Andrew Hoppmann

The case for getting in one another’s way

Growing up in Dubuque, Andrew Hoppmann didn't think of "people showing up" as social infrastructure. It was just what people did. "People knocking on the back door, we let them in, we have something to eat, we talk about what's going on," he says. "That's something I kind of miss."

Eighteen years ago, Andrew moved to Clarinda, a small town in rural southeast Iowa where he is Director of the public library. People don’t drop by much in Clarinda. And neither, these days, does Andrew.

There are good reasons for this. Showing up unannounced can feel presumptuous now, even produce something closer to alarm than pleasure. Our homes have become more private. Our calendars more negotiated.

But Andrew wonders what else disappeared along with dropping-in. Because it did something besides interrupt your afternoon. It made people part of one another's ordinary lives.

We say we're busier. Andrew isn't sure that's the whole story.

He offers the explanation most of us would: life has gotten busier. Then he catches on the claim. Because has it? Maybe. But he wonders instead about the friction we’ve lost, how we’ve come to use time, what we’ve come to expect: We can summon entertainment, food, information and one another with surprising precision. There’s an elegance in all this efficiency. There’s also something missing from it.

As Andrew puts it: “The pleasure isn't in the process anymore.”

For a librarian, there’s an obvious place to watch that tradeoff. The stacks.

Consider the inefficient way to find a book.

Once, you went to the library to look for a book.

You walked the aisles. Combed through shelves. Scanned spines. Sought out the librarian for help. Much of this was friction. And like nearly everywhere, libraries have become very good at removing it.

Today you can search from home, find the exact book you want, place it on hold, receive a notification, walk inside, grab it and leave. This is an improvement in efficiency. But notice what an efficient transaction doesn't require: Anyone else.

Andrew isn't proposing libraries be less convenient, but he's noticing that the seemingly useless parts of ordinary life had a second function. Waiting, wandering, asking, lingering: they put us in one another's way. We've managed to remove the incidental encounters but now wonder where the relationships went.

Living in a place with seemingly strong community is no guarantee of relationships, either. Andrew has experience with this. When he moved to Clarinda, he found a town with plenty of community. That wasn't the problem. The problem was getting inside it.

Groups already existed. Relationships already had histories. People weren't necessarily unfriendly, but a newcomer first had to be inspected, understood, placed.

A community visioning process later confirmed what he’d experienced: people who'd left town told consultants the same thing. It was difficult to break into established friend groups. One way in was knowing someone who'd bring you along; another was finding other newcomers. With no guarantee of having either and with social friction removed elsewhere, newcomers can have it especially hard, but the challenge can be felt by anyone.

A room can be full and still be socially closed. A place can be friendly without being permeable. Someone has to make an opening.

So Andrew has begun making doors.

At the library, he pays attention when someone new arrives. Where they’re from, what brought them there, what they’re interested in, if there’s a program they should know about or someone they should meet.

He's also developing "Clarinda Conversations," recurring gatherings built around the mayor one month, the police chief the next — the subject an excuse, the people the point.

Then the Welcome Committee led him toward something smaller.

Meet a neighbor.

Nothing much happens.

Andrew and his wife introduced themselves to a woman nearby. They told her where they live. If she needs anything, they said, let them know.

She was pleasant. That was it. Andrew was disappointed. No invitation inside. No sudden friendship. No discovery that they have everything in common.

The story refused to provide the little emotional payoff that stories about connecting with strangers usually promise. Then Andrew realized: That was step one. There can be a step two. Maybe another invitation. Another encounter. Another hello.

Because eventually there will be something harder than saying hello.

Communities have decisions to make. Schools. Property taxes. Trails. Services. Which project gets funded and which one waits.

Andrew wants those conversations to happen over coffee, because disagreeing with someone you already know is different from meeting them for the first time as an obstacle to what you want.

Wait until the school levy, zoning fight, budget shortfall or disaster to discover one another, and we've waited too long.

Fresh cookies

Andrew recently bought a small oven for the library. The library works with people experiencing dementia, and smell can summon memory with unusual force.

But the oven fits everything else he's been describing. A library can be designed for frictionless use: Find the title, pick it up, leave.

Or for something to slow you down: the smell of cookies, somebody you recognize, a librarian who asks how you are and waits long enough to hear the answer.

None of it comes with a guarantee. Andrew didn't know, introducing himself to a stranger, whether it would lead anywhere. He still doesn't, with the cookies. That's easy to miss: the old dropping-by culture was never built on any single knock working out — it was built on knocking again anyway, on the odds and not the outcome. He keeps the oven on for the same reason he keeps saying hello: not because this batch matters, but because eventually one will, and there's no telling which in advance.