A Chance To Make Some History (from Ashfield News, April 2007)

On Sunday afternoon, April 22, the Ashfield History Project will host a community get-together at Elmer's Store. The festivities begin at 3 p.m. There will be refreshments and a chance to visit. The centerpiece will be a conversation about what we need to include in our account of life in this town over the past half-century (since 1960).

Several people who have played prominent parts over this period will be on hand to give brief accounts of their activities. We will hear stories about the origins of Fall Festival, the renovation of the Town Hall steeple, the challenge of farming under modern conditions, and the planting of new businesses.

Mainly, though, we want to hear from people who have lived here, about people, projects, and events that helped to shape the town we live in.

History sometimes seems remote. When we focus on the past half-century, we are talking about people we know and events we ourselves have experienced. In producing a new history of the town, we are building a collective memory. We do this as a community, together.

We pride ourselves on being a radical democracy. Nowhere else do communities govern themselves by assembling, as many as choose to come, and deciding laws and public budgets together.

Our third history volume should partake of the same spirit. It should be made democratically.

Inevitably, much of what happened over the past five decades is already forgotten. In collecting the town's history, we are deciding what we think needs to be remembered. The book we produce will have to be highly selective. We hope you will join us in making the choices.

See you on Sunday afternoon, April 22, at Elmer's.

by Don Robinson