From cows to schools, community life is vital to our area

Guest Commentary

Reprinted with permission from The Caledonia Argus, September 21, 2005

CALEDONIA, Minnesota — I was born and raised in a big city. I like watching a lot of people on the streets, I do not get bothered by the noise of cars and I have survived the smog. That is why, when I was told that I would spend a few days in the silent Caledonia, I did not expect much of it. Moreover, I was afraid that my stay would be boring.

After all, what could a journalist expect if he is used to watching murders, suicides and corruption scandals every day in the newspaper? What would the local newspapers journalists write about, I wondered. And the answer was not late to come.

Lets start in the beginning: I am a journalist from Lima (Peru) who is in this country thanks to the World Press Institute. As well as visiting the main media of (the) United States in the big cities, the program includes spending a short time on a farm. I was sent to Caledonia, where George and Mary Jane Hendel lodged me. And I believe I was the luckiest one among my fellows.

Mary Jane, who is convinced that life in the country is about more than just milking cows, took me to several local institutions. Because of that, I was able to be at the jail on both sides of the bars and get an excellent explanation about the job that they do. I was surprised by its organization and cleanliness, unlike prisons in Peru, which are overpopulated and do not give the interns the slightest opportunity of regeneration, despite what is supposed to happen.

Then I visited the Women's Shelter and, once again, I was pleasantly surprised at seeing how the beaten women and children can have an opportunity to move on, in spite of their hard reality. Another place I could visit was the new school, days before the classes began, where I was astonished, specially, by the classroom of science. In my country, only the exclusive private schools could afford having a classroom like that, and only very few people can accede to those schools.

Then I saw the courtroom at the Courthouse and visited David, the editor of The Argus, with whom I could share some experiences about journalism in Lima and in Caledonia. I bumped into him again in a work commission, near La Crescent, where we kept on exchanging experiences.

And this is the answer I found: Indeed, there are things to write about in Caledonia. Perhaps people like me, who live in big cities, only consider to be news the facts that have a scandal in the middle, a dead person as an ending or someone behind the bars. But community life is also important and I could verify it in this town, which overcame my prejudices and initial expectations in the best way.