Why do a small town's best and brightest young people relocate to big cities?

The common assumption is that they leave to seek better opportunities or more excitement.

Bill Kauffman has a different theory -- our teachers, civic leaders, parents and American culture try to convince rural young people that to be an achiever, you have to go elsewhere. There's little thought to the notion that you can achieve right where you're rooted.

Kauffman discusses this idea in a book review for the Wall Street Journal:

The sharpest insight in "Hollowing Out the Middle" is that "small towns play an unwitting role in their own decline" by inculcating, in school and too often at home, the belief that fulfilling one's promise means leaving for the city lights or the manicured suburbs. The purpose of education today, as Kentucky poet-farmer Wendell Berry argues, is to train young people to leave home. And so, the authors note, "the investment the community has made in them becomes a boon for someplace else."

Batavia is full of bright, young people who have decided to stay, or who have come back. I've met them. Batavia's future would be even brighter if we could convince more of them to stay and help build new businesses and invest in the community that nurtured them.

Read the whole thing.

Yesterday, Sunday, I rode with Batavia native, Elba resident, nationally known author, Bill Kauffman and WNED reporter and Darien resident Jay Moran down to Alfred to hear Bill deliver a speech on localism to a Green Party gathering at the university there. The video is broken into three parts because of YouTube's upload limits. The total runtime is less than 20 minutes.

Next two parts after the jump:

An interesting new Web site passed over my desk today -- Front Porch Republic.

The site promotes the kind of localist, libertarian, decentralist philosophy that appeals to me.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that Batavia's resident (well, Elba, now, really) historical writer Bill Kauffman is a contributing editor.

Chief among the founders is Bill's friend Jeremy Beer, whom I met at a Muckdog's game last year. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

"The site doesn't really hit the left or right straight jacket," Bill told me today. "It's about exploring alternatives to empire and biggness."

He described the site's contributors as people of various backgrounds interested in localism, decentralization and "restoring human scale."

I asked him if this meant he's now blogging, knowing he hates the word.

"Technology people have given us such great words," he said. "Blog sounds like some unpleasant body function."

Blogging or not, it's always a treat to find another outlet to read Bill's vivid and insightful writing.

Author Bill Kauffman was recently invited to Emory University in Atlanta by a fledgling student group known as the Young Americans for Liberty. The group had organized an event on the theme of "the importance of traditional American values in the 21st century."

Kauffman, it turned out, fit that bill quite well.

From an article in the Emory Wheel:

“I always felt an intense homesickness no matter where I was,” Kauffman said. “I knew that where I was from mattered.”

Kauffman said that those who are immobile and choose to remain in a specific region are overlooked in modern society.

“Love’s truest, greatest expression as I’ve come to believe is immobility,” he said.

Kauffman gives vent to the rootlessness of American politicians, such as President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, and he speaks of the divide between "televised America" and the rest of us. But all is not lost, he says.

Despite the problems that have arisen due to the lack of connection between Americans and their hometowns, Kauffman said he believes the situation can be fixed.

“Our country is lost, adrift, but there are sign posts pointing us home,” he said. “We have to rediscover the places in which we live. It is our task to find the sacred in the everyday.”

There's an especially poignant bell struck here... for me, at least. With little seeming compunction, Kauffman digs trenches—between the nomadic and the sedentary, "the televised" and "the rest of us" (which latter are also equated with the sedentary), and the various subdivisions of the rooted and the rootless—and he takes sides. At least since Cain and Abel, and especially during the Exodus, the nomadic and the sedentary have been set at odds with one another. Be it divine or secular, judgment pronounced on the nomad is often fueled by the prejudice and derision of the sedentary—witness the gypsies of Europe. A person or people are exiled as a means of protecting the homeland, as a preservation of the sanctity of the species, as it were. Yet the nomad is no such simple fiend. The Wandering Jew is both cast out and yet forever among us: at home in his homelessness. Nomadism, itself, is both a curse and the mark of blessedness in the Old Testament.

It's fascinating to hear Kauffman take up this ancient dialectic, which for sure is a prominent theme in his writings, if I'm allowed to comment on the little that I have so far read. Yet, it's also unsettling that the author is so decisive on adopting the directives of one to the exclusion of the other. I'm all for the shades of grey, myself. I see the extremes and opposites more as determiners of one another than exclusive entities. If I were to adopt Kauffman's language, I would have to call myself "rooted-rootless"—home is a plural: I have the one made by my family, several made by friends, even a few I notched out myself on the headboard of my own lonesome living in distant geographies...

But back to what's poignant here... despite Kauffman's own trench-digging, he is an incurable champion of the particular. Listen to what he says: "It is our task to find the sacred in the everyday." While I shy away from the language of the sacrosanct, I follow the same sort of maxim. It's why I call myself "a voracious pursuer of the idiosyncratic," which amounts to the same thing: a belief that the individual things, if they can be found—like so much else in this world of ours, they, too, have become rare and endangered—will speak the most to us about ourselves and the general things we only purport to understand.

So... really, all this to ask: Where do you fall? Are you an inveterate caster of deep and permanent roots? Are you a nomad? Do you feel like me: a "rooted-rootless" believer in the pluralism of home? Do you distrust one side or the other? What of the everyday? Is it sacred or does it just get in the way?

Congratulations to the Daily News, which announced in the paper today that the publication will go online sometime "within the next few weeks." Keep an eye on the print version to find out when the site will be ready for viewing. Folks can log on at www.thedailynewsonline.com once the site is up and running.

In other news, reporter Joanne Beck wrote an article on the fire last night at an Oak Street home. That news was featured early this morning on WBTA and picked up a little while later by The Batavian.

Fire hydrants will be flushed starting at 9:30am, Tuesday, in the area of Pearl Street, Meadowcrest Drive, River Street and Ellicott Street.

Author Bill Kauffman was honored with the Andrew Eiseman Writers Award in nonfiction for his book Look Homeward America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals. The award is given out by the University of Rochester. For more on the award, visit the University of Rochester Web site.

We encourage you to pick up a copy of the Daily News at your local newsstand. Or, better yet, subscribe at BataviaNews.com.

Bill Kauffman's latest column for The American Conservative magazine is about the annual reading of John Gardner's works at the Pok-A-Dot, or as he spells it, the Pokadot (The Batavian may need to change its stylebook).

The piece is titled Gardening at Night (registration required for PDF version).

Our literary-culinary venue is the Pokadot, Gardner’s favorite diner, the unselfconsciously funky eatery at the epicenter of the Italian-Polish southside. (Gardner, a Welsh Presbyterian, frequently teased his people for their anti-Italian-Catholic prejudices while sharing them: a neat way to have your tortaand eat it too.)

...

Pokadot readers have included Gardner’s family and friends and people mentioned in his books, but most of us—teachers, a dairy salesman, our independent bookseller, and my wife, daughter, and I—know him only through the stories he wrote and the stories that are told about him still. (My dad, a few years behind him in school, said that Gardner was “weird.”)

A few regulars sit at the counter and sip coffee, bemused by the proceedings —maybe even edified, I like to kid myself.

Darrick Coleman covered this year's reading for The Batavian. His post and video are here.

While on the topic of Bill Kauffman, we recently found a video of a lecture he gave two years ago on Restoring American Regionalism. On the same site is a more recent lecture on Wendell Berry on War and Peace.

After 18 months of living in Batavia, local blogger Martin Szinger is getting settled into life in his new home town.

I was born and raised the Town of Tonawanda, a first-ring suburb of Buffalo. As an adult, I moved out to the "country" in Genesee County, Town of Batavia. Always Buffalo-facing, I never gave much thought to the City of Batavia, five miles to the east, other than it being the shopping destination of choice for most of life's daily needs. I came to understand that most of Genesee County is more likely to be Rochester-facing - we got the 585 area code with them, bland pollsters operating from a half a world away assume we watch the Rochester TV stations, and so on. But I never gave much consideration to the idea that any significant number of people could be Batavia-facing.

Great way of putting it: That you can live in Batavia and not look to Buffalo or to Rochester, but actually be Batavia-facing.

It's probably no surprise that Martin getting knee deep in appreciation for Batavia coincides with his reading Bill Kauffman's book.

Slowly, I've become more interested in the history of the place. I've just finished reading Bill Kauffman's Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette, in which the author's classic experience of the Native Son returning to his small hometown is set in the very same Batavia. It's his vehicle for bemoaning so much of what's been lost in Small Town America and also celebrating the good in What Remains There, but it's also very much about Batavia. Literate (probably to a fault) and witty (to compensate), Kauffman produces a veritable parade of references that shed light on Batavia so as to almost move it from the Real to the Mythic. You can feel the love, and it's contagious.

And we're gratified to know that Martin reads The Batavian and that he is considering taking our advice to subscribe to the home town newspaper. We also encourage him to make a habit of WBTA.

You can enrich your life when you turn to your own home town and make it not just a place where you watch TV and sleep at night, but where you actually live.

This article is from April when Hillary Clinton was still a possible option. It is a very interesting read and, as the usual Kauffman style, illegitimizes all candidates as being from "nowhere... or everrywhere". In the end it is a very interesting use of 5 minutes of your time during this election season!

In 1969, novelist Norman Mailer ran for mayor of New York City on a promise to make the city the 51st state and a platform of self-governed neighborhoods.

Bill Kauffman has a short piece on Mailer's campaign posted on First Principles.

There would be no inane happy-talk about the “family of New York” from Norman Mailer. He realized that “the good farmers and small-town workers of New York State rather detest us.” Rather indeed. “The connection of New York City to New York State is a marriage of misery, incompatibility, and abominable old quarrels.” His concern was properly with his own brawling grounds, but he did see a favorable fallout for we hicks as well, for going it alone could spark “the development of what has been hitherto a culturally undernourished hinterland, a typically colorless national tract.”

Yes, Niagara Falls, Cooperstown, Lake Placid, Susan B. Anthony, Grover Cleveland, Washington Irving, John Brown’s North Elba—we are cultural and scenic starvelings for sure.

What does WNY have in common with NYC?

Here's an MP3 of a radio station interview with Bill Kauffman about his book on Luther Martin.

A little outdated, but I just found this article by Bill in The American Conservative on last month's "Bill Kauffman Day" at Dwyer Stadium.

Then there is the more recent TAC column about Lucine Kauffman, town supervisor of Elba. (to follow that link, you need to sign up or a temporary free account -- pretty painless -- and then be able to download the PDF).

The Republicans are indulgent of Lucine’s non-Republican husband, but then in a healthy society politics plays so small a role in our lives that who really gives a damn how others vote? Cold ideologies melt in the warmth of daily communal life.

I think of the local civic organizations in which, say, Assembly of God churchgoers and gays work side by side in the cheerful labor of neighbors. They can be friends because they are, to each other, rounded and fully dimensional. They are people, not cartoons.

This is nigh impossible in larger places, where such disparate folk would never meet and would exist to each other only on the flat screen of the TV set. Instead of Kate and Dave they would be “Religious Nut!” and “Fag!” How dreary. How lifeless. How very Red and Blue.

If you can, read the whole thing -- it's full of Bill's usual wit and fine writing.

On Saturday October 18, 2008, Genesee County residents gathered to remember John Gardner, a well-known novelist and university professor who was born in Batavia, NY. He wrote more than twenty works of fiction, children's stories, poetry, and literary criticism. Among his most popular novels are Grendel (1971), The Sunlight Dialogues (1972),  Nickel Mountain (1973), and October Light (1976). Gardner died in a motorcycle crash near Susquehanna, PA, in 1982. He is buried in Batavia's Grandview Cemetery.

Ten people volunteered to read excerpts of Gardner's works for the evening's program including author Bill Kauffman and his daughter Gretel, a student at Elba High School; Tracy Ford, Associate Professor of English at Genesee Community College; Batavia Muckdogs President Brian Paris; and Erica Caldwell, owner of Present Tense bookstore. This was the 12th annual "Batavia Reads John Gardner" event at the Pok-a-Dot.

In the Charelston City Paper, Dylan Hales reviews Bill Kauffman's new book about Luther Martin, and refers to Kauffman as "the patriot of Batavia." 

I kind of like that better than Gore Vidal's "sage of Batavia."

It's a favorable review.

As Kauffman aptly notes, the Founders are often revered as the designers of a "federal compact," wary of the dangers of big government tyranny.

In fact, it was the "anti-Federalists" who were the true advocates of self-government, and Martin was their most spirited proponent.

One of the implied theses of the book is that history is written by the winners, and we are all worse off for it. Kauffman is at his best noting Martin's unfair treatment by Constitutional scholars and historians, who have for the most part regarded him as "the town drunk, the class bore, the motormouth."

Kauffman thoroughly debunks this as obtuse obstructionism. In fact, Martin was a relatively modest participant at the Constitutional Convention. His attachment to the Articles of Confederation was predicated on a reverence for local government as well as the illegality of the usurpation of power promoted by Hamilton, Madison and the gang.

I just started reading the book last night.  I'll probably post something about it after I finish it.  The book can be purchased at Present Tense, where last I heard, there were still autographed copies available.

Richmond Memorial Library will host a book lunch today in the library's Gallery Room at 19 Ross Street in Batavia. Folks are encouraged to come by to hear Bill Kauffman talk about his new book (that's it here to the right) while they eat lunch. They call it "Books Sandwiched In," and it starts at 12:10pm and runs to about 1:00pm, long enough to get a healthy dose of culture, but not too long that you can't make it on your lunch break from work.

From the press release:

Bill Kauffman will talk about his new book, Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin. The Friends of the Library co-sponsor this free program. Bring your lunch; coffee, tea and cookies are provided.  All welcome. For more information, call the library at (585) 343-9550, ext. 8 or log on to www.batavialibrary.org.

Bill Kauffman spoke Sept. 9 at the Holland Land Office Museum dinner and Patrick Weissend recorded it as part of HOLM's ongoing podcast series.

You can listen to it here.

Bill's new book is Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin.

Luther was an anti-Federalists, a misnomer used to describe a group of people who opposed ratification of the Constitution because it would, they believed (and accurately predicted) that it would lead to a concentration of power in the national government at the expense of communities and states.  The opposition of the anti-Federalist did help lead to the drafting of the Bill of Rights.

In the podcast, Bill covers Luther Martin's biography and his opposition to the drafting and ratification of the Constitution.

The Muckdogs lost. Big time. The final score of tonight's big match with Jamestown was a blowout: 13-4.

The Jammers (44-29) now sit a mere half game back of Batavia (44-28) in the Pinckney Division.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn won again, to maintain a half-game lead in the wild card race.

All-in-all, a bad night at Dwyer Stadium.

Or was it?

Tonight was "Bill Kauffman Night." Bill threw out the first pitch, autographed books for fans who gave the correct answers to trivia questions, and his daughter and a friend sang the National Anthem and "America the Beautiful."

I sat with Kauffman and his friends and family in the third-base bleachers. It was a good lesson in what it really means to attend a minor league baseball game in a small town.

It isn't all about the game. It's about the camaraderie, shared memories and hearty laughs.

That said, not a single significant play was missed by the group and the level of baseball knowledge was higher than I've found in big league stadiums where I've seen games.

If that experience in "Little Elba," as General Manager Dave Wellenzohn calls it, could be captured in a marketing message -- if more families and groups of friends could better appreciate how much fun an evening at the ballpark can be, win or lose, the Muckdogs would sell out every game.

As much fun as the evening was, the highlight might have been meeting local legend John Hodgins.

After the fifth inning, when Wellenzohn thanked The Batavian for its sponsorship of the team in 2008, and pointed out that I was sitting with the "Little Elba" group, Mr. Hodgins came over and introduced himself.

I cringed at first. I thought he was going to complain about our "fly swat" post, poking fun at a cartoon he drew for the Daily News. Nope, he said. That didn't bother him at all. He's just curious about what we're doing and wanted to meet me. That, my friends, is quite a complement.

I've seen Hodgins art work. I'm impressed. I hope to own some of it some day. I'll feel honored for a long, long time that he wanted to meet me.

I also got to meet in person for the first time Russ Stresing. We chatted for ten minutes or so as the game drew to a close. That, too, was cool.

So, you see, a night at the ballpark is more than just about the game. It's also about the people.

You should go.

Yes, the division crown isn't wrapped up yet, but there is hope: The Muckdogs, sitting in the cat bird seat, have two home games against State College (18-54) who seem hardly to even be going through the motions anymore, while Jamestown must play third-place Williamsport (38-34).

After the game, however, Wellenzohn and the Red Wing's Dan Mason insisted that State College needs to be taken seriously. There's no guarantees.  With that said, you really need to get out to Dwyer Friday and Saturday and support the team.

Local author (Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette and Ain't My America, etc.) spoke this week at Ron Paul's Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis.

A two-part video has been posted to YouTube.

The normally mild-mannered scholarly writer really gets into it.

In part 2 Kauffman makes the case that localism, the idea that people should look first to their families and their neighbors for their sense of place, for a sense of peace, is asserting itself all over again.

Local authors Bill Kauffman, Den Linehan and Nick DiChario will be at Present Tense on Saturday, Sept. 20.

They will be helping the store celebrate its third year in business. Even goes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., but the authors will be on hand at 1 p.m. for book signings.

Kauffman will be there is support of his new book, Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin.  Kauffman's previous books include Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette, Ain't My America, America First! and Look Homeward America.

Den Linnehan is a photographer who's books focus on Upstate New York.

Nick Dichario is a science fiction writer and his latest book is Valley of Day-Glo.

On Friday, Sept. 19, author Christopher Paolini will be at the store at 11 p.m. for a release party of his new book, Brisinger. Costumes are encouraged. UPDATE/CORRECTION: The author will NOT be at the store.  This is merely a local release party.

On Tuesday, September 9th the Holland Land Office Museum will have a dinner program at the Emmanuel Baptist Church, 190 Oak Street. The dinner is open to the public and will feature the Church’s famous Swiss Steak dinner, served family style. The dinner begins at 6:00 p.m. The price of the dinner is $9.00 per person.

After dinner, our special guest speaker will be our very own Bill Kauffman. Mr. Kauffman will be taking time out from his extremely busy book tour schedule to promote his latest book, Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin.

Martin was a delegate from Maryland to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. He opposed a system of government where the large states would dominate the small ones. He believed a new central government would have too much power over state governments and would threaten individual rights. Not finding support for his ideas, Martin eventually walked out of the convention.

To reserve your spot at the dinner, RSVP’s are necessary. Please call or email (director@hollandlandoffice.com) the Museum by September 3rd at 343-4727 to reserve your spot at the dinner. The book is due out in the middle of September, but we will be fortunate enough to be the first place in the United States to sell the book!

Much has been made of Batavia's mall in recent weeks. So we here at The Batavian thought to turn to a citizen who has never been afraid of expressing his opinion on the subject, Bill Kauffman, author of Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette. Kauffman has often used this mall in his writings for a national audience as an example of big government gone bad. In particular, we asked Bill Kauffman what he thought of City Council President Charlie Mallow's recent comment that the city should consider demolishing part of the mall.

Here's what he had to say:

The mall ought to have been dispatched long ago to that circle of hell reserved for brutalist architecture. For 30-plus years it has been a monument to misplaced faith in big government and capital-p Progress. Urban renewal was a catastrophe for many American cities, Batavia not least among them. The demolition of old Batavia was a crime against our ancestors, ourselves, and our posterity. Any discussion of human-scale, pedestrian-friendly, small business-centered alternatives to what remains of the mall is welcome. More than that, it's a sign of civic health. Batavia still matters. (And while we're at it, perhaps that imbecilic and pretentious spelling of "Batavia City Centre" can be corrected to "Center." Batavia is neither Canadian nor a suburban strip mall straining for "class.")

What do you think?

Another YouTube discovery this morning -- a two-part radio interview with Bill Kauffman. The primary theme of the interview is anti-war conservativism.

The interview was broadcast on July 22, 2008 on 1250 AM WTMA talk radio in Charleston, South Carolina.