Man bites dog

It won't make the news really. It's not the kind of thing everyone talks about, and it's really just an arts thing, after all; it's not going to change the world or redo whatever it is we call "the status quo." Still, it's something.

It's a tale of two cities, although they're both really just towns. It's a tale of two cities that exist somewhat less than a good cup of coffee apart, two cities who've existed in relentless competition for at least 125 years, despite the fact that most of the citizenry are, well, kin. True story.

Here's the latest. These two little burgs--hard-working, vigilant, aggressive, and, to some, oppressively Republican--are actually going to work together. I'm not making this up.

No, not on a new hospital--they've each stuck millions into their own already.  And no, not on a college--they've each had one of those too for a long time. For years, there's been talk of a shared airport, but no one is holding his or her breath because these two villages, overwhelmingly Dutch-American, are often state champions of their own independence.

Enter The Nutcracker. That's right, the greatly beloved traditional Christmas ballet. You know?--the world's largest tree and a stage overflowing with gymnastic Cossacks and tiny mice and sugar plum fairies all tripping the light fantastic. It was The Nutcracker that did it because it doesn't just take a village to mount The Nutcracker--it takes two. That's right.

So they're doing it together. It's true, and it's going to happen this Christmas, and it's going to change the course of Sioux County history.

Well, that may be more than a little hyperbolic.

Besides, when the news gets out, the skeptics will grouse. What? they'll say. Who let that happen? After all, it's competition that's kept us lively. It's the American way. One of us imports a humongous playground system and the other buys up an open space a half block long to build one of their own. One gets a Holiday Inn, the other gets an Embassy Suites. One gets a Wal-mart and the other weeps. Yes, but you have to remember that only one has the courthouse--so there! 

It must be noted that both do exceptionally well despite being planted in America's demographic graveyard, the upper Midwest, where small towns don't have to go to die because they're already here. Some barely.  People have been leaving for a century.
These two towns, loyalists say, do well because they don't work together, because they're fiercely competitive, because they each keep one eye open over their shoulders to see what the other is doing.

I say, let the fundamentalists grouse. After all, some of them thought indoor plumbing was a foul idea. 

I say it's epoch-making. Get this: Sioux Center and Orange City are going to work together. You read that right. The two of them, in tandem, working together, are going to stage The Nutcracker come yuletide, and the stage at Unity Christian High will be overflowing with sugar plum kids--all of them ours.

That's cool. And its news. It's big-time news.