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There is a particular hour in a Taunton summer when the light goes long and gold across the Green, the courthouse throws its shadow most of the way to Main Street, and the heat finally eases enough to sit outside. If you are from here, you know the one. For a lot of us, summer is also when the calendar opens up and an old question drifts back to the surface: who am I spending all of this with?
This is a guide to answering that gently, in our own city. No tickets, no dress code, no need to be louder than you want to be. Just Taunton, and the people already in it.
Everything in Taunton still orbits the Green. Five acres of grass in the middle of downtown, the old county courthouse on one side, the quieter triangle of Church Green tucked off the other. It is the most public place we have, and it costs nothing to be there, which makes it the best third place in the city: somewhere that is not home and not work, where you get to just be yourself for an hour.
Look up while you are there. Below the Stars and Stripes flies a second flag, red, with the words “Liberty and Union” across it. Taunton's Sons of Liberty first ran that flag up a pole on this Green on October 21, 1774, the first flag in the colonies to carry those words. We have been a city that says liberty and union out loud for two and a half centuries. You, standing here as your whole self, are not a break from that. You are the latest line of it.
Bring a coffee and a friend, or a coffee and a notebook. The Green has held bigger things than a quiet afternoon.
A mile south of the Green, the river turns tidal at Weir Village. Everyone here just calls it the Weir. It is named for the fishing weirs the Wampanoag set across the Taunton River long before the English arrived, to catch the herring that still run up that water every spring. The herring have been coming home to this river longer than any of us have been alive.
This June, so did we. The Network held Pride South Coast down on the riverbank at Weir Village Riverfront Park: drag, music, spoken word, and a whole crowd of people being loudly and easily themselves, on the same stretch of water people have gathered beside for centuries.
The stage is down now, but the park is not going anywhere. The Taunton River is one of only a handful in the country with a federal “Wild and Scenic” designation, and the riverfront is free and open all summer: a splash pad running for the kids, and a long quiet bank for everyone else. Go back on a hot afternoon, or a slow evening after the crowd is gone. It is still yours then too.
The herring have been coming home to this river longer than any of us. So can you.
Taunton has always been a city people came to and made a home in. The Irish, the Italians, the Portuguese families who came for the factory work and still anchor Whittenton: this is a place built by people who arrived from somewhere else and made a family where they landed. Chosen family is not a new idea around here. It is in the bones of the city.
If you are still looking for yours, the Network runs three free programs, and every one of them serves Taunton:
One phone call is the whole first step. Free for everyone. Always.
Community does not have to mean a crowded room. A walk with one person counts. A standing text thread counts. If the big, loud version of Pride wrings you out, the quiet version is just as real: a flag in a window over in Oakland or down in the Weir, a long talk on a porch, an evening by the river with people who knew you before.
When the heat is too much, the splash pad at Hopewell Park runs all afternoon. When everything is too much, rest. Sleep, water, shade, a phone turned face down for an hour. Joy is easier to find when you are not running on empty, and you do not owe anyone a performance of how fine you are.
Somewhere in this city this summer, someone is coming out. Maybe for the first time, maybe at 16 in East Taunton, maybe at 70 after a whole life of waiting. You do not have to fix anything for them. You just have to be kind, and a little bit visible.
That is the whole assignment. The welcome you offer now is usually the exact welcome you once needed yourself.
You do not have to be in crisis to reach out. These lines are here whenever you want them.
The Silver City is yours too. Wherever you land this summer, on the Green, down at the river, or on the phone with one good friend, you belong to this city and it belongs to you. Come find us when you are ready.