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MILESTONES


If you’re reading this copy of MILL on the day of publication, today marks the end of Carrboro’s first century and the beginning of its second. As we note in several spots here and in The Citizen itself, the shindig at the aptly named Carrboro Century Center is just the start of a period of celebration and commemoration marking the passage of 100 years, culminating on May 1 with an extra-grand Carrboro Day.
March, the month of new energy and hope and emergence, is the perfect month to get this party started, for milestones – century marks and otherwise – are as much about the future as they are about the road just traveled.
Wrapped in each remembrance of the way things were is the unspoken question of what is to be. As we look at the town through its yesterdays, we can’t help but wonder about its tomorrows. One hundred years from now, the map coordinates and the town’s boundaries will be little changed, but the people, their way of life and those things thought of as local institutions will be far different.
Our hands and our hearts will shape that future a little before passing the task on to the next generation, who will have their turn at it before doing the same. And on some spring day far down the road, some bell will ring 200 hundred times, calling those who will walk these streets long after us to recall our ways, our institutions, our character and characters; to remember what was and imagine what will be.
— Kirk Ross