Welcome to Regenerating Elmira
If Elmira could talk, what would she want us to know?
Note to Readers: This page may interest those current or past residents of Elmira, New York who are also interested in her future.
Hi fellow Elmirans, I’m Marilyn Lynch {Carpenter}.
I’m a native with parents and grandparents who were born and raised in Elmira. I’ve created this page on Conscious Living site specifically for Elmirans – current residents, or those who are like me, drawn back to our beloved town in some way that is sort of unclear and uncertain. I’ve been feeling for some time this beckoning to Elmira and it’s no coincidence this pull is coming during these profound times we are experiencing, as many of us are undergoing an awakening process like no other time in our lives. Spiritualist | Philosopher Darpan writes this:
We stand at the threshold of a great dawning.
Something deep within our lives is changing. An era is ending.
At the very core of creation something new is being born. As history demonstrates time and time again, humans are notoriously asleep in times of comfort. When we can no longer determine what is true and what is not, the only way forward is to come back to one’s self - to ask the deeper questions.
The time has come for us as a collective to return inwards, to look inside for the answers to questions we have. Beyond that we must learn to trust. What is being asked of us now is that we learn to trust ourselves.
For too long we have been told about our limitations as humans, now is the time to awaken to our true multidimensional nature and take back our sovereignty in all ways. Now is the time to trust ourselves and our deeper knowing. Now is the time to trust the process {of life} …
Darpan
How I came to write about ‘Regenerating Elmira’ …
My brief story: After graduating with the EFA class of 1979 – and from university in 1983, I promptly left the state of New York to pursue opportunities in my study field of Marketing. I’ve lived in Charlotte, NC area for forty years. I’m single and have one lovely daughter, Sydney {23}, who is schooled in + works in Veterinary Medicine and is pursuing a B.S. in Business Management degree.
I currently operate an energy medicine + alternative wellness center and have begun a third chapter in my work story with a vocation as a writer. After doing extensive educational writings and updates keeping pace with advancements in the energy medicine space, I expanded our center’s website to feature a digital content site – Our Living Library. Over the last three years I’ve created a series of eBooks, select Book Studies, and a collection of monthly Fresh Words Photo Journals on topics that are relevant to the science and spiritual underpinnings for the times we are living.
Writing is my way of processing the world, and because, possibly like you, I was in the midst of overwhelming, unprecedented series of events over the last four years {which sparked my awakening}, I found writing as an outlet to share things I discovered and deemed important for others to consider, if they had interest.
My simple questions that inspired a deep look at Elmira at this time:
What in the hell happened to our country? To the world? And, to our beloved Elmira?
For the past year, I worked on a deep research project about our country’s history and systems, and about Elmira specifically, in an effort to answer those questions for myself and to share these considerations with others. I felt it might also serve as an enlightened map for those of us called to come together in the future in whole new ways for Regenerating Elmira.
Regenerate: reformed or reborn, especially in a spiritual or moral sense.
Economic Development Plans v. Regeneration Initiatives
Throughout her history, there have been economic development plans for Elmira, including the current ‘City of Elmira Comprehensive Plan 2016 – 2026’, a government-led initiative organized at the local level to help fix “Elmira’s systemic issues of fiscal stress, declining population, aging population and economic stagnation.”
Distinguishing what is different about this concept of ‘Regenerating Elmira’ from the current government-led initiative is important. It will become clear as we unfold ideas within the context of the events occurring in the world today that ‘Regenerating Elmira’ is not a concept that is meant to replace or even springboard off the current strategic development plan for Elmira. That’s its own thing, created at a collective level of state and local government leaders and civic stakeholders in 2015-2016 that fall within the guidelines of government policy for funded initiatives through 2026. One plan or initiative is not better than the other – it’s the backdrop of the realities occurring in the world, our cities and towns, our people, across our entire planet that distinguishes what’s relevant to us and our expanding heart-desires emerging at this time for living a life that is suitable to our soul, and possibly regenerating a town suitable for generations who follow.
After moving through this deep dive research on Elmira, I came to only one hard conclusion – first settlers to generations of residents and leaders - had {unwittingly} put her through the ringer. Before she is ready to give her gifts again, Elmira must first heal.
What does that even mean? We can look at one anecdote from the bigger story from Elmira’s history that might start to make sense:
Data Records Tell Stories
My research approach made full use of the data records from 1771 – 2022, provided by Diane Janowski {thank you Diane} on the Chemung History site -https://www.chemunghistory.com/timeline-1771-now. The simple method was to approach one decade or so at a time of the data records listings that captured very specific events in Elmira over the timelines. Next, analyze against events occurring in the larger scope of our country and the world at that time. We see the patterns emerge for how this directly influenced the shaping of small towns like Elmira.
Sharing one example, consider this data record listed in recent history:
2017 - Elmira High School was deemed toxic.
How did this happen? Tom Wilbur, a reporter for the Star Gazette, provides data and perspective in his article from 2018:
Toxic time bomb: Elmira High School pollution an urgent problem among NY's cleanups
Key Points of the article:
Parts of the Elmira HS property remain polluted from industrial solvents dumped over 40 years ago.
Activities were stopped on the school’s fields after an article appeared in the Star-Gazette.
State officials, responding to public pressure, said they will expedite the cleanup.
Some wonder whether a variety of cancers among students, graduates and others could have been prevented.
A legacy of pollution might seem a simple footnote in New York's environmental history, but like the forgotten hazards at Elmira High School, the dangers linger. While our memories might be short or our attention may have wandered, long-buried pollutants still exist.
Tom Wilbur also published an article on the same day on the larger topic of toxic sites in NY:
More than Love Canal: Infamous toxic site just the tip of NY's pollution woes
“Elmira High School is one of 1,290 active and 220 potential toxic legacy sites statewide, according to an analysis of state records by the Elmira Star-Gazette.
Reading these two articles is really uncomfortable. But, in fact, Wilbur’s reporting does answer the question - ‘what happened’ to deem this school to be toxic. But, in a very linear manner drawing a straight line back to the contamination by big business’ reckless processes decades earlier. In the greater history landscape, it’s too narrow of a cause-effect report. We are fully aware that Western NY is not the only place in the country where toxic pollutants from big corporations caused sickness, disease, and death to the people and a great sickness to the land + water. The Erin Brockovich story with Pacific Gas & Electric in California quickly comes to mind.
These past decisions that leaders of big businesses made that resulted in “a variety of cancers among students, graduates and others”– begs us to stop and consider a more broad and deeper, generational understanding for how this happened.
So, here’s a broader + deeper question:
How did these past titans of business, people just like you and me, some are our family members, come to create processes in their manufacturing of products that they sold for profit - with a blatant disregard for the land and the people?
Elmira’s Data Records Provide Clues
Going all the way back, before Elmira’s founding as a town, data records report:
1783 - first settlers arrive in Newtown {what would be named the town of Elmira in 1806}.
1803 or 1804 - Last remaining local Native Americans left and went to the Batavia, NY area.
What’s the significance of these two seemingly disconnected early data points in Elmira’s history?
Besides the recent culled realization that it only took twenty years {only 20 years!} to completely drive Natives from the land that became Elmira, we understand that a foundational tenet of the Native American heritage is their connection to the land. These ‘displaced’ Native Americans lived with the land, holding her sacred, viewed the earth as their very life force. When settlers moved in, under heavy British influence with a colonizing playbook to conquer - live on the land, extracting and exploiting her resources for the gains of money + power in the name of society-building, city-building and ‘progress’, we see the underpinnings of this dark aspect of humanity driven into our culture to not give a shit about our land, from the get-go.
So, the answer may be found in the idea that these practices are historically + culturally systemic … Elmira’s Remington Rand business leaders toxically polluted the land and water that caused decades later illness, disease, and death in our children and others employed at the school because our country’s Business System, from its beginnings, values money above all, and the leaders making the decisions not only became part of this generational system, they defended the system as the way to do business profitably, as big business leaders were doing and teaching all over the country, and they led employees to carry out these dark practices accordingly.
We are reminded that time dims our generational memories, and history as we know it is written by the victors.
Now, when we ask the general question, how in the hell did this happen, we intuitively know that the material-world-culture of our Systems value money, profits, wealth-building, power, progress, property ownership, competition – The American Dream as we know it - over ethics, morals, and gentle care of people and love of the land - as the true cause of many of our world’s ills. Our Business System’s role in the creating the American Dream myth took root when we began and continued to consent as a people to these ways v. honoring humanity’s true divine nature and our connection to the sacred land that is our life-force too.
With our forgetfulness over generations, does it feel as if there wasn’t even a conscious choice. That’s how I felt. It’s a humbling and hard pill to swallow. I lived a long time programmed in this system with these shallow business + life principles that were in constant tension with my soul, and never once gave my way of working and living pause to consider what I was consenting to be part of, until I did finally pause. When the spark of awakening shook me out of it. And this awakening is happening now in collective humanity as well.
It’s spiritually liberating to transcend these darker aspects of ourselves through healing and by doing the work to move to higher levels of consciousness. It’s also awfully hard work. But it is essential because love and forgiveness is the way of being at higher levels of consciousness and the only way we will come together gracefully to help build our new world, that is already emerging under its own steam with or without our consent. And if enough Elmirans have it in our hearts to come together to regenerate Elmira when it’s the opportune time, what a soul-fulfilling event that will be.
“You cannot solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it.
You must learn to see the world anew.” Albert Einstein
So, if Elmira could talk what would she want us to know?
Well, I believe that she can and will talk to us – we just have to learn how to ask deep + wide questions and how to listen to her.
Coming soon …
Tools For Listening To Elmira
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