As the COVID-19 restrictions slowly, slowly ease off, like a huge snowpile melting away in the spring, we Toy Towners are getting back to our accustomed activities and habits. There will be some lasting changes, and some new habits that will linger--like wearing masks, which not only slowed down COVID-19, it stopped us from having a flu season. Toy Town Pub will be opening on May 29 (with a floor so shiny, you may want to wear sunglasses).

But as we look forward to getting out of our houses, back to work, and back to socializing, questions about our community are also reviving, questions that have been sidelined for more than a year. The Master Plan Committee and HEAL Winchendon have been asking you a lot of these questions, but concrete plans have mostly been waiting until they could be implemented (when will the amphitheatre construction start in the Community Park? And the Central Street project?).

What does it mean to be part of our community, and what kind of community are we? Every spring, when the snow melts, it reveals...garbage. Trash, refuse and garbage all over the place, in some locations much worse than others. Discarded nips bottles by the thousand, beer cans, Dunkin and Cumby's drink cups, candy wrappers. Scores of tires, including along walking trails in the woods (how did they even get there?). Mountains of paper, old furniture, junked baby strollers and car seats, ratty old clothes, old mattresses (all these often pile up around clothing donation boxes). Car parts, old TVs.

Some of this may be dumped by out-of-towners, but most of it isn't. It seems that some Toy Towners--and it doesn't take many--lack a certain pride of place in their town. I'd love to see nips banned, personally; not only do they account for a major amount of litter, every nip means someone was walking or driving around drunk. At least we should make that harder to do. But people who trash the lawn of a church, or their neighbor's woods, clearly aren't playing with a full deck.

On May 15, Winchendon residents will pitch in for the annual Earth Day volunteer clean-up. (For those who were concerned, the $2,500 in Board of Health funding for a dumpster is intact, and will be part of the Board of Health budget going forward.) These volunteers work their tails off picking up trash along town roads and on town property. The Scouts have already done yeoman's labor cleaning up trash at the Winchendon Community Park.

But why do they have to? To what better use could their energy and dedication be put if they didn't have to clean up after, excuse me, a lot of pigs?

Decades back, sociologists used to talk about "alienation". This didn't have anything to do with immigrants. It meant the growing problem in America for Americans to see themselves as isolated individuals rather than members of a community, or a group, or even a nation. People were sitting alone, watching TV, feeling entirely apart from other Americans--"alienated" from their societies. People who are alienated feel no obligations to their community because they don't recognize any benefits from their community.

Communities aren't just created in Town Halls and presented to the public. They're built out of the connections that we all make with each other.

Before the Town Election, one of the candidates went to the Board of Selectmen to protest about being told to remove their campaign signs from public properties around town. There was a long discussion around this, in which other cases of people being told to remove signs were mentioned, and places in town where signs appear came up.

But what struck me about this debate was that it missed the whole point of candidates having campaign signs in the first place.

You don't put up the signs yourself. The whole point of campaign signs is to get your supporters to put them up for you--in their own yards or on their property. The whole point is to show the world how many supporters you have. You offer them campaign signs as a perk, a way that they can help your campaign. A candidate who puts up all their signs themself can't have many supporters!

By getting as many people as possible to put up signs, candidates are building a network, a web, connecting all their supporters into more than simply individuals going to the polls alone. They're building social capital and helping people see things they have in common. Not a bad reward for a few cardboard-and-wire campaign signs!

But of course campaign signs can't go on public property, any more than specific religious symbols like Christmas creches or other partisan signs. Public property belongs to everyone. It can't be labeled with any one person's or one group's opinions or beliefs or interests. That's just the way it works. Sometimes private property owners don't really care about signs going up, but asking them is a good way to start a relationship.

People who really feel connected to their community, and respect its differences and diversity, understand this intrinsically. But people who are alienated, an army of one, standing alone in the world...they don't get it. And we all need to get it.

Every spring we'll be picking up trash, and every election we'll have election signs. But we can ask ourselves--how do we prevent the trash from being thrown where it shouldn't be? And how do we get our message out in a way that creates unity, rather than isolation?

Inanna Arthen