Small Town, Big Lives

I found this in a post by Julie:

I find it interesting. Local "small" news is still by far the most interesting. All the odd, unusual, very real, sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes laughable things happen to real people on a local level.

I think she's got a good point. It called to mind one of my favorite passages from Chesterton:

The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing that is really narrow is the clique....The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment like that which exists in hell

Heretics