I don’t really like football. As confessions go, that’s not a very good one since I say it all the time, lest I be confused for someone who knows or cares what a fullback is.

The weird part is that I nevertheless love when Virginia Tech plays a home football game here in Blacksburg. Last week’s was a doozy, the biggest game of the season. Clemson (they’re good, apparently) and ESPN and rabid Hokie fans thronged the town, mingling under a beneficent blue sky. I put on my Virginia Tech t-shirt and felt bizarrely abuzz with excitement. Quinn explained me to myself. “You like a spectacle,” he pointed out.

Circuses. Parades. Fairs. Festivals. Any event that’s splashy and thrilling, that invokes a holiday-time aura of excitement, I love. In a town where fall football games mean thousands of people walking downtown and tailgaters grilling in every campus parking lot, a game is just the kind of extravaganza that appeals to me. Or rather, not the game itself, but the human spectacle that accompanies it.

There’s a place attachment benefit to community spectacles as well, since they’re often tied to our place identity. Big events like fairs and football games differentiate and unite us, coming to symbolize community togetherness. Yesterday was Blacksburg High School’s Homecoming parade, fifteen minutes of teenage football players and school board members floating past on truckbeds, while art club members like my older daughter pressed candy into the hands of kids. The sidewalks were thick with people we knew. The parade didn’t just look like unity. By providing a communal experience for everyone to share, it actually made us feel more united.

The energy of it, the spectacle of it, enlivens our community. When something special is happening, it confirms our belief that our town is special. Which of course it is. Even if we, ahem, lose the big football game.

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Shameless self-promotion portion of the newsletter: “Warnick’s book gives me hope that whether we stay or go, we are equipped to learn to be happy wherever we are.” I liked Kristy Ramirez’s heartfelt post at Parent.co on learning to love a city that doesn’t fit.
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7 items of interest

1. Placemaking through portable ping-pong.
2. “You can empower and invest in your new downtown residents and let them be the ambassadors for our growing urban paradises, or you can ignore them and build casinos.”
3. When disasters strike (and there have been so many lately), recognized public gathering spaces and socially connected residents foster resilience.
4. In other words, neighbors who know each other save each other.
5. “People say, ‘Go to school and go make something of yourself.’ It’s like you couldn’t make something of yourself here.” Wisconsin’s problem.
6. Ten good reasons to build community.
7. Twelve ideas for learning to love where you live.