MAIN STREET:

the outlook, environment, or life of a small town. (Dictionary.com)

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I begin with a question: Does Main Street still exist, or is it merely a metaphor or figure of speech? I ask this question because this phrase has become so important in our national dialogue over the past couple of years that it deserves to be clarified.

I grew up in a small town in Upstate New York. It was an industrial community, a hub of the paper-making industry which surrounded the upper lengths of the Hudson River. There was a Main Street in our town which ran one mile exactly from one end of the "commercial" area to the other. We had a unique term for it. We called it "overstreet." On Main Street you could find a grocery store, dress shop, men's clothing store, shoe store, W.T. Grant store, a liquor store, a couple of bars, six churches, three locally-owned pharmacies, a post office,a hotel, two garages, a flower shop, and a variety of other small, locally-owned businesses. For all intents and purposes, we were a self-contained community, and it was almost unnecessary to go to our neighboring city, three miles away, to shop for anything. That picture has changed dramatically, and many of those businesses have been replaced by nail salons, second-hand clothing stores, income tax preparation offices, and a variety of not-for-profit agency offices. The industries have changed just as dramatically, most having closed, moved South or out of the country. My hometown is part of what New Yorkers call the rust belt.

In many other parts of the country small towns still exist. But I wonder if they are still the same entities they were fifty years ago. When residents of those towns click on the TV they watch television news and programs originating from cities some distance away. They shop in Walmarts, part of one of the largest and richest corporations in the world. They drive cars which are manufactured overseas, or whose parts are imported for assembly in this country or Mexico. They shop on the Internet, and communicate via cell telephones, Blackberries, and computers. Their newspapers are, for the most part, driven in from cities before the crack of dawn. They have bank accounts, pensions, and savings instruments which originate from financial institutions located hundreds of miles away. Their groceries come from chains which are large and prosperous.

The reality is that Main Street may be a location, but it no longer represents an isolated, locally-grown society which is free from the influences of Wall Street, the Chicago markets, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, the WEATHER NETWORK, ESPN, or the myriad of channels available on their cable or satellite televisions. They are beholding to finance companies and insurance agencies to whom they are a number. Even many of the churches in which they worship are connected to larger, wider communions, and they have begun to experience the building of temples and mosques in small-town America.

In spite of the government and media's attempt to create a tension between Main Street and Wall Street,the truth is that they are inextricably tied together and incapable of being separated. This artificially-created tension is not helpful when we are attempting to re-build our economy and re-design the way we do health care, international relations, and social welfare in this country. The convergence of Main Street and Wall Street is a given.

I end with a question: Would it be worth our time, energy, and emotional stability to stop feeding a false dichotomy between the two and, rather, to identify and embrace the benefits to each which can come from a healthier relationship with each other?