We have been looking at houses for about two months. No, don’t cringe back in horror, this is actually with a view to making me more productive. And there are “family economy” reasons behind it. Not in the sense of saving money (though true to an extent, if you consider the whole extended family) but in the sense of “making life easier.”
At any rate I will confess the main reason we’re looking is that all of us have a feeling of a move-in-haste at around September. We don’t know why, but we’d like to be prepared. And if it’s “trauma” and nothing happens, that’s fine. Mostly the looking involves us going to open houses. We found a house we REALLY want, but you know, lottery insists on picking the wrong numbers. (No, it’s not…. How do I put this? The house looks and feels like it was designed by Robert A. Heinlein, including the naval engineer touches, and the labor saving. And SO MUCH STORAGE and organization space. But you know…. ain’t got half a mil. If any of you finds it on the street, please send it in. Pleaz and Thanx.)
Anyway, this is in the service of: I finally figured out why I’m uncomfortable in suburbs.
I’ve always felt a little guilty about this, because the left hates suburbs so much. And because so many of you love them. But me? I’ve always felt most comfortable in older urban neighborhoods, usually the ones that never fell or were re-rehabilitated. My touch stones used to be “Can walk to at least two bookstores and a coffee shop. Walk to library can be slightly longer, provided the library is good.” That’s not true now. At least two of thos are inoperable. I still like coffee shops.
But this means most of my neighbors are liberal, so why? And why was the only suburb that was endurable (though I was still not that fond of it — the reason there being that walking was difficult as it was all uphill) the really expensive one. (Too expensive for us, to be fair. Strapped us down for years.)
Well–
I figured it out. Or actually Dan did. As we were driving away from a perfectly decent neighborhood, I said “that was nice, but I don’t think we’d be happy there.” And he said “Uh… you know, they look like a nice, close knit neighborhood. They’d resent us within six months. They’d try to have conversations that confuse us, interpret our responses as talking down to them, and then start low level acts of spitefullness.”
AND it hit me: I like urban neighborhoods because NO ONE expects me to be sociable. My neighborhood (then of a year) got to know me because I was part of the effort to trap and neuter Greebo and his brothers and sister (we couldn’t catch mom, which is why we had D’Artagnan and other cats.) And then we went to not talking to each other for three years, until the neighbor across the street accosted Dan and asked if I’d autograph her books. It wasn’t UNFRIENDLY. It was just “at a distance.” We smiled and waved, and when there was an emergency, like someone getting ill people helped. We’re still Americans. We just didn’t live in each other’s pockets.
Also, the neighborhood was very mixed ages, which means… well, at our age, buying in a suburb with lots of little kids will get us strange looks, at least until we have grandkids who can visit.
Anyway, that’s when I figured out it wasn’t the suburbs. It was us. We suck at lawn care. Mostly because I’m the one who does it, and I’m likely to suddenly disappear inside my head for three months, while the weeds grow chest-high. And we’re introverts. DUH. So having people try to talk to us all the time (ALL THE TIME the two times we lived in normal level suburbs) is exhausting. And on top of that, people often take our conversational style (“She sounds like she swallowed a thesaurus” — from a former neighbor) as PERSONALLY offensive, and like we’re doing it SOMEHOW on purpose. So we end up withdrawing and not talking to anyone, which is viewed as an act of hostility.
The problem, friends and blog-neighbors, is that we’re weirdos. Just straight up weirdos. You try to ask Dan how the game was last weekend, and he’ll cheerfully inform you he doesn’t follow. If you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, he watched it for some bizarre reason, and will start going into probability and statistical analysis until you run screaming into the night. (I’ve seen it.)
A normal conversation about the yard or movies around me, particularly if I’m trying very hard not to go political, will take sudden right (or left. Or kumquat most likely) veering turns into a book I just read, or my opinions on narrative construction or the history of archetypes.
I don’t do it on PURPOSE. The stuff is in my head, and it comes out, you know?
“Well, have you tried stopping being weird?” Sure. I have made great efforts since I was six or so, but weirdness keeps breaking through.
Look, I can hold it together for the space of the occasional party or social function. But people who live around us start noticing the oddness, and if they’re the kind that cares, it all goes downhill.
So what is this in the name of? I was talking to a friend who like me doesn’t write … as you’d expect from someone on the right.
Like me she gets afflicted with characters with weird sexualities (in her defense, she’s better than I. A lot of hers are alien.) Or characters that have other characteristics the left claims as theirs. Because this thing isn’t PRECISELY under my control. And if I try to control it completely, the life coursing through the writing dies, and it becomes a just so story. A slightly saner just so story than the left tells, but still blah and meh.
I mean, my arguably most Catholic work (Other than the Vampire series, because that was supposed to be the third book and…. oh, another thing to finish. I mean the reveal is in the third book and it turns the whole thing on its head) is Deep Pink, which is about…. satanic metal bands going to the pink. And the hero going to hell with holy water filled super-soakers.
Because I can’t just be normal. Doesn’t work for me. And my levels of pretending are lower and lower every year.
So, if we move are we going to end up in another urban neighborhood? There’s a high-ish likelihood, though right now my priority is being within walking distance of the church, for a bunch of reasons. (Will I horrify the other elderly church ladies? Likely, but you know what? I’ll volunteer for the cleaning and maintenance committee and they’ll shut up because I’m good at THAT.)
More importantly, talking it out with Dan made me less guilty about going into places — real and virtual — that are dominated by the left.
Because, honestly? We can’t let them claim the weirdos. Part of the problem was we let them do that. Which means they are squelching the leavening of society right at the source and turning all misfits bitter and full of hate.
They can’t have my people. Not anymore. Because I’m not retreating. Not from urban spaces. Not from weird fiction.
As I told my friend: We will march right on into their spaces and reclaim them. And if our reach is small (it is for both of us, relatively speaking) let it be so. Our presence will allow others like us to break out of the stultifying assumption they MUST be leftists. And they’ll have a little further reach.
Putting weirdos into straight jackets of thought breaks them. Which is what we’re seeing happen in real time, everywhere.
They’re not even of us, these leftists. They’re like Terry Pratchett’s auditors, trying to make everything fit into their mental categories. They just view our people as easy meat, because we’ve been weird since we’ve been aware of being alive, and are used to getting kicked around.
So, Weirdos, Misfits, Huns, follow me. Weirdness is ours, and they can’t drive us off.
Let’s go into the spaces we enjoy — or are called to — even if they are left-claimed or left infested.
Lift the light high. Claim our right to exist. And be weird.
According To Hoyt 
I’m not weird.
It’s the World That’s Weird! [Very Big Crazy Grin]
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Once upon a time, two airline pilots waited for the elevator at a hotel where a SF convention was. Something was wrong with the elevator, so the fans went off for stairs. One pilot turned to another and said, “Follow the weirdos, they always know where the stairs are.”
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Ox not silly. World silly. Ox just notice.
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Odd. I’ve lived in the suburbs my entire life, and no one *ever* talks to each other. Maybe if you have kids the same age, or know each other from other venues.
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Ditto
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Maybe it’s your area? We were always accosted…
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It’s probably regional. You’ve mostly lived in the South and Colorado, right? While I can’t speak for Colorado suburbs (the three years we lived there were apartment years), the South is notorious for neighborly attitudes. I’m sure the Midwest has a healthy dollop of that too.
I’m in a pretty friendly suburban Californian neighborhood, but “pretty friendly” translates to you know your neighbors’ names, and a few facts that you exchange on the way to pick up the kids or somesuch, but aside from the fourth of July gathering, you might not see them for a few weeks.
I certainly hear you on the yard work. At least I’ve managed to have a lot of the pretty weeds. (California poppies look nice even when they’re not intentional anymore.)
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I probably have $100 in California (Pacific Coast) Poppy seeds outside my east fence; this is the first year I have any, after trying nearly 7 years!
They’re pretty tough once they get going, but don’t transplant at all, and I don’t know why they resisted coming up for so long.
Many locals think they’re weeds. Orange is my favorite color – I like ’em!
But where did I get Fringed Loosestrife in my daffodil bed? If they’re pretty, maybe I’ll leave them as successor flowers to the daffys.
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Daffy’s are bulbs and will regrow every year. In fact, once established, they are a PIA to get rid of. California Poppies are actually native to Willamette Valley. Might not actually be what you planted, at all.
Fringed Loosestrife are invasive. Who knows where the seeds came from.
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Seasonal successors – I plant bulbs so they return without any intervention (that is, no more work on my part!), but dried daffy leaves are unlovely by May. Even just green to hide the daffy leaves would be an improvement.
I was surprised to learn that those Poppies are native from British Columbia all the way down to San Diego.
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I do the same with bulbs. Tried to move a bunch of spring bulbs. Thought I had them cleaned out, planted Lithodora. Bulbs just come up through the ground cover. Sigh. I end up topping off the bulbs as they stop blooming. That and the grasses that are entwined with the Lithodora and bulb roots.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQXP_OptGeHMvIE5JzgQKlAH7TrVCq3uBxgT9A_D_Q4bELVWYfRxM8j0R5B0ANlPeFBQegI7Y9VMiNj-EDAH3oIMWwx2wXOnkzzW5p9t7Fc&s=10
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Oriental poppies bloom only in the spring and then die back, so you have dirt in your garden. They do come back and reseed.
Icelandic poppies bloom longer but don’t overwinter, or re-seed.
European poppies, new to our garden shops, bloom longer and re-seed. I’m happy.
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They really like disturbed soil. We’d planted seeds and hardly got any until the year I ripped up the tiny mound of grass between the driveway and the walkway (to put rocks and pavers in) and piled the dirt on the remaining small slice of lawn. The subsequent spring had a MOUND of poppies.
Leave them to seed and you’ll never have to worry about them coming back again. Thankfully the neighbors don’t hate me for bringing them in.
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I’m in Utah county which is it’s own weird little subculture. Most of the neighbors we know are also members of our congregation. Even those who aren’t, most interactions are of the smile, nod, occasional comment on the weather variety.
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Even in Utah County, that can vary. Some neighborhoods are very outgoing, some are like you describe, and some are straight up ghetto (think south Provo older neighborhoods). We’ve lived in a variety of spots and like the suburbs for not sharing walls or floors with anyone (or one max, if it is a duplex or MIL apartment).
Our current neighborhood we’ve been in for 9 years and while people are friendly, most don’t get us. We’ve got maybe 2 couples we are actually close to. The rest are friendly acquaintances.
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That was always the glory of a detached house on a half acre lot – you would certainly be polite to your neighbors, and yes, if you had some other shared social function that would be extra contact, but I could stay happily in my own yard, do my gardening, and not have to worry about if it was my turn to host a block party.
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My limited exposure to suburbs agrees. I smile and wave, and every few months I actually exchange pleasantries. Mostly with the little old lady across the street–who sometimes asks me to fix something when she’s in trouble. (There’s not much better than helping someone who needs it, and who appreciates it. Especially when you get to solve a puzzle along the way.)
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Same.
Growing up, what Sarah describes, yes. Only because new neighborhood in the ’60s, and everyone had grade school children. Now, even that neighborhood it isn’t true. Mom knows her immediate neighbors, even the “youngster next-door” because, they’ve been there forever. (Yes, even the youngster. He is the grandchild, whose grandmother had custody, who inherited the house.)
Our neighborhoods? Whether we owned, or rented, two places in Washington, and two locally in our neighborhood. No. In fact when we moved to Eugene, first street had one of hubby’s co-workers, and where we lived now had two (now one, as one has died). Our street has had very few families in schools. Because, like us, any families move in, they stay until the estate sells it. Despite being between two grade schools within walking distance (two different districts).
We were friendly with people in the wider neighborhood because our kids played sports or were in scouts together. Now that everyone has graduated, everyone has dispersed (even ones who haven’t moved). Partly because we were older parents. But not entirely, because there were older parents, even if it was because it was their youngest child, not their oldest (or one and only).
Bottom line. I know our neighbors well enough to say “Hi” and wave, when and if we are out front together. Yard work? If it is up to me? It’ll get hired done. As it is, hubby or son does it. Weeds, if the barriers don’t hold, get sprayed.
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I really laughed. Who hasn’t? It just never works. When I wrote my work biography, my best friend who is certainly my intellectual equal, made a comment about my using some “obscure” words. I gave him a quizzical look because I deliberately write in an informal manner, and he explained that he had to look it up when I used the phrase, “my famously parsimonious grandmother.” I might fancy myself an intellectual in that I try to write about things that make you think, but I’ve never considered myself someone with the vocabulary of William F. Buckley, or, heaven forbid, John Updike. Honestly, I can’t remember when I didn’t know the word parsimonious, but then I can barely remember my childhood, and those memories are less like flashbacks and more like being an outside observer.
I don’t generally consider myself socially awkward, but then it comes out before I think about it. Saturday I made a remark about Austria being the only country I know of that has common last names ending in two consonants with “l” being the last, like Feitl, or Stenl. Somebody made the comment about Frank being the source of random, obscure knowledge. I honestly can’t remember if something in the preceding conversation related to it in some way that only made sense to me, or I just blurted it out like a random madman on the street.
Ah well, I guess I have to own it.
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The vocabulary is a DEEP issue. People accuse me of trying to talk down to them and I have no idea what word I used that caused that.
And I infected the boys who have similar issues.
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So much experience in that area. Accused of having swallowed a dictionary, of flaunting my erudition, etc.
So grateful for the Internet for letting me find my own tribe, instead of having to make friends based upon physical proximity.
(And fellow-feel on piles of unfinished projects. Must get them done. Must get them done).
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I finally vacuumed the car yesterday. I don’t think I did a good job, but I finally remembered to do it.
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Meanwhile, I get corporate email written in txtspk and gangbanger-ese.
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I’ve a library of rote response that works on normies. It is discrete, tested, and useful in only brief everyday interaction. Which perforce I must do much of (hospitals et. al.). When things get outside that relatively narrow wheelhouse, chaos ensues.
Occasionally entertaining chaos, one must admit. But from the inside it’s an unexpected trip downriver sans paddle and you’re lucky if there’s even a boat innit.
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I have a friend and (former) coworker[retired] who was an internationally competitive Scrabble player. He was ALWAYS studying word lists, and would come across something he thought was really obscure, and would get frustrated when I generally DID know what it meant, and often could give a cogent definition. He only cared about the words so he was sure to spell them correctly, and knew they were in the word lists used to verify that. But all that time meant he couldn’t spend it READING, so I had come across the same words being USED. So at the very least, I knew the meaning in context, and had occasionally looked up specific definitions to be sure I hadn’t made untoward assumptions. For a while, we also had an unspoken competition of who built the best home computer. We both had boxes more powerful than anything at work, without having spent more than a quarter as much. My guesses on the likely direction of tech adoption tended to be more accurate than his, which he always found frustrating. (We shared a subscription to Computer Shopper magazine, but I spent more time reading THAT, too. He got it first, and turned it over when done.) I think he had a Byte subscription, and I had PC Magazine. So, overall we were very much on the same level, just different focuses, and both neural divergent. Our core skills COMPLEMENTED, though, and we had learned to work together. NOONE could troubleshoot faster than the two of us together.
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My husband had a subscription to Byte in his teens. His mom thought it was a porn mag, and gave him a bad time, until his dad overheard…. Then his dad a) got him out of trouble. b) borrowed Byte.
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That is hilarious! I can just picture Dan having to hide Byte under his bed.
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Chaos Manor. SIgh.
I built my first computer from parts bought out of the small adds in Byte Magazine.
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Jerry’s articles were the main reason for borrowing Steve’s Bytes when he brought them in. Or I could find them in any DECENT library. And Chaos Manor was my SECOND reason for wanting to meet him, after Lucifer’s Hammer and Mote In God’s Eye. So glad I got the chance to meet both him and Larry, though sadly NOT at the same time.
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Oh, I miss those early Magazines, and Byte was one that I funded with my meager paper route funds first, and continued subscribing until I left to serve a LDS mission at 19. DDJ and PC Techniques were also influential to me… I was very sad when Byte folded.
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Did you ever tell Jerry Pournelle that story? Because I KNOW he would have found it hilarious.
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I don’t think so. Sigh.
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I recall at least one article/letter (in Byte) about a corporate setting where someone had to defend the subscription to Byte.
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I’ve discovered (not recently, thank God) that several people have thought I was, “stuck up, think you’re better than me.” I wasn’t trying to be. I just assumed everyone was as smart as I am and would be interested in this neat fact I just dug up.
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Oh, I find this again and again routinely. It’s BIZARRE.
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You have to wonder if the Left haven’t deeply wounded us to the point where most have a deep-seated need to be offended at anything, to crab bucket anyone to the bottom of the bucket just to make themselves feel better.. You know, when you assume everyone is as smart as you are, they really ought to take that as a compliment. Instead, they take it as an excuse to vilify you and put you down.
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I want to hit “LOVE” for a response to that. Because I, too, got that all my life. When I ASSUME you’re as smart as I am and just as well-read, you should dam’ well take it as a compliment. How is that even an insult??
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On the rare occasion though it can lead to a lasting bond like the time in the 90’s when I discovered that Edward Abbey had died and mentioned it to a fellow co-worker. Nobody else at our large office had the slightest idea who Edward Abbey was, but if you were both literate and a lover of the Southwest US, you definitely knew. Admittedly not a huge group but a passionate one.
I had come across Abbey via the Kirk Douglas movie Lonely Are the Brave, which Dalton Trumbo wrote from Abbey’s book, the pathetically titled The Brave Cowboy. I named my first car Whiskey, IYKYK. That led to me becoming a fan of Abbey even though some of his books were a little too anarchic in theme for my taste. Still, they all featured important desert facts and survival skills entertainingly interwoven.
I’ve always loved entertaining books about different cultures. Tony Hillerman was not a highly skilled mystery writer, but his books are a treasure trove about modern Navajo culture in easily digestible form.
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I try to hang out in areas where enthusiasm is an asset. Like Scouting. It’s a BIG asset in Scouting.
I’m also surrounded by the neurodivergent. When you start spouting off neat facts in front of ADHD types, you get interest instead of opprobium.
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Squirrel Watchers of America – we gather together to share our united
..SQUIRREL!!!
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You too? *Rueful G*
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Gah. I hate that so much.
Especially from people I’m related to.
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Years ago, my manager-at-the-time told me that some of our ESL people found my vocabulary an obstacle. I asked if he was accusing me of erudition.
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Random customer decided to show how ignorant everyone was by asking what a young turkey was called.
Unfortunately he asked me. “A poult?” I said – because I was suprised, in a tone of why do you even have to ask?
Yeah that went badly….
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It’s not a goblet?
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That…. that…. Look up in the sky. It’s a balloon, it’s a plane, it’s a load of carp!
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Snrk
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“Supper”
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A co-worker: I wish you’d stop using the big words. They don’t impress me.
Newsflash: I wasn’t trying to impress you.
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Things I wish I could say, if only I’d thought of them in time “And I wish you’d use larger words. The tiny ones you use are boring and repetitive.”
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My often response was “I wasn’t TRYING to impress you, I was just trying to be CLEAR.” This was occasionally met with a splutter, and even less often with a “Well, THAT didn’t work!”. I generally managed to NOT respond to that with “I’m sorry, my vocabulary of one syllable words of three letters or less seems to be sorely lacking.”
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On somewhat rare events, I will demonstrate my mastery of Naval Profanity. Since I generally don’t hang out in circles where such demonstrations are considered regularly mandatory, it can sometimes catch folks by surprise, and I HAVE gotten an occasional “I didn’t know you could talk like THAT!”.
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“Are you inferring my sesquipedalian tendencies culminate in a lexicon antithetical to the vernacular?”
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rofl… I actually had to look up sesquipedalian.
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Most of us had to. At some point.
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Oh, and yeah, my mind is stainless steel lint trap. Things get in there, and sooner or later I’ll want to share.
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Mine, too.
But you know, we’re the sane ones. Everyone else is weird. They call us scatterbrained, because we miss things going on around us. But it’s really just the opposite. We focus on one thing. They scatter their attention on every distraction they can find.
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> Somebody made the comment about Frank being the source of random, obscure knowledge
—-
A friend mentioned he was learning Latin. I told him that could be useful if he was at the Vatican, which has the only ATM machine in the world with Latin menus.
“How did you know that – no, never mind, I don’t want to know.”
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That actually makes a lot of sense. While you might not be able to get every language that visiting clergy have, there’s a large chance that they studied Latin well enough to navigate an ATM with it.
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–
I will never be accused of this. I understand the words when someone else speaks or writes them. But I will never be accused of saying or writing big obscure words.
Why? One asks. Because I’ll never pronounce them correctly (speaking), let alone spell correctly (thus tend to restructure sentences, and spell checker or internet searches are rarely helpful), if I can dredge up the vocabulary.
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I thought I had a good vocabulary before reading Jack Vance.
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I met Vance once, a long, long time ago, and the difference between who I had pictured from his writing and who he was in real life was startling. Vance was short, stout, and extremely well-muscled, basically a guitar playing stevedore. I did not have that on my bingo card when I joined that week-long writers’ workshop put on by Frank Herbert.
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Czech (hey, double consonants coming and going 😁) – Kantorowicz. One of my High School classmates.
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Oh, and your rumination reminded me of Warren Zevon youtube.com/watch?v=FWwOEie7Eh0 . Can I say, “rumination”?
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Only if you use it parsimoniously.
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I should hope so. It means mentally chewing over something in the matter of a ruminant, and I ALSO can’t remember when I didn’t know the word in …. two languages?
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Erudite employment of recondite lexigraphic units becomes the cynosure of approbation, in these venues.
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I grew up in the city as did the wife. I’ve lived in NYC, London, Paris, and …. Hong Kong (sorry no Munich IYKYK). I’ve lived in a deepest, darkest Sussex UK village, and I’ve lived in suburban NJ. I hate suburbs. Hate ‘em. Not half as much as the wife does, but hate ‘em I do. It’s that combination of no one ever talking to one another since there’s no one on the street to talk to and the curtain twitching disapproval intrinsic to the concept of an HOA.
Alas, NYC is dead to me, as are the rest, so I have to make the best of it. Once #2 son finally launches — grad school finally done TG — we might move to a large, older town in PA or MD depending on where he ends up. List isn’t long because they’re mostly dead, sterile, or dangerous but we do have a list of places that still have second hand book shops, poky places, and a reasonably orthodox diocese keeping liturgical innovation to a minimum.
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I’ve lived in both Suburbs and Urban. Being able to walk to things is nice. However, Urban regions have gone way downhill in the 35-40 years since I inhabited one. I can particularly compare Worcester (where I and then girlfriend now wife) lived for four years of 1979-1983 to Worcester where my younger daughter lived 2014-2018. Where I had my RIFT (rat infested Fire trap, although we were luckily short on rats) apartment was 1/2 mile from campus. Beyond it another 1/4 mile or so was Pleasant street, You Did NOT go there unless you were looking for Weed, Ladies of the evening or Trouble (and normally you’d find trouble). By my Daughters day that line was MUCH closer to campus at Highland Ave much of that half mile away where I had lived was no a no go zone where Worcester townies had been replaced with something else. Waltham has had similar changes. These are LITTLE cities, but had been quite liveable when we were there, they are no longer so.
Suburban New England is a culture NOT likely to interact with neighbors. Small suburban towns like I grew up in can be tough. EVERYONE knows you I was Marion’s son or Carlos’ grandson (and woe betide me if any miscreant behavior got back to mom or worse yet maternal grandfather). And New England Townies have an immense suspicion (and to some degree contempt) for those that “come from away”. Brother-in-Law lives in Vermont Exurbs, where you almost need a telescope to see your neighbor, although he is part of several local clubs and efforts. More of the small town vibe, and definite Town vs import issues.
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I’m sorry to hear that of Worcester. Back in the late ’70s it always struck me as a decent little town. And similar in many ways to the decent little Appalachian town I came from: everyone knows you, knows your mom, knows your grandma (and will be on the phone to her in an instant if you misbehave). And boy howdy, do they know if you’ve come from away…
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Worcester of the late 70’s/early 80’s had iffy parts (e.g. Clark University was essentially situated in an expanse of low income housing). My school WPI was situated near what had been the houses of mid to high level execs at the turn of the 20th century and its environs were open but generally safe. After I graduated in the early 80’s Worcester went through some major gentrification that went on until The Mimicomputer )DEC/DG/PRIME/WANG) downfall in the early 90’s. It was trying to come back in the 2010’s when younger daughter was there but the Democrats running it in the 2010’s were very different from the far more conservative Dems that had run it in the 80’s and 90’s. The Biotech folks have helped as has UMass Medical, but the current Pols are very much the dyed in the wool blue Brahmandarins you see in most New England cities and they short-circuit the attempts of Worcester to gentrify again.
The slow downfall of small colleges Becker College (a neighbor to WPI Nee Becker Junior College) folded a couple years ago. Anna Maria College closes its doors this May. Worcester still has Holy Cross, Clark, WPI, Assumption, Worcester State University (Nee Worcester State), as well as UMass Medical and the Massachusetts College of Pharmocology. Holy cross does OK, Clark really suffers from being trapped in the middle of a no-go zone with no ability to expand, WPI has, if anything gained Notoriety since I was there. It was a mid second rank engineering school well known in the Northeast. It’s now a solid peer with RPI (some would argue at the undergrad level a near peer with MIT though I feel they’re delusional as much as I love my Alma Mater :-) ).
There was ALWAYS a Town and Gown tension. However, many of the Old Worcester townies ended up going to Holy Cross, Clark, WPI or even Worcester State. That is no longer so, Worcester’s poor are no longer Poles or French Canadians or Swedes. They generally do not speak English well and have been ill served by the Worcester school system. Students have also moved upscale at Holy Cross and Clark, so the finacial difference is HUGE (WPI not so much, engineers tend to come out of blue-collar families mostly with some second or third generation engineers). That dynamic is a HUGE issue for the city, and the politicians play it up to their base.
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“Save Ayer. Close Fort Devens!”
“Save Fort Devens. Close Ayer!”
I was stationed at Fort Devens in 1979, when in October it snowed 2 feet in one night, and froze on top of that. Gloriously beautiful in the autumn. The locals hated us. :) For which we did not blame them. The police I met one night were lovely.
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Hubby talks about those days. Where everyone knew everyone. If you misbehaved, word hit before you got home. He grew up in Lemon Grove California, which used to be outside of San Diego. It isn’t anymore. San Diego surrounds it. Our section of town wasn’t quite that bad.
How dad, his mother, and her mother, grew up. Not only the neighborhood, but the entire town, the town next door, and all the farms in between. Back then, the small town neighbors were mostly extended family. Especially when grandma was growing up.
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I like the suburbs but I do recognize the difference between “I hate the suburbs and would never want to live there” and “tear all suburbs down and put people in 15 minute cities and stackaprole apartments”.
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I’ve always found that suburbs have just enough buffer to make me feel like I have privacy, but are not so far from anything that I feel deprived of conveniences.
… of course one could argue that the place I live doesn’t actually have an urbs to be sub to, and because it’s a university town, one’s neighbors are transitory anyway.
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I think this is why leftists were so angry with Leslie Fish. She was a misfit who refused to have anything to do with them, and had the gall to make fun of their tropes.
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Yep. It’s part of why they hate me too. It’s funny because when one of the sprouts says I can’t write, one or two always feel forced to defend me, but it HURTS them. So they say things like “She’s an excellent writer, but has a lot of health issues and has gone peculiar.”
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Apparently John Scalzi turned up on a favorite author list of m the WHCD dinner shooter. Larry Correia was taking considerable pleasure in pointing ,that out.
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I suspect I shall have to ask for the loan of our Hostess’ shocked face that a dyed in the wool liberal tech type read Scalzi. Honestly, early Scalzi (The Androids Dream and Old Man’s War) aren’t half bad but his later stuff is really pandering to the left side of the aisle. I can just imagine Larry Correia’s glee at such a finding. I will note that if schadenfreude refuses to dissipate after four hours he should probably seek medical attention.
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They’d “rather think you mad than bad” to paraphrase one of my novels.
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*favorite novels
Why aren’t errors visible until after you hit post?!
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Gremlins. They also like getting into your manuscripts. That’s why they are so much worse than you wrote.
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She also resolutely refused to buy into transgenderism. Being an “old-school feminist” as well as a survivalist, she knew that biology did matter.
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Leslie and I shared a few friends who were ACTUALLY transgender, vs. the political Punch and Judy show that the whole “movement” has turned into. No problem with people living their reality in a proper manner, vs. forcing your delusions on EVERYONE. Just as I never bothered trying to get her to stop smoking. She was aware it set of my allergies (and some few other folks) and tried to be polite about it. And I am SURE she knew it was ‘bad for her’, but just as Veganism doesn’t let you live forever, only making it SEEM that long, for her giving up tobacco and liquor would just take too much out of life for her.
Too many ‘trans’ people these days seem to suffer less dysphoria than I have ever suffered, and are just milking the fad for all the attention they can get. I am glad I found actual psych therapists who reminded me how to ask the right questions OF MYSELF, and how to deal with the situation in a manner that led to a more fulfilling life. Having already studied everything available to me at a young age, I could STILL tell I hadn’t found enough to satisfy my questions. Scared the heck out of my Dad, but he still (despite being one of those ‘oh so scary’ rural ‘fundamentalist’ Christians) didn’t stop loving me, and found people who were actually HELPFUL. To bad so many young folks these days are being gaslit into making themselves perpetually miserable. (Apparently ON PURPOSE!)
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Rereading that; YES< I know Leslie’s dead. Thinking about old times makes it easy to not think about that part, and I don’t know that all the smoking necessarily contributed to her demise. ( Though I know darn well it didn’t HELP any.)
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The smoking, the various adult libations (for both her AND Monster the guitar)….
Like you, I know she’s dead, and so’s Jerry Pournelle, but I like to remember them as they were.
Absent friends…..
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The Incredibles had to move a lot, for much the same reason.
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Hey, there, watch who you’re calling weirdos and misfits…oh. 🤣
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Sir. You hang out with ME.
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Of course, conversely, you hang out with US.
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There’s no accounting for taste. “I may not know art, but I know what I like!’
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I recognize myself in those labels. Despite nowadays blending in like a social camo clad lad on a turkey hunt, what’s in the brain doesn’t mix well with others. ‘Splodeyness is definitely not recommended for the average normie.
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I’m southern and female. We aren’t allowed to be antisocial or introverted.
Weird is okay though. Southerners love eccentricity. And we hate HOAs. So I like to visit cities (briefly), live in the suburbs, and wish I could live in a small town or out in the country.
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I grew up in Portugal. Not allowed to antisocial or introverted OR weird.
It was such a relief to get away.
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In the South, we cherish our eccentrics. Everyone has a crazy aunt in the attic, or a cousin that raises pigeons in the front room. :)
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Probably why Dan wants to move to TN.
…. it’s far from both kids. NO.
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Nashville is becoming a bright blue dot (though parts of it are very nice in an upper-middle class way). Memphis scares me. Have only driven through Knoxville but it seems to be OK for a college town. Pigeon Forge would send you screaming into the darkness in about 10 minutes – high-density tourist trap.
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Memphis is… if you’re passing through on I-40, make sure you gas up in Germantown or West Memphis (in Arkansas) if you’re running low.
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I lived smack-dab in the middle of Denver (two blocks off the zero/zero address point). I live in a similar location now, relatively speaking. The biggest difference is two orders of magnitude in population (three if you count “Denver metro” not “Denver proper).
I’ve thought about exurban (“living in the mountains” or “living on 40 acres”), but that time has passed (but “is past”; weird conjugation on that one). There is no way that I’m going to put up with that sort of inconvenience in my old age. I walk to my doctor appointments. I do, usually, drive to the grocery store, but mostly because I’m lazy, not because it’s not walkable. I have a lawn roomba (some Huskvarna thing that I do not recommend) so yard work is mostly weed-whacking.
I grew up in an unusual area. Lakefront is different than other places. We lived, with several other families, between two wooded lots. It was “suburban”, sort of, but more strung out along the lake with fields on the other side of the road. Now, it’s suburban, no scare quotes needed.
I agree with Sarah: I like people around, but “wave hello” around not “let’s chat over the fence” around.
My fiction, such as it is, is much less parenthetical (thankfully).
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Right? At my age and with the wobblers my weird health, I MUST be near the emergency. Twice, if I’d been out in the boondocks, I’d have died. So….
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Why in-laws sold their custom-built home off state park road and moved into town. Somewhere where the ambulance and hospital was minutes, not an hour away.
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That is one reason why those right leaning blogosphere folks who say “the hell with cities, let them collapse into ruin, it won’t affect us because we can just survive off the land” drive me crazy. News flash: not everyone who lives outside an urban area is a farmer or homesteader, lots of them depend on cities for their jobs, shopping, medical care, etc.
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I’ve been saying this for a while; that’s when “blackpilled” gets deployed. Ah well.
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Preach it Sister!!! So far (thanks be to the Author) I have not needed the emergency room other than once. But for along with high intelligence, I have a LOT of other genetic issues which mean I need access to a decent medical facilities (or actually to excellent medical facilities, some of my stuff is weird). So although I would like a nice Exurb with beautiful views and dark night skies, being an hour or more from my various medical providers is not a valid choice. This is especially true as I age and transporting myself gets to be more of an issue.
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High intelligence and weird bodies seem to go together. Or as Kate Paulk put it “Bodies as strange as their minds.”
I’m mostly fine, except for weird immune conditions, but four times in our marriage I did something so weird (including momentary death in the shower) that Dan threw me in the back of the car and broke all traffic rules getting me to the hospital. Twice it was something obvious: Concussion, pneumonia. Twice…. we don’t know. But one of those times if they hadn’t stabilized my heart, I’d be a gonner. And no, I don’t have heart disease. It’s actually funny how I have no heart problems. Might have had to do with the thingy in the brainy throwing a wobbler.
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Strange wiring in both cases, maybe.
I was developing a very unpleasant (and indelicate) chronic condition. Two specialists had been puzzled. I realized there was a probable link to a drug I’d been on for a year and change, by way of a likely crossed connection between loosely related functions in the same organ system. I stopped the drug and the problem cleared up in 18 hours.
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One of the houses we really loved was in a neighborhood where we just wouldn’t fit. Same sort of thing– there were kids around, but they weren’t actually at the houses. There would be like one toy on the very nicely fenced yards. And so on.
Dropping my horde into there? It’d be like setting off a bomb. And that’s just not a good thing to do to folks for no good reason!
So the place we got is way more– well, us. The yard’s a mess. There’s random acts of engineering by the garden. WE have, ah, eclectic variety in our food-plants, and way too many chickens.
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I have a mind-eye of you and your horde in a B-52, zooming in low to “When Johnny comes marching home” in black and white.
“Remove second safing interlock….third enable switch to armed……”
(grin)
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Much better at “praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” and the Tank would morph to a B-52 fairly easily…. add in a very enthusiastic dog.
…for some reason it disturbs some of my relatives.
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I’m with you on the house hunting. Been doing that the last couple months also, and have found several that matched what I need except that the idea is to make the mortgage go down not up!
I’d say lets move to the same place and be wierdo’s next door to each other, but I’m pretty sure your a state or two away. I only visit the state I live in, as I’m generally in the state of confusion. Or sane. I’m in sane a lot.
And I really don’t want houses so close I can hit them with a thrown baseball, but that’s probably what I’m going to be getting.
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Oh. We call the close houses “Warreny.” As in “it’s a warren.” I CAN’t live in those. Don’t ask me why but the writing STOPS. It’s kind of like having strangers in the house. The writing STOPS.
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My fantasy is to win the lotto and build a Geek Retirement Village for me and my friends.
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*Thumbs up*
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My similar idea is to win the Lotto and grab one of the houses out in Marblehead with ocean views along with its guest and other houses. I think we’re talking 10-20 million + and I do NOT want to think of the property taxes 75-125K/Year, I can’t imagine Marbleheads residential rates are lower than non ocean Northshore towns…
OHH this is pretty
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/16-Coolidge-Rd-Marblehead-MA-01945/56937191_zpid/
and about 8x anything I could start to afford without a big Lotto hit… Either the owners have NICE furnishings or someone staged it well.
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Nice, but winters are too long. I’d rather have my ocean place on st Thomas. 😉
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Cough.
I don’t watch any of the HGTV network fancy house shows. Not at all.
Hey. Looking is legal.
Yes. The houses are lovely. I do notice the property taxes are never mentioned. Not once.
We suffer from the “you have to play the lottery, to win the lottery” syndrome. As in we do not play, or rarely play. When hubby was working, and occasionally the core men’s club golfers pool money for someone to go down and have the computer pick numbers. Nothing has ever produced any money.
Have a cousin who can’t play the lottery machines. I think he can play scratch off’s, but not even sure he can that. He works for the Oregon Lottery repair.
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At least he’s guaranteed to get money from the Lottery. 😂
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Every month.
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Heh. Just found something I wrote some time ago, that’s going to get worked into a story:
“Your courts and trials are like duels between stage magicians. Whichever side crafts the most convincing illusion wins the case. Facts, truth and logic are minor considerations, if they’re not actively subverted.”
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“cleaning and maintenance committee”
Altar Society among the Papists, of course. Late wife had been treasurer for ours in town. I still get occasional nice cards from them.
I don’t think CG is a suburb, exactly, as Eugene seems too small to have those. We’re just Small Town; in my neighborhood, folks seem to smile and wave, but conversations are uncommon.
Everything ‘downtown’ is between half a mile and a mile from my house; don’t use the library, though we got cards first thing (mostly because I read in bed before sleep and my tablet and kindle app is easier to hold and easier to read with the backlight, so physical books get short shrift). Never got into coffee shops.
As an adult, the Thesaurus has always been my favorite dinosaur. There are whole books about it!
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I’ve never understood coffee shops. I mean, I get the “store that sells coffee” part, but the “hang out” part? I view them as I view parks: I suppose, if you have nowhere better to be.
Not being a city-boy (see growing up lakefront, above), parks have always puzzled me. I don’t dislike them or anything, but they seem so contrived, probably because they are. I can’t imagine myself saying, “let’s go to the park.”
Note that golf courses, tennis courts, ball fields, etc… are different. They have stuff. Parks are just grass. Doesn’t everyone have grass? (Yes, I know, not everyone does have grass, but my subconscious doesn’t seem to realize that.)
Coffee shops are the same. If you drink that much coffee, buy a coffee machine. If you don’t, then the coffee shop is a nice treat for the five minutes it takes to drink an espresso.
Now that I think about it, when I worked in Fort Collins, we went to a coffee shop (then immediately returned to the office) almost every day. The company paid – and we bought our own, reusable mugs after seeing the pile of styrofoam that quickly built up. I still have the latte stirring spoon/straw thing (30 years later); never use it, though.
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If you don’t have a lot of kid space, or outdoor gathering space, parks are a wonderful thing. The one near RedQuarters gets a lot of use – little-kid soccer, families with kids running around or using the playground, people doing tennis things on the tennis court, dog-walkers, church and other picnics, little-kid parties.
Another benefit if the park is greenspace (lots of grass and trees), is that it cools the area around it, and slows rainwater runoff, so street flooding is less of a problem.
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Older neighborhood homes like ours or my parents, we don’t need parks. Can have swing sets, easily play Frisbee, throw and catch balls, play fetch with the dog, etc. Maybe not play baseball. But plenty of room for kids and pets to play.
But the newer neighborhoods that have gone in around us and other parts of the city. Barely enough backyard to have a grill and an outdoor table with chairs setup. This is not counting the duplexes, with a small pad for a “backyard”, if that. Those neighborhoods need neighborhood parks.
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And they’re a great place to put floodplanes.
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… floodplains. (That’s what I get for checking before going back to sleep after I’ve had an AM bathroom break.)
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And Here I was picturing a Martin Mars Water bomber :-) .
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I like floodplanes. Very useful for fighting forest fires.
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The one hanging-out-in-a-coffeehouse thing that I do enjoy is bringing the laptop (and earbuds/headphones in case the chatter and clatter and crappy music get to be a bit much) and spending a couple-three hours caffeinating and writing. Not by myself, though; me’n the daughter used to go to Starbucks or one of the local joints a few times a year to do some concentrated writing together. I really miss those outings now that she’s on the other side of the state.
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Same with older son, now halfway across the country from me.
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It’s not a suburb if there’s active separation (such as farmland) in between. So Santa Clara can be a suburb of Eugene, but CG certainly not.
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When my folks built their house in the Santa Clara area, ’63, there were a lot of farmland between Eugene proper and their new subdivision. Farmland north of there too. In fact ’64 there was a referendum, that passed to incorporate Santa Clara properly to prevent Eugene from expanding and taking over. Eugene protested and won, shutting down the incorporation. Eugene has been trying to incorporate the area, repeatably.
Most recently was when the area was mandated (by federal) to get sewers (mid-’90s). Never mind that when the sewer plant went in where it did, everyone and the developers said “us too”. Eugene shot that down then. Fast forward, with EWEB, Lane County, and Eugene, overseeing the sewer expansion, Eugene decided required to but cannot hook up unless agree to incorporate into the city. By the time it was our turn, that was shot down. Still had to hook up and pay the assessment for sewers going in, but still not city. Eugene did grab almost everything on River Road south of Beltline.
Currently, our area is any new build (not rebuild or expansion), most commercial (newest) or public (churches/granges), businesses, are officially city. Will have to encircle us to get our property incorporated. Eventually. But “eventually” has been 65 years, that I know of.
Cottage Grove/Creswell are too far south for Eugene to grab and incorporate as suburbs. Besides, Goshen is in more danger of forced incorporation than either of those. Springfield would squawk if Eugene tried to take Pleasant Hill.
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Surprisingly enough as far south as Drain and Yoncolla, let alone Curtin, Cottage Grove, and Creswell, along I-5, are bedroom towns for employees who commute to Eugene. I wouldn’t want to. But a lot of people do.
We did look at towns on Territorial, Springfield, and outside of Springfield, before settling on N. Eugene. (“We’re not buying near your parents!” …. Guys. We’re a mile north of my parents; just mom now.)
We’ve seen a house plan that (with a few tweaks) would be perfect!!!! The problem with the one that was for sale when we saw it (Tour of Homes), was it backs up to N. Expressway, almost where the off-ramp for Beltline is, with little to no backyard. Back when we still let the cats roam. Plus it includes city taxes. Huge double location NOPE. Building we’ve had a few obstacles to overcome: Cost is supposed to be less than what we sell + moving costs (not happening), prevent increases in property tax (not happening), and a big one – Where to build.
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Live where you want, you be you, we’ll be us. As far as the the half mil. my lottery numbers haven’t come in either.
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One would have to play, or be gifted a ticket in the first place. My math brain, small though it is at this age, tells me to invest that money in books rather than tickets. Better ROI.
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Yes, it is.
But, if the expected 1-ticket win amount is GE the odds of winning, it isn’t insane to spend a dollar or two for the fun of imagining what you might do with the money. (Yes, one can do that for free, but it seems even more imaginary then, to me.)
I buy tickets – quick picks – when the MegaMilions and Powerball prizes get up around a $billion. But both Feds and OR tax such winnings, so the net on a billion dollar win, cash payment seems to be about $250 million. I wouldn’t refuse the 250, but it’s sad.
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Same. I buy the right to dream. :D
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We talk about doing that. Then never seem to do so. Shrug.
Yes, Feds and Oregon take more than their fair share. Plus, it’ll screw with the SS insurance costs (Part A?), forever. Granted at $240 mil, one can afford that. In addition, when it comes to estate tax (don’t know about you, but we’d have trouble spending that much), Oregon, (1 mil, 2 mil for married), Feds (15 mil), will take a huge chunk when you die (do not know how that works if what remains goes to 501c3 (Shriners/T2T, etc.))
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What I’d really like to do If I were to win is donate a modern hockey/multipurpose arena to UofO, with a contracted naming like ‘Second Amendment Rights Arena at University of Oregon’. Make their hockey program a real varsity sport (they’re usually pretty good, for a club team.) But 250 million is nowhere near enough to fund the whole thing.
Of course, giving a couple hundred million to UofO would free their budget to build the ‘Rainbow DEI Center’ or something.
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Neither Duckville nor Beaverville (it is OSU, dang it!) would get a donation (I went to both).
It would be Shriners, T2T, March of Dimes (because of cousin), add to the family *graveyard trust (even tho it is handled by the state), and smaller amounts to some local animal rescues.
(*) Working capital for the graveyard comes from the interest generated by the trust money. Better than what was available before ($0). Still mostly volunteer labor, and donated supplies. But some of the items needed are paid for now instead of passing the hat for money.
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Damn! that’s some high taxes. State and federal would be no more than half in SC. If you took the onetime payout you would still expect to get about 40% I think.
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This!
I don’t do lottery tickets as it is scientifically a losers game. However once or twice every year or so when the amount starts hitting stratospheric amounts I will buy a ticket or two. I have a blast doing the what if’s for a few days and then move back to reality.
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Alas, I live in the crazy part of the country where a half mil is below the median starter house price. (Note that we essentially bought at the bottom of the market, so our house price was actually sane for the area—and a price it hadn’t been in twenty years.)
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Same locally.
We bought for $78k in ’88, and cringed. In fact, though the house appraised appropriately, the neighborhood after the ’80s, did not. Nothing had been sold in those 10 years. We almost didn’t get the house. Once ours closed, other houses that had been held up, for the same reason, started closing.
Now, per Zillow, it is north of $500k (bounces between $490k – $520k). Too many new neighborhoods and sales in the area now to hold a home hostage for the above reason.
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Yup here in North Shore Mass $500,00 MIGHT get you a vintage lat 1950’s 900 Sq ft ranch on a 1/8 to 1/4 acre lot IFF it goes on the market (the small houses tend to be handed down to other members of the family), and if you happen to spot it in the 40-50 milliseconds it is not under agreement. Oh and likely it needs 40-100k of deferred maintenance. my modest 1900 sq Ft 3 bedroom double cape is worth 1.5 to 1.8 times that per Zillow or per my assessment. To get a 2-3 bedroom house below 500K I suspect you are well outside 495 and NOT near Worcester, Springfield or the little cities in the norwthwest corner of Massachusetts. I’ve seen gorgeous Victorians in Gardiner in need of help for maybe 375k. Problem is they’re in Gardiner MA, an old manufacturing town WELL past its prime. Gardiner used to make furniture all that went south in the 60’s and 70’s with the unions being jerks and the Carolinas begging for work with right to work laws.
Oh and don’t think you’ll build new inside the 128 belt, probably 95%+ of land is built, from 128 belt to 495 its maybe 90%. And various MA water laws (Particularly Title V which controls septic systems) mean it is essentially impossible to build without town sewage UNLESS you have an Acre+ of arable land for a leeching field plus room for a backup. Essentially, MA wants it to be IMPOSSIBLE to build new in a suburban or rural area. they’re forcing you to urban spaces at least to start.
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I very much like the suburb where I live now. (I’ve lived there long enough to pay off the 30-year mortgage.) Small houses (2 or 3 bedrooms/two bath, or bath and a half. usually about 1,100 sf), with small, manageable yards. A good size for a small family, just starting out, or a single person, or retired couple. The properties are just large enough that we aren’t constantly in each others’ lives, but small enough to be manageable and attractive. Affordable for most people with a middle or working-class job. There were and are a lot of military and retired military, because of proximity the the bases. A fair number of people who walk or run for exercise, have dogs and walk them, or walk with children. A nice mix – and a lot of us know each other by sight, or at least well enough to say ‘hi’ to, just through walking around. Just about everyone owns, only a handful of rentals. I like it very much, and would be reluctant to start all over again somewhere else, although that is what my daughter has done in moving to a new development in the next town up the road.
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Condos are different. We don’t deal with the lawn. We don’t deal with the outside of the building. Our condo are in groups of three with a big private fenced patio behind each. It’s a 3 bedroom 2 bath with a garage. We wave at each other but the only ones we’ve met are the two other households in our building. You can walk or bike a loop road around us but the only outlet is on a busy street with no sidewalks so you drive anywhere you need to go. The poor access tends to keep those cruising to look to steal or porch pirate away. The whole development is pretty much an old folks home. Walmart and all the Instacart stores are close enough you can have just about anything delivered. At 78 soon to be 79 it works.
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we’re considering. Other consideration, maybe, is making current house multigenerational. The main objection ATM is cats. Their cats. Our cats….
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At least in Utah, condos don’t appreciate as quickly, and have all of the condo associations can be as stiffling as a HOA.
But what kept me out has been my desire for ham radio antennas.
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If the Formerly Golden State were not in all respects such a disaster, I’d say you’d find your happy place in suburbia out here. While I have friends who live in progressive-dinners neighborhoods where they have grilling parties in various front driveways on the regular all summer, and all talk to each other about all their, um, stuff all the frelling time, the rest of my friend group all agree that’s just weird.
I can count the times I have spoken to most of the people in my neighborhood on one hand. I wave back freely, and chat with my next door neighbors on occasion, but other than that, not really. I think it comes from the California thing of everyone being from somewhere else. It must be frustrating for southern transplants.
And the trick to your front lawn weed height staying within your limits is either pave it in astroturf, or do a xeriscape thing with specific plants and mulch. Much, much less maintenance required, though I a, told you still have to run a lawn mower across fake grass to vacuum up accumulated detritus. Plus it makes you look all envirorespinsible and Gaia-friendly while also making absolutely certain those kids stay off your lawn, since you don’t have one.
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I spent 17 years in a more-or-less suburban neighborhood in San Jose. (Willow Glen). Knew a few of our neighbors, generally enough to chat for a few minutes, and talk dogs for a couple. (Our 13 pound Italian Greyhound terrorized their 40 pound Airdale Terrier, drawing laughter on both sides.) Was in a lower class (occasional gang signs) ‘burb also in San Jo, but barely spoke to neighbors. (Modulo the one we took to court for backing into my car…)
Growing up, between ages 2 and 8, we lived in a typical ’50s burb. Boatload of kids on the street, mostly stay-at-home Moms, mostly WW 11 (thanks to Somilia’s finest congresscritter) vet Dads. After 8, we moved to a much ritzier ‘burb, where I had the dubious joy of being one of two class Odds, and in the bottom rank of the economy. Great schools, but the snoot level of a bunch of the kids was off the chart. (One guy’s dad was a VP of a railroad company, and it went on like that. Son of a draftsman, Odd and clumsy, not so much.)
We enjoy rural living, though before Covidiocy, we were starting to think about moving nearer town. Generally an hour-90 minutes from 911 call to ER, or 60 minutes speeding to the clinic during open hours. However, California Expats drove the prices through the roof, and the real estate market is pretty cold. Dry Ice, not Liquid Helium, but liquid water would be better…
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Dear lord,
This has been an entertaining reading of comments. I feel as if all the birds of my feathers landed here. The number of times I have been told I was mocking people or acting superior for just using the vocabulary I know is huge. I had a kid (Friend for that year) in the seventh grade that I found out years later got out the thesaurus and dictionary every day to learn bigger words than me. I never even realized I was in a competition.
My wife though not much of a reader is a school teacher and very competent, between her and me we have thoroughly ruined our two girls. At 12 and 15 I will only stump them with a word they don’t know every month or two at this point. I’ve also corrupted them with long conversations about human nature and socialization that puts them at odds with some of the brainless behavior at school and they get judged as being no fun when they don’t just go along with the latest stupidity and or try to say that might not be a good idea or that that’s mean.. sigh.. children are still as cruel as they used to be and maybe more so.
I would love a new house in a different geography. However I own what I have and budget says unless the lottery mails me a winning ticket I’m not going anywhere else. On the plus size it is small and relatively easy and inexpensive due to smallness to maintain. It is also out in the country. I have three neighbors the closest of whom is 100 yards away from our house. The are good people but a bit stand offish and always have been for the 28 years i have lived here. There is no walking anywhere, a car is a necessity. I am 12 to 20 to 40 miles from the closest towns in all directions. Advantage is I have almost an acre that my 1100 sqft house sits on. With a wife and two teenagers it is a bit small but you live with what you have. We have over the years planted over 100 fruit trees, fruit bushes, vines etc.. kinda lazily creating a food forest. Not all its cracked up to be done lazily but we have blueberry’s, plums, peaches, persimmons, apples, blackberries, elderberries, goji berry’s, grapes, mulberries, jujube trees, pawpaw trees, banana trees, fig trees galore, and we try to plant a garden every year with not a huge amount of success.
My yard is a mess and close neighbors would be a hassle as they whined about it. We have no street lamps and at night it is dark dark. I love it. When I drive through neighborhoods or subdivisions it always creeps me out a bit seeing all those houses right up against each other. We are 300 feet from neighbor up the drive and 400 feet from the road and I would love it to be twice the distance if not farther.
Oh we also grow sheds and chickens :) I have over 700sqft of sheds scattered around for tools and work shops and storage etc.. We also have about 17 chickens and get about 6 eggs a day.. 6 of the chickens are roosters my wife won’t let me eat. Who knew that 6 roosters would get along that well. The don’t kill each other and don’t try to kill us so I guess other than having to feed the damn deadbeat noisemakers that all is good.
lol we joke with people and just say we live out where the children of the corn live. fields to 3 sides and woods a mile deep behind us.
Though you get a bit of push back for being weird here (deep south) it is like another commenter said, there is a bit of pride in the weird individuals also. So it isn’t a horrible thing here.
I do tend to not say much in groups or with people anymore though. In todays age almost anything you can do or believe in can be contentious and not worth the effort. Mostly I will just unwind online once or twice a month when a topic or conversation strikes me and a lot of the time I regret doing so later anyways. :)
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Hurrah,, another RURAL person!
Our area is getting built up fast, but I’m hanging on to our five acres with teeth and toenails. Apple orchard dating back close to a hundred years, other ‘feral’ apples around the fields, house built around 1900, a sweet well with a high flow rate, elms shading the house, it’s all wonderful. Except for the frickin’ property t*xes and the built-up light poIIution.
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Grandparents area is getting “divided up”. Minimum 5 acres. Their acreage (moved in after WW2) started at 5 acres, but they subdivided off lower 1.25 acres (just past where the bench broke) and sold it, sometime in the ’70s (I think).
Those 5 acres? If not taken care of, poison oak and black berries rule. Trust me. That is what happened to the house when it got repossessed by the second buyer after grandparents died. Sat empty for a good two or three years. House was engulfed.
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only about an acre here, wish i had more. But taxes are now about 430 a year.. 123 dollars 28 years ago.doubles every decade ir so. Just a flat grass yard when i git it in 1998 not almost 100 fruit trees bushes and vines. Large chicken yard with about 17birds. Had 30ish at one time.
School is doing chicken hatching as science class and are giving us chicks after so will bump up a little again thus year.
working to build a couple green houses. One against front of house like a sun room. 10×21 if i ever get it done.
getting old and slow so a lot of projwcts are not going anywhere fast.
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only about an acre here, wish i had more. But taxes are now about 430 a year.. 123 dollars 28 years ago.doubles every decade ir so. Just a flat grass yard when i git it in 1998 not almost 100 fruit trees bushes and vines. Large chicken yard with about 17birds. Had 30ish at one time.
School is doing chicken hatching as science class and are giving us chicks after so will bump up a little again thus year.
working to build a couple green houses. One against front of house like a sun room. 10×21 if i ever get it done.
getting old and slow so a lot of projwcts are not going anywhere fast.
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Moving to Galt’s Gulch would work. Except I seem to remember that it’s in a valley that’s over the 5000 foot level.
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I grew up in the north Seattle suburbs. 3 blocks to the open air shopping center, a huge patch of woods owned by the Catholic Church a 1/2 block away, Echo Lake a couple blocks away down the hill, across the street from the shopping center. Children on every block, so much so that we named the block for who lived there.
Dad was a mountaineer and Mom was a lover of all things outdoors, so we spent virtually every weekend stuffing ourselves in the camper, driving to the Olympics or the Cascades, and backpacking to some idyllic mountain lake.
I live in an apartment now while I save for the house. Small town north of Seattle, that’s being stuffed with people as fast as the developers can build 8-story beehives. My dream-target is so rural it takes twenty minutes to walk to the neighbor’s house. I’m fortunate to have relatively few aging issues, it gives me some flexibility, assuming I stay this way.
(My younger brother dropped dead on February 7th. My nephew, 35 years old, heart stopped a week ago Sunday–half of it forgot how to pump blood. (We have our suspicions, and that part of the family was BIG on getting the covid shots, so we’re treading very carefully.) He got out of ICU today and will be in the hospital for a bit. All of this to say that staying healthy is nearly 100% out of my control.)
I’ve finally accepted that I cannot pass as “normal,” no matter how hard I try. I stopped trying and it’s way more relaxing, and easier to write, draw, etc. And more fun.
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I come with a warning label. Beware of..B……..(Presbypoet’s true name).
I warn people I have 3 goals in life, first that everyone I meet is made more joyful. Second that I make people think, and third that I reflect God perfectly to all I meet. Three of my 312 paradoxes.
I warn people “i am dangerous, i will make you think”. I explain “i am a charismatic Calvanist redneck from Berkeley, an extroverted odd”. So no one expects a normie.
I found online a picture with the beware of…, a useful sign. Perhaps the AI can make one for Sarah to warn them…Beware of Sarah..
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But we keep our crazies on the front porch, not hidden in the attic!
I’ll start: my great-grandfather insisted on eating all food with a fork. Never a spoon. Not even soup.
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Attics need front porches!
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I don’t really try for normal any more. I’m at the point where I can be “an eccentric woman of a Certain Age,” and channel my inner Dame Maggie Smith. My employer tolerates it, my neighbors don’t mind ( I keep up my side of the fence and help other people when I can, but also don’t poke my nose into other people’s business), and the church where I sing has a lot of room for people who are different so long as we all agree on the basics (Creed, certain prayers, not putting beans in chili ;))
It helps that the town has always had a certain percentage of Odds, many of whom were also philanthropists. “Yes, he’s a little different, but he also donated the land for the park/helped found the opera/sponsored the Kids’ Bank/funded the mural, so we just ignore his little quirks.” As he rides past on a unicycle while wearing a spinning bow tie.
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No beans in chili! The Texas battle cry.
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I am more cautious with my vocabulary than I once was, and try to be mindful of matching it to my listeners. If I notice a puzzled look, I can blame it on being educated in a foreign country.
Otherwise I chalk it up mentally to my people skills, which on a scale of 1 to 10 are a pretty solid -2.
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I lived in a suburb from 1995 up until the end of 2020, and outside of the library being close enough to walk to, it was a constant low-level nightmare. Our neighbors went so far as to deliberately call the dogcatcher when the family cats got out – these were Abyssinians, impossible to mistake for just “stray cats”. The one neighbor across the street who considered herself friendly to us (hah!) at one point angrily approached us about, why had we gotten rid of the front-yard roses – she was helping herself to a bouquet every day.
I’d consider urban life myself; I’d just need blackout curtains. And I sympathize with people being too close shutting down the writing. I really wish I made enough to live in my own place – feels like I can only write when my roommate is not there to judge me!
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Luckily for us, it is illegal to harass neighborhood cats that one should know belong to someone (collared, well fed, etc.) If they relocate, take to the pound, or kill, they can be not only fined, but sued (OTOH, has to be proved it was them). Luckily, a good indirect scare (not our fault they chose to go through a neighbor and not come directly to us).
The neighbors complaining got told that “feeding wildlife” was illegal. Their complaint? The cats were attacking the birds they were attracting to their yard by feeding the birds. Compromise was they installed motion water determents.
OTOH these were the same people who complained about kids playing in the backyard behind them (daycare, it was there when they looked at the house). Also, the ones who complained about all the AM and PM traffic on the corner cross street, the loud buzzers AM and PM and extended fire alarms, at the grade school that did not just spring up between the time they made the offer on the house and closed, that was visible from their front door (not quite across the street, but close enough.) They were the “Oh. Them.” Neighbors. I think they have sold (I don’t know. We don’t let the cats roam, anymore. But no complaints when daycare across street shutdown, and a big Rottweiler (big baby, but he wasn’t quiet) moved in, with 6 kids.)
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“…a constant low-level nightmare.”
Yes. I live in the sticks now. Been here nearly 20 years, don’t know who the neighbors even are. Just wave when they drive past.
I can pursue my odd little projects in peace, and I can have a lifting frame in my yard without having to hear snarky comments from the old lady next door. While I’m in her yard helping her fix her broken sh1t, not to put too fine a point on it.
They’re all insane, I swear. It wasn’t that way when I was a kid growing up in the ‘burbs, but it sure is now.
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Our first rule when house hunting down here 12-13 years ago was absolutely, positively, no HOA. Ever. (Our second was not to live in Mecklenburg County because Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools are horrible.) We found our little two-acre setup, and while it’s not perfect, and one of our neighbors is…occasionally problematic, the others are nice and we all leave each other alone. And nobody gives a damn what color our door is painted or if the lawn gets a little high before our buddy Kyle comes and mows it.
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We had some rules too. 1) No HOA, period. 2) No city taxes, or at least no Eugene city taxes. 3) Side parking for RV. 4) Decent Yard. 5) 4J school district.
Got everything except #5. RV parking was tight, but it worked. Prejudice against Bethel was from when I was growing up. That was the rural district. Fifteen years later, not so much. Not only are Bethel school district taxes less, it was a better fit for our child (not born when we bought, FWIW).
Property taxes were interesting. I remember being told that Junction City taxes were so much better than Eugene. A maximum of 2% total of taxable value. The problem? We can do math, without calculators. So declaring a bargain for property taxes at 2% on a house that is $200k? Um, that is $4k. Houses aren’t $200k, anymore. FWIW, our current property taxes, on taxable value of $235k is < $2500 (county & school district).
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On another symptom of Civilization going Someplace in a Handbasket …
I see That River Place is killing off the Windows book reader.
I have EPUBOR, but is there a way to tell it ‘do all of them in the app library’?
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NVM
Couple things I needed to do.
New K app for Mac
New EPUBOR
Some fiddling at the manage my books page
Patience in hitting Synch in the K app; looks like that gets throttled; quit and re-start the app a few times to get things to actually download
But EPUBOR isn’t seeing them in the K library … 206 is all it finds. Maybe the K app is hiding them, so I let it look through my whole home directory tree.
Aha! Now it finds 1794 books, though seems like some dupes.
I probably now have maybe two hundred ‘real’ books, and not really space for many more.
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EPUBOR reported that Kindle for PC is being dropped. Grrrrr.
Bad enough B&N pulled windows support of their app as of 2023. Nook for PC app still works, if you can find a Windows Installation.
All my stuff is converted, both Kindle and B&N, based ebooks. Either way, grrrrrrr.
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For non-Euclidean/Anatomical/Geometrical directions, I am a fan of eckward and andward, per C. S. Lewis’s unfinished MS The Dark Tower, myself.
But reveling in obscure books was one of the earliest ways I embraced being Odd, if they’re good books and not “least well known and most legitimately neglected” after the manner of “P. D. Q. Bach.” Looking bach*, it’s probably also been one of the foundation-piers of my mental framework that’s helped me not slew windward like so many formerly-anchored acquaintances and friends when all of the contemporary Messages were blowing ferociously to the Left.
*Always mean your puns. Always.
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And if you didn’t mean a pun take the standard feline position of “I meant that” :-).
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people have thought I was weird from the time I could walk. I of course have got to the point where I could care less what people think as most of my friends could be classified as weird. I am in good company I feel and are comfortable being me these days.
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My reasoning was simpler: I want to live in a community with a university library, which is an essential amenity for me. When we were figuring out what city to move to, I visited university libraries in our top choice places and assessed their resources.
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(deep booming echo voice) “WHO HAS SUMMONED ME?”
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I have vocabulary war stories, mostly from my K-12 years. One was about the time when the English teacher went off about how “formic” was a wonderful made-up word in a poem about ants. Another was about a different English teacher with a lesson on the differences between UK and US English, starting with a speech full of britishisms he expected the class to not understand.
I also have a working theory that for people with large vocabularies, Shakespeare is written in English, and for people with smaller vocabularies, Shakespeare is written in a foreign language ancestral to English.
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The small Hill Country town I live in has seveRal apartments of various types, within normal walking distances of shops, book stores, churches and the town library. I realize it’s a distance from where you intend to land, but there are a lot of possibilities to consider. Please do.
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Sorry, if I found a half million dollars lying on the street I’m NOT giving it away.
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Oof. I’ve been accused of the cray cray since childhood. I’m Pagan [just about to get my MDiv at a Pagan school] which puts me square in the middle of weirdville. There were a LOT of pronouns in my final class and four transmen. I’m also a delegate to the CT Republican convention. My worlds haven’t collided yet, but that time is approaching. I got som pushback in my thesis over how I labeling sexual preference because now this is called ‘sexual identity’
The hell it is and I’m not agreeing with that. But I’ve passed with this bit of heresy intact so I’ll have the discussion later. My teacher was concerned I’d be challenged over it and it would shadow my work. I welcome such a challenge. I too want to re-claim the weird spaces. We can be the fringe, we just have to not be the void.
Strange to be more accepted among conservatives right now than among artists and Pagans…
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Oof. I’ve been accused of the cray cray since childhood. I’m Pagan [just about to get my MDiv at a Pagan school] which puts me square in the middle of weirdville. There were a LOT of pronouns in my final class and four transmen. I’m also a delegate to the CT Republican convention. My worlds haven’t collided yet, but that time is approaching. I got som pushback in my thesis over how I labeling sexual preference because now this is called ‘sexual identity’
The hell it is and I’m not agreeing with that. But I’ve passed with this bit of heresy intact so I’ll have the discussion later. My teacher was concerned I’d be challenged over it and it would shadow my work. I welcome such a challenge. I too want to re-claim the weird spaces. We can be the fringe, we just have to not be the void.
Strange to be more accepted among conservatives right now than among artists and Pagans…
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“Strange to be more accepted among conservatives right now than among artists and Pagans…”
Right? Welcome to Under-The-Bus-Land. The bar is over by rear axle differential.
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Three soldiers–a decorated hero, an admin Fobbit, and a deserter–returned from the war on the same day and headed into town to celebrate. Soon the MPs were called, and found them at the ER, with a couple of concussions.
You see, two of them walked into a bar but the chicken ducked.
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Sarah said: “Well, have you tried stopping being weird?” And I nearly rolled the eyes out of my head.
Only all day, every day, since I was like 6 or something. I’m good for about 20 minutes of “normal” before I can’t keep it going anymore and I start appearing a little strange to the Normies. The length of a job interview.
I don’t know why that is. And the freaking Normies don’t know either. I’ve asked them often enough, and they can’t tell me. But it’s there that’s for sure. The never-ending, recurring theme.
But at my age, I don’t care so much anymore. I don’t really -need- them for anything now, so it isn’t a problem if I appear odd. “Oh that’s just The Phantom, he’s always talking about space ships and science, pay him no mind.” Harmless is nearly as good as “Normal” IMHO.
But then Sarah said this, which is somewhat more serious: “We can’t let them claim the weirdos. Part of the problem was we let them do that. Which means they are squelching the leavening of society right at the source and turning all misfits bitter and full of hate.”
Yeah.
This would normally be my cue to rant on the destruction wrought by Hollyweird on all things nerd, but we’ve been over that ground a million times by now. We know it sucks, and why. In excruciating detail.
Instead, I’m going to do something different. I’m going to jump off of Sarah’s call to arms, and point out WHO made all our beloved SF/F suck these last 30 years. Who did that?
Normies did it. Because Leftists got financial control of Hollyweird somewhere around the mid-to-late 1980s, and they f-ing-well fired all the non-Lefties. “Repugnicans are icky, they can’t work here.”
But they didn’t fire all the freaks and weirdos, because those crazies are the engine that drives the industry. They invent EVERYTHING. Need a new makeup technique, or a new spaceship design, or a new sword, or a character design that doesn’t look like every other character design we’ve seen for 30 years? You need a freaky weirdo who’s into that sh1t and never thinks about anything else. A nerd, in the common parlance.
So what changed? In ~2010 all the money people started loving DEI. And they began having purity tests. We all watched it happen at the Hugo Awards, that was the canary in the coal mine. If you didn’t schmooze the DEI way, you didn’t get published.
So now, fast-forward 16 years, who’s making these stories now? People who are good at DEI, and good at schmoozing Normies. That’s who got those jobs. Nobody who loves the fantasy and the science fiction is working there.
Most glaring example so far, Star Trek Academy. A “science fiction” show made by people who HATE nerds and HATE science fiction. What they’ve done is slap together a pile of whatever they had lying around the shop, stuck it together with political propaganda, and covered it with money. Anyone who cared a single damn about the story, or the franchise, or about anything at all, had long since been fired. Even the tired old hacks with experience were fired.
Result? Star Trek Academy. Possibly a $200 million loss. ‘Nuff said.
On the bright side, with modern animation tools some crazy nerds have been making AMAZING short videos the last few years. With Amazon even freaks like me can get their books published. Robot girlfriends and giant tanks, it’s a little weird. But you can buy it if you can find it. Sarah has her clanker songs, another nice creative outlet that has only been possible for two or three years at the most.
So, I strongly think that this is the best time in history to be a creative nerd/weirdo/eccentric old gentleman with odd ideas. AI tools, are you kidding me? We’re going to be able to animate our freaking stories, my friends. Giant tank jumps over a mountain at 80 miles an hour and fires 2 megatons per second at the dreaded Dark Ones, in living color. Helz yeah.
But if I tell that to a Hollywood weenie, they do not understand why that’s cool, or why I would want to do it, and they think I’m an idiot for even expressing the notion. So I’ll be doing it myself or it isn’t going to happen. And Mr. Hollywood Weenie will be going bankrupt, another good thing.
You can’t live on schadenfreude, but it makes a great garnish. >:D
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I don’t think I ever had a job interview that was less than 2 to 3 hours. That are the ones that were actually 3 or 4 interviews. Otherwise, interviews were all day. Didn’t matter if I got the job or not.
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Do I hear a challenge? 😛
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