My home on the web.

At long last, my hometown of Rochester, Massachusetts has an official town website. The new Town of Rochester site has a wealth of resources for town residents, including lists of appointed and elected officials, contact information for town departments, downloadable forms and documents like this year's town warrant. The site also offers plenty of helpful material for casual visitors, including a concise but thorough introduction to the town, a page on our proud history (first settled in 1638, Rochester was incorporated in 1686), a map page that graphically answers the oft-asked question "where the heck is Rochester?" and a photo gallery that provides some sense of the bucolic and pleasant character that has drawn many to the town. Not included in the gallery but present elsewhere on the town website is the evocative photo with which I started this post. The picture above offers an early morning glimpse of what old guidebooks describe as Rochester's "small but authentic New England town common," a common that includes the First Congregational Church (slightly right of center in the photo), the church vestry (left) and the Joseph H. Plumb Memorial Library (at right, behind the church). If you want to get a better idea of the milieu from which I sprang, take a look at the Rochester town website.

For my own part, I'm pleased to report that Rochester was a fine place to grow up and remains a great place to return to when I'm able to go back to visit my family. Living away from home for a number of years has given me a greater appreciation for my New England roots. There's a lot to be said for the experience of growing up in a long-settled, close-knit community; in the modern United States, fewer and fewer people can claim such an experience as their own. I can, and for that I'm grateful. AMDG.