This and that, starting with a nod to community.

In our little town of Mechanic Falls, I’ve recently been to three funeral home viewings and a retirement party for longtime Public Works Director Scott Penney. Each one brought us together in a way I never witnessed while living in the suburbs and larger cities.

Sure, the passing of friends was a solemn occasion, and we’ll miss the self-effacing Scott and the pride he took in his crew. (His tribute at the American Legion included a potluck buffet that must have stretched for 25 feet.) At the viewings, we shuffled past the casket, paused respectfully, and then joined knots of people smiling, wisecracking, and reminiscing — like family.

There’s more in McFalls and, I’m sure, thousands of small, mostly rural, towns across the U.S. Here, when someone’s house burns down or a child needs an expensive prosthetic arm bone from Europe to beat cancer, the word goes out and we pack the Legion for spaghetti and a roll and a salad. Paying for the meal is part of the privilege of taking care of each other.

Then there’s the Madison Avenue “community.” Have you seen the ad where people spill out of their homes and businesses to march down the street, thrilled to be walking toward the truck-mounted camera in an evenly spaced, polite, mob? Why? It has something to do with Wegovy, but the details of the product escape me because I feel such overwhelming bliss at seeing so many people so happy. Doesn’t that just make you tingle with love for your fellow human beings?

But still, I have no idea where they were going on that walk. What are we, the consumers, supposed to think? Has anyone rushed out to buy Wegovy as a result? Ultimately, what do the makers of Wegovy think of us? Condescending is what it is. Takes me back to the hyper-masculine Marlboro Man ad, or the “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” sung by a choral group on top of a hill. They were after the “perfect harmony” that could be achieved if only we all got a sugar high from a drink that still has no nutritional value.

Two reasons to appreciate Maine: First, cars and trucks, lots of them in the big urban clogs where I’ve lived and done business. Here, no stop-and-start traffic, minimal stress behind the wheel. Second, little in the way of self-conscious upward striving.

By comparison, about 15 years ago as a freelancer, I wrote an application letter for a private kindergarten in Manhattan. The mother said she was “too emotionally involved” to write it herself. She paid me $100. I do so fervently hope the poor 5-year-old wasn’t rejected. That would have scarred her for life.

On a sad note, at Range Pond State Park in Poland last month, we sat in the shade about 30 feet from a well-fed family of eight or nine gathered in a circle and grilling something on charcoal that kept flaming up. With them was a woman (or girl) of indeterminate age who appeared to have a mental and/or physical disability. She had been sequestered in an adaptive chair facing the pond, outside the circle. While the picnic festivities proceeded, no one paid her any attention, although just before we left, someone had given her potato chips.

Now I’m no expert on caring for people with disabilities, and there might be a good explanation for her isolation, but it just didn’t look right. She should have been in that circle. 

On a baseball trip to the West Coast in August (Anaheim and Oakland), we strolled through the Japanese Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. In that memorably peaceful setting, discreet signage urged us to seek enlightenment. My immediate reaction was to recall the 2004 baseball playoffs when the Red Sox came back from three games down to beat the Yankees in four.

True story.

Dave Griffiths of Mechanic Falls is a retired journalist.