, overdoses, homelessness, food insecurity, lack of transportation, poverty…
I don’t know how to solve any of those. They’re much too big for one author to tackle. All I know is that building a sense of community must be part of the solution.
The video above features the dance circle with music by Firefly the Hybrid. You can also watch the news story about this event.