The neighbors that constitute smaller residential communities, obviously, react substantially more quickly and excitedly to the same decisions only where they affect that environment, but which may be imagined to have little effect on the overall city. One might seriously question the attraction of an area so devoid of intellectual and cultural attraction, a desert, in fact, in contrast, for example, to the Berkshires and northwestern Connecticut, replete with music theater, dance in profusion, fine arts, home to innumerable artists, actors and writers of great acclaim. K'port, as it is nicknamed, nevertheless remains a small and beautiful village, boasting a vital conservation-minded community which has been able to protect large areas and islands from development, and yet such takes place year after year in the same manner that plagues the resort beaches of Long Island, where the smallest plot of land receives the largest possible footprint of a house. Here it is the rebuilding of older homes into mega-structures with no regard of courtesy for existing residents, even if friends. The greed that was the centerpiece of Michael Douglas' motion picture about Wall Street is rampant to the dismay of the reasonable.
Taste gives way to flamboyance, be it homes, automobiles and boats.
Sailing has been supplanted by vessels specifically designed for offshore racing, an image first introduced to the river by the Vice President at the time. In fact, the harbor master has made sailing into or out prohibited because of the huge number of craft moored in the channel, where one was once able to arrive and leave without starting an engine, and small children learning the skill were encouraged to do so in dinghies designed and built locally. Even so, for those who can disregard ugliness that is much of the merchandising scene, who can hope that the fascination of snooping at an ex-President may gradually diminish, for those whose delight with the ocean, the lobsters, and, post the summer season, a return to relative tranquility, the 'Port is highly desirable. Indeed, the term relative is key to what K'port and many other shore towns has become. One can reflect on a year in the mid-fifties when milk was delivered to one's home even miles from the village center, when the town square encompassed three small markets, when four shipyards graced the riverfront across from the square and furnished services for the lobstermen and rare larger vessels, sail and otherwise, that ventured up the narrow, narrow channel.