By IRA SALETAN

Special to the Register

After living in Sacramento more than 20 years, my life began changing in many ways and I moved to Napa late this spring.

I arrived here through the grace of meeting a woman very rooted in the community who’s lived here almost all her adult life, helping to make my transition rather unusual. Perhaps the experiences and impressions of this fledgling “Napkin” will resonate with others.

I grew up in a small-town suburb of New York City and was a teenager in a smaller Texas town, but life in bigger “small town” Napa feels like nothing I’ve ever experienced — perhaps because life feels and looks very different than when I was younger, and the world has changed in significant ways since then.

I’m a feisty, inquisitive middle-aged Jewish white guy who feels wonderfully welcome by the Jewish community and others here. I live in the largely Latino Westwood neighborhood, where residents enjoy strolls and front-yard socializing.

Nearby is the Napa Valley Language Academy, a model of bilingual, cross-cultural learning.

Introductions,

early discoveries

I’m becoming acquainted with some of what makes being here so inviting: the tapestry of hilly vistas and vineyards, cool and breezy evenings, safe and walkable neighborhoods, the library’s excellent service and merchants’ helpfulness, relatively easy driving and parking (though I expect many of those who’ve been here much longer will have very different opinions on that score), the fine fitness center at Queen of the Valley, and much more.

So many are happy to live in this valley (count me among them), and many others wish they were living here. There’s plentiful caring and collaboration, an array of nonprofit organizations doing important work for the common good, a strong legacy of volunteerism and philanthropy. Helping “our own” who face hardship is a key to the community’s heart and self-image. So whom do we consider and treat as “ours,” who are not viewed or included in such ways, and why? It can take a long while to be or feel accepted as a “member” of “clubs” here. Some never do.

This is a diversifying haven, both real and imagined: refreshingly casual and open, amusingly and puzzlingly provincial, now with international luster for its offerings of savory wine and food. This area, formerly rather ordinary and unacclaimed like many in agricultural California, has become a tourist mecca. Its growing portfolio of attractions now features an array of performing arts and other special events very impressive for a community this size.

Among my early lessons here are how and why being more careful about what you say and to whom matters, since word can get around quickly. There’s a relatively high degree of sensitivity to criticism, conflict or deviance. Appearance and civility are generally valued over candor and depth. Local melodramas are well publicized while larger underlying issues receive little attention. Journalism here is more casual and entertaining than professional or provocative. I’m taking some risks and testing the status quo by speaking out in this way, with the intention of inviting response and dialogue.

Telling contrasts

and realities

Napa takes pride in its past and the unique resources of this area, a legacy witnessed daily but often taken for granted, founded on public concern with historic preservation and open space conservation. At the same time, the community’s shape and ways are yielding to change in many ways — pulls of business and development, shifts in population and culture, concerns on the public agenda, new realities and expectations.

Despite their significant and growing numbers, those with Spanish surnames are not mentioned often or prominently when we talk or read about civic issues and leadership, as they are in local crime stories. Many work in fields and restaurants that keep others well fed; grounds, houses and hotels that others enjoy; businesses and services on which the community depends. As this population becomes more enfranchised and organized, their increasing impact in the marketplace will be accompanied by stronger movement in political voice and power, a wake of change that severely tests the valley’s social and economic fabric.

Other immigrants include older newcomers of ample means, establishing roots on impressive homesteads, not unlike the vineyards that have helped draw them here, which supplanted orchards and norms of the past. Others nearby struggle to make a living, afford adequate housing, get the health care they need and others largely take for granted, raise their families, build a future. The haves and have-nots are not as far apart as it may seem. What are the prospects for our prosperous society of inequality and endangered coexistence, in which Napa has become a microcosm, in a world that faces great environmental peril and the escalating costs of war?

The awesome bounty of this area is matched by its disparities — so open in some ways, closed in others. Non-whites and others seen as unwelcome strangers were excluded for many years from this valley. This kind of insularity and intolerance surfaces not infrequently in commentary from readers of our daily newspaper. Such sentiments are evident in different ways among those who are better accepted, more informed and influential. Friendly Napa, more conservative than its popular image and self-image, has its guard up.

Openings and connections

At an amazing Napa High School dance concert, I experience what can happen when we who seem so different come together — not as insiders and outsiders, as benign masters and honorable servants, but from an awakened sense of our shared humanity. This kind of connection doesn’t happen nearly often enough. When it does — as at the lively downtown gatherings formerly on Fridays, when younger and older locals of differing needs and tastes converged — there’s often an undertow of caution or uneasiness we’d rather not talk about or have difficulty doing so.

As a special education teacher at Bel Aire Park Elementary this summer, I found myself in the company of students with varying levels of English and Spanish proficiency, all from Spanish-speaking families. They are part of the emerging Latino majority here and throughout California, growing aware of the larger social challenges and opportunities awaiting them and us. They tell me about St. John the Baptist Catholic Church and the Sunday flea market, places I know little or nothing about but want to visit. Our lives touch, but often tangentially.

These young people and I talk about our differences, what connects and separates us, how our behavior reflects our thinking and understanding. We use language, stories, maps, videos, art, humor and play to explore their place in this dynamic world — what they know about where they live, origins in Mexico, perspective and pride, the history of the Napa Valley, life in places and times they haven’t visited.

I increase my Spanish vocabulary as their grasp of English grows. I see anew the magic that can happen when we are unafraid, imaginative and open with each other.

Now I’ve become a teacher in Vallejo (which, like American Canyon, is so close to Napa in many ways yet seems a world apart). I’m a migrant of sorts, returning to the harbor of this valley after challenging and instructive days on Mare Island and in a neighborhood almost all of us drive by without noticing. It is a season of change and resettling in new ways for me — my first fall and Jewish new year in Napa, a time of reflection and renewal as I move more fully into life’s next chapter.

Saletan can be reached at saletan@comcast.net.