This week, I went to the Mid-Winter Meeting of the American Library Association in Seattle. I went to a talk about “social infrastructure” by Eric Klinenberg. He is a sociologist from the University of Chicago, where I went to college and graduate school. He teaches at New York University.
Klinenberg believes that a strong social infrastructure makes people happier, lengthens life spans, and increases the chances that people will live through a natural disaster.
Up here in the Pacific Northwest, we don’t hear of neighbors dying in hurricanes, wild fires, or tornadoes. The last big earthquake only caused one death in the entire Puget Sound area. The Big One is predicted to be much more severe, but it’s hard to get worked up about it in comparison to the deadly heat and cold waves that kill the elderly in the big cities of the Midwest and Northeast like Chicago and New York every few years. We have our forest fires, but the threat of fire on the rain soaked west side of the Cascade is not the terror of dry eastern Washington, Oregon, and California.
But I was still interested by Klinenberg’s talk. His social infrastructure is the set of institutions that bring neighbors together and foster a sense of caring for the other members of the community.
In my own community of Ferndale, an example of social infrastructure of the past was three-hand pinochle in the back room of the old Cedars Tavern on the corner of Main and Second (Now Outlaws Saloon). Farmers, construction workers, and other folks played cards and gossiped on rainy afternoons. I don’t know if back-room card games are still around, but while they went on, they brought together the community, cutting across social and cultural boundaries in ways that some closer-knit organizations, like churches, or civic organizations like Rotary or Kiwanis, do not. Of course, churches and civic organizations have an important place in social infrastructure, but they are not the same as broader based institutions.
The Ferndale Public Library is also an example. Folks of all ages and economic position mix together in a new and airy building. Kids attend story-times. There’s a LEGO club. Teens have Whatcomics and a readers theater. Adults have their book clubs, computer sessions, English practice sessions, and stress management classes. All ages read and check out books and magazines, borrow music and videos, and use free wi-fi and internet terminals. A librarian will help you find instructions for rebuilding the smoke lift on a 1954 Farmall B. Most importantly, folks see and interact with each other. Go into the library. Getting a smile and nod from a complete stranger there is the easiest thing in the world.
Another example is the Ferndale public school system. Kids are educated in schools, but schools do more than educate. When I entered the first grade, the first refinery, then Mobil, was completed at Cherry Point. I went to school with kids who had just arrived from Olean, an oil refining center in western New York State. Their parents were transferred to Ferndale to run the new plant. I remember going to PTA potlucks and other school events during which my parents met these new and different neighbors. Later, with the opening of another refinery and an aluminum plant, the population of Ferndale expanded and diversified. The schools, especially the high school, where the entire district turns out regularly for football and basket ball games, was an important force in welding the community together.
Social infrastructure brings people together who would not ordinarily mix in their work and home life. The school brings together parents and children, causes them to get to know one another at ball games, school concerts, plays and other events. Ferndale has always needed this, we still need it now. The Whatcom County Health Department reported this month that two Whatcom County communities with healthy social infrastructures (Bellingham and Lynden) stand out with lower rates of death from heart issues and cancer.
The social fabric of Ferndale has changed in the last 60 years. Back room card rooms have been replaced by a gleaming casino. The high school of a few hundred students that I graduated from is now the largest in the county. The high school building, which was dated in 1967, is still in use. In a few days, Ferndale will vote on a school bond to rebuild the high school and performing arts center. If the bond succeeds, Ferndale will carry on a tradition of a healthy social infrastructure that has kept the community going for over a century.
Disclaimer: I’m chairman of the board of trustees of the Whatcom County Library System and I use the Ferndale Public Library at least once a week. I haven’t been enrolled in high school for over fifty years.