I just can't get over the community outpouring of love, assistance, caring, and support that is going on in Reno, Nevada today, as it was yesterday, and the day before that. Please don't misunderstand me; this type of love has caught a brilliantly lit flame that has spread across our nation like the wild fire it should be.
In fact, by the time you are reading this it will have been one month since Brianna Denison, a young, bubbly, cute as a button 19-year-old college sophomore was abducted right out of the front living room of a friend's house.
The mere thought that a person could be innocently sleeping on a borrowed couch in the living room whilst close friends slept approximately 10 feet away and another friend just in an upstairs bedroom leaves me numb and in disbelief. Imagine going out having a bit of fun—dancing, laughing, being with high school friends, downloading from the rigors of college life, only to be abducted right off the living room couch!
This article is really about Williamsburg, Virginia. You see between the original landing site of Jamestown and Williamsburg, Virginia lies the way life had been. This is why we, whoever is reading, need education. We must be able to transmit societal norms and family values, personal values of decency, respect, and liberty that need to go on from year-to-year, decade-to-decade, and so on.
If there has been one particular disconnect that has happened in America is just that—the loss, for whatever reason, of good old fashioned decency. Sure we all could probably name any number of reasons why this is happening but for now and for the sake of this article, I'm going with diversity, lack of immigration control, and entitling almost embracing action from other customs and traditions that were not part of the Founder's plans or found in any of the Founding documents. But first back to Williamsburg, VA.
Actually I should be paid for this…hey! I'm only joking! What I learned in Williamsburg was first; structure and planning. Second, unequivocal trust in one's neighbor; and third, how interlocked a community can and should be.
Unbeknownst to most the planning and design of the earliest towns, settlements, or gatherings of people, very much resembled a concentric circle out to the point furthest away where the walls (if needed) were built.
Actually one would have to get to the third or fourth tier of the outward sprawling circles before actually finding the residential living. Yet, right smack in the middle of the town is the largest building which served as: Town Hall meetings, the schoolhouse, the day-care center, the swap meet, but most of all it was the settlement's church. Everything else from the horse livery, Post Office, General Store, Doctor's offices, and all other commerce was conducted in the appropriate buildings that sprawled about from the center.
Folks what I learned in Williamsburg, Virginia was the living reality of the term "community" and how the design of the settlement fostered it. I don't know how or why precisely, but this much I do know; the structure of community has been lost in most of America; yet, in the small town of Reno, Nevada there lives on a spirit that gave me hope that America does have a future.
In Reno, an entire community joined for the collective good of finding one of their own—Brianna Denison—who'd been brutally abducted from a private home. The call to action came as soon as the other two friends realized that she was missing roughly 9:00 am on that same morning.
The city of Reno has reasons to be proud of it self. They mobilized by the hundreds, then the thousands by foot, horse back, helicopter, phone, fax, computer, and word of mouth to find this missing girl. Now that Brianna Denison has been found, I am sure that this community will bind together until they find the perpetrator of this heinous crime. Why?
Because they are a community.
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