My house is on the common of a New England town. Until about 25 years ago, there was no street name for the lane that passes in front of my house, and no house number -- mail was simply addressed to "The Common." Life here is in some ways reminiscent of earlier times -- I walk to the library, town hall, a pond, the fire and police stations, three churches, a burial ground, both schools, and the general store.
In fact most of what appears to be my front yard is town land (a neighbor a couple of doors up has a front porch on the Common). The canny Yankees of the 18th and 19th centuries incorporated as much of the Common into their land uses as they dared, which gives us more modern folk some interesting insurance issues.
So the title of this blog is partly literal -- every walk or drive I take begins and ends at the Common, and the theater of small town life -- Christmas tree lighting, the planting and harvest festivals, the parades for Memorial Day and 4th of July -- has played in front of my windows for two decades. I've been a member of the Historical Commission here for many years, so I know the place fairly well. I intend to report and chew over some parts of my life here.
But as you might imagine I mean to take a broader view of the title too. Though a scientist by training (physics Ph.D.) and a computer programmer by profession, I've always had an interest in the meaning of government. I took courses at Yale that George W. Bush, with whom I overlapped a couple of years, clearly didn't, like Political Science 50a and b, "Political Theory." I'm NOT going to talk 2008 election politics, except when it provokes thoughts about issues like the relation of church and state, or the meaning of "liberal." You're much more likely to hear about 17th century Massachusetts town government and the Puritan church (I've discovered that a lot of people, even here, have a cartoonish view of the Puritan world), not likely to hear about the latest polls or attack ads.
