Notes From My Knapsack 7-9-06 (see below for 7-16, a related column)
Jeff Gill

When Our Children Come Home

Along with camps and sports clinics and county fairs, kids are packing up in some households for college. Classes may not begin for weeks, but freshmen days on campus or early orientation or even "fall" sports get going in just the next few weeks.
These can be bittersweet days, all the more as most young people who travel away for higher education tend to stay away, returning for visits but very rarely moving home to work and live.
The Lovely Wife and I lived in West Virginia for six years, and were struck by how much political campaigning was focused on "bring our children home." Lines like "vote for me and we’ll keep our kids and grandkids here," or "my opponent has turned a blind eye to thousands of our young people moving out of state" were standard fare. No one was against this, it was more a question of who could make the better case for how their plans and policies would allow everyone’s descendents to stay near the home place, and not the other guy.
Meanwhile, the more this was the rhetoric, the reality just increased that college grads left the state, in ever larger numbers.
Then we moved back into Ohio, and what do you know: we’ve started hearing candidates slide references into ads like "and I’ll help keep our children working and living in Ohio."
Surely this is a fine idea that no one can argue with, but my fear is that as in West Virginia, and with so many other political footballs, we’ll hear the most ranting and raving about the stuff elected officials can’t do anything about, and little discussion of what they can affect.
Ohio has started competing with West Virginia in the rate of college graduates who move out of state, and by some measures we’re beating them in this category (keep in mind that they’ve already seen huge losses in years past, so we’re just catching up). Central Ohio is doing better than most of the rest of the Buckeye State, but population losses in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, and Dayton, along with rural Ohio, more than overwhelm our local vitality.
How realistic is the "keep our kids here" logic? Scott Russell Sanders, who spoke to freshmen at Denison last fall, spoke eloquently about the easy assumptions we have around the links between mobility and education and professional advancement. He encouraged students to think about finding a place to live and putting down roots there, even if it meant a certain loss of potential prestige, status, advancement, or even (gasp) income.
Sketching the social costs of rootlessness and vagrant culture, tracing them through non-sustainable practices and cultural amnesia, Sanders made (and makes) a strong case for why your life is better with roots. Meanwhile, American society does, in fact, presuppose that a person or a couple will move many times, across multiple states, until they reach some level of economic stability where they will then buy a vacation home in yet another locale.
For myself, I feel wistful about the place I still think of as home, and faintly envious of high school classmates who still live and work where we were students together. They take their kids to the camps we attended, picnic in the parks I explored as a kid, and go to church where we grew up.
And there’s a different sense of the same jealousy for those around me now who are marching in the same parade with their kids that they marched in as children, or are running events they watched their parents manage years ago.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send your thoughts about community to disciple@voyager.net.

* * *

Notes From My Knapsack 7-16-06
Jeff Gill

Send the Candidates To School

Last week I talked about two categories of people I know, those back in my hometown (in another state) who take their kids to the same camps we attended, picnic in the parks I explored as a kid, and go to church where we all grew up; I do envy them bit.
And there’s a different sense of the same jealousy for those around me now who are marching in the same parade with their kids that they marched in as children, or are running events they watched their parents manage years ago.
But there are actually very few people for me to feel that way about. I know maybe a half-dozen people who left either spot for college and ended back home to raise their families. Two back in my hometown are actually able to be there in large part because they don’t have any kids, and are free to do what they want, which for them happens to be back in northwest Indiana.
Licking County is a great place to raise a family, but the professional options for supporting a household can be limited.
Wait, you say, aren’t there lots of interesting, challenging, and even well paid jobs in central Ohio? Exactly: in Franklin, Delaware, and other surrounding counties. Beyond hourly wage jobs, many local residents are pursuing opportunities down the road (roads like the new 16/161). This means a family that stays in Licking, but whose wage-earners are spending ten and more hours per week in their car, time they don’t spend as youth group leaders or tutors or board members in Licking County.
Last I heard, out-of-county workplace directed giving to our United Way was pushing past 25%. That’s good news of a sort, but an indication of problems to come, as the landscape of volunteerism and local involvement shifts seismically.
Many local civic leaders are asking "what can be done to increase the number and type of jobs here in Licking County?" This isn’t an anti-bedroom community issue, so much as a very real concern about balance and wholeness in how to be a sustainable bedroom community.
And our children are still likely to advance themselves by moving away, for schooling and for after. Easy answers aren’t going to be real solutions from anyone running for office, but everyone can share the goal of creating a state where more people want to live, and can.
Development is getting to be dirty word in Licking County. We still have to make decisions on things like whether to support our growing schools with property or income taxes, zoning and stormwater management, the question isn’t yes or no, but good or bad.
Maybe even "good or bad" is a less useful distinction than productive and sustainable versus short term and short sighted. Education out of state is getting more attractive, and picking up your bachelor’s degree out of state greatly magnifies the likelihood you’ll not return.
Even recipients of Ohio higher ed degrees are moving away, but that’s not a reason to cut state post-secondary budgets. We need the economic energy of research and technology that comes from colleges and universities, because that’s where new jobs are born. We also want to lure capital for investment in Ohio businesses, and those dollars tend to follow campuses and the educated work force found around them.
6,000 plus students (a bit over 2,000 each) are pursuing post-high education in Licking County, at OSU-N, COTC, and Denison. Around 12,000 kids are in high school right now ‘round here, watching to see where their future is heading. I hope the campaigning going into this fall has some clear proposals for what candidates intend for our most vital economic infrastructure.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send your community news bulletins to disciple@voyager.net.