In November Mark and Cindy Hill of Dearborn Missouri won $587 million in the lottery. Did they buy a private island or a Ferrari each? No they bought their community a new sewerage treatment plant.
Of course the reason this story has made the news is that it
is surprising, this shock being evident in the numerous question marks and exclamation
points peppering the headlines. But it shouldn’t really be that surprising at
all. People naturally form connections to places and the people in them, and we
are in part a product of the communities where we grew up and in which we live
now. Obviously not everybody has pleasant associations with the places that
have shaped them but for those who do, giving to those places can in some ways be
seen as a natural extension of giving to oneself. In a world of such mobility and
individualistic values it is easy to lose track of these connections between self
and place but when you have a connection a place, to a community, your own
wellbeing becomes linked to the wellbeing of that community. While it is unlikely
that this story signals a cultural shift in which public utilities trump the
Ferrari as the purchase of choice after a windfall, maybe Mark and Cindy’s
sewerage plant will make us think a little more about the intertwinement of people and the places they inhabit.
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