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  1. What is “Here”? Notes from the Field Thursday, October 01, 2009

    Josh McManus is one of CreateHere’s co-founders and Creative Strategists. About to embark on a month-long trip abroad through the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, he sent us this dispatch from the road.

    Today I find myself in our nation’s capital, doing highly uncharacteristic things. First and foremost, wearing a suit and a name tag that’s not permanently part of my yellow shirt. But I’m also awash in other unfamiliar feelings.  

    Most notably, I miss home.  

    This is only further compounded by the fact that this name tag hanging around my neck simply has my name and the combined words “Create” and “Here.” As I meet new people, they tend to study the tag, ponder for an uncomfortable minute and then ask, “Sooo, where is Here?”. I usually only get a moment to find words befitting a place that captivates me. That’s why I wanted to write more here.  

    Now, Home is an elusive concept in a digital society, and Here is even more esoteric. Let me expound a bit more on what I mean.

    First, Home. My home is a topographical “saucer” on the earth where the land and the water intersect with the Southern sky in a way unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been. It’s the first major break in a mountain chain that runs hundreds of miles to the northeast, a geographical touchstone that has directed settlement patterns for thousands of years.

    And it is a fertile valley in many senses. Our agrarian past is not so distant and our fields and surrounding foodshed are putting more sustenance on local tables by the day. The spirit of innovation that found roots in primary elements like metal and sugar is today reemerging in areas like clean energy, transportation, sustainable manufacturing, technology, and design.

    Perhaps most importantly, it’s a place where people come together to do things that are larger than any one individual.

    On the subject of people it should be noted that we, the citizens of Here, are wildly different. Our ages, our backgrounds, our incomes, our educations, even what we individually regard as quality of life. Here is all over the map. Still, there is on constant: an overwhelming sense that our individual pursuit of happiness is advanced by thinking and acting in ways bigger than ourselves.

    And before you accuse me of being pollyannaish about Here, let me also say: we’ve come so far, but we have farther to go. Our rising tide has not lifted all boats. Our growth and vehicle patterns have isolated entire areas of our city and groups of people that somehow seem forgotten. These people and places teem with unrealized potential but often stand before barriers to entry that seem insurmountable. This unrealized potential should stand as a call to action to each and every engaged citizen to never declare “mission accomplished.” Community building is a process, not a static goal, far on the horizon.

    So, where is Here? Here is home. Here is Chattanooga. Here is the best city in the world, not for any individual attribute but for a spirit that admits, anything is possible when people care equally about themselves as for others. A city rich in history and ripe with potential standing on a precipice. A city spreading it’s ever strengthening wings about to embark on another twenty-five years of incredible change and progress with an eye for the benefit of all and an uncompromising commitment to quality. A city that I love and can’t wait to get home to.

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