We are all new arrivals someplace and we all know the loneliness of what it’s like to be from somewhere else and have to find our community. 

In TV series from Green Acres to Schitt’s Creek, that discovery of life away from big cities is played for laughs as newcomers discover who they really are in strange new places. 

In Willmar, Minnesota, people had to intentionally find ways to be together. Isolation and quarantines changed how residents connected. What used to happen pre-pandemic in smaller towns was an ingrained sense of community. 

Residents would see each other all the time. They would go to each other’s homes or they may run into someone they knew at the local stores and go for lunch or get caught up by grabbing a coffee.  But when differences divide people, everyone has to find a new way to reconnect.