Westport

Now that Write Here Westport is ending, I feel regret that it is over. It has been a unique experience for me, not only because of its place-focusing design, but because it has opened my eyes to such a variety of facets of my town. I think back on where we’ve been this last month and the different relationships I have had with the places we visited. Some are today almost daily spaces in my life; the Y, the Senior Center, the Library – some are current but only on occasion; the Playhouse, Longshore, the Farmers Market and some bring echoes of a vital past; Earthplace (when it was the Nature Center), Compo Beach, Wakemen’s Town Farm – and there were a few first timers, even for me who has lived here since 1956; the police station, Toquet Hall, the Boardwalk at National Hall, the (Rolnick) Westport Observatory. All have given me a sense of place, but perhaps more importantly, it is the people who were present at each that leave the most indelible mark. I have a sense of Longshore but it is the words tumbling out in enthusiastic intensity about the Gatsby tie, that makes the strongest connection- or the policeman that started out a journalism major, and still brings strengths from that talent to his vocation for law enforcement – the head of Parks and Rec who fought a career that she brings so much to, the site supervisor at Compo whose background in marketing and policing helps to make us safe and welcome, the naturalist at Earthplace that traces her love of nature to a hummingbird’s nest, a town historian who was with us in a few sites and speaks his love of place in every word. Places and people, that’s what makes up my Westport now, my legacy from Write Here.