I know almost absolutely zip about this, and that’s when I usually get myself into mucho trouble, but for some reason I feel compelled to blog on, even though on this one I’m reasonably clueless.

What caught my eye in yesterday’s Newburyport Daily News, February 21, 2006 was the headline, “Seniors want chairs returned to lobby” on page A3.

I remember that there was an article in the Newburyport Daily News a while back about how the chairs were going to be removed from the lobby of the Sullivan Building on Temple Street (for residents 60 and older). And how other plans were being made.

I remember thinking to myself, “Ooops if it was me, I wouldn’t go there.”

There is a lounge on the 8th floor of the Sullivan building, but it would be my bottom dollar guess that it would be rarely used and that the lobby would be the place to gather, greet and socialize.

If it was me, I wouldn’t be going up to the 8th floor, I would want to go where people come and go. Find out what’s going on. Feel connected to the people in the rest of the building.

I come from New York City, and the analogy that I come up with is people leaning out of their window, watching what’s going on, shouting out to the people down below. Or sitting on the stoop talking to people passing by. An easy, organic, human way to connect to the community. And an escape from and very good tonic for loneliness and isolation.

There are new plans for a smaller room downstairs. But it would be my guess that that might not be used as much as the lobby was. It might not have, what I call the “stoop” feeling. Something informal and community connected.

And even if I did live in the Sullivan Building and thought the new room downstairs would be a good idea, knowing how things work, it might take awhile. And I might feel, that that might not be enough time for me. And I might want those few chairs back down in the lobby too, so that I could feel less desolate and more connected to the world in which I had been apart of and contributed to for so many years.

Mary Eaton
Newburyport