Posted on 02/02/2005 5:59:35 AM PST by Theodore R.
In America you get to live where you choose to live. Rural America isn't for everyone, neither is urban America -- though pretty much everyone likes Four Seasons Hotels.
Not on my property you don't!! LOL!
Small towns tend to be realllllllly homogeneous. Everyone hunts, fishes and goes to the high school football games for recreation. Finding someone with an interest beyond those things proved impossible to me. Nothing wrong with hunting, fishing, or football mind you, but my interests just aren't there.
Speaking as a New Yorker with some experience with small towns and small town people -- I'd say they remain part of our cultural heritage as well as American myth.
We ignore tham at our peril...
However, I need the diversity, the chinese food and the 24 hour bodegas/korean delis, but I understand the appeal of small towns.
There has got to be a reason why the solidly blue states are like this. I'll theorize that the liverals living in Red States are driven to suicide, while Conservatives cope relatively well anywhere. Democrats living in blue states are in their own little socialist paradices.
I am among those who despise life in densely populated areas.
But were I condemned to live the rest of my life in a landlocked state, I'd want to do myself in, too.
Some things don't translate into politics. Trying to find political meaning in the list probably isn't a good idea. There are factors, as pointed out, such as climate, landscape, population patterns, etc. etc. etc.
I don't know what you mean by "American myth" but it certainly has me intrigued. Please explain.
I grew up in Casper. I read SiFi, we had a "mad scientists club", built tesla coils, converted a TV to an o-scope, did ham radio, had star parties, etc. I never liked football, have never once been on a horse, don't like to fish, etc.
Even in rural Wyoming I fould folks with my interests. My three best friends from Casper ended up as a Professor in Ohio, a software engineer in SanFran, and a physicist at MIT.
See, the country needs both of us. I despise life in remote rural areas. I need the city.
Seacoast. Almsot all on the ocean.
BTW, I would never move back to Casper. LOL!
I too like the big city.
The most obvious American myth is that of the Western...people don't generally recognize it, but the American Western book/movie/music is an American art form as much as jazz, certain types of theater or the immigrant story.
Take the issues tackled in the typical paperback western novel -- good, evil, self-reliance (a favorite theme of Ralph Waldo Emerson)and opportunity -- those are distinctive American themes.
Things were a little better when I moved to the town of 7,000 but not much. If I'd lived in Lufkin, which is about the size of Casper, I'd probably have suffered a lot less from the experience.
I too despise life in remote rural areas, if those areas are not a combination of forest and ocean.
But I despise life in cities ocean or no ocean.
I am glad most people like to live in cities, as there is precious little rural seacoast left in America.
And by the time I have grown old and am gone, there will be none left (except maybe in Alaska, if they don't drill, that is).
Ha! When we lived in Newhall, California before here, we were geographically at the edge of a wind-funnel - a mountain pass that let the high pressure from inland squeeeeeze through into the San Fernando Valley.
It was horrible - the unofficial motto for the Newhall Pass was, "the wind doesn't blow in Newhall, it sucks".
Oh, I agree. I'll have to say I am suprised that list.
I spent a night in a motel in Laramie. I was one of the only guests as it was wintertime. The whole town was scary--no people to be seen. Nothing to see but snow, ice and the frigid wind blew at 50 MPH non-stop. I could hardly wait to get to Utah to see signs of humans and some mountain vistas. Little wonder they off themselves in Wyoming.
The list of art forms or suicides?
Thats an idea. Florida would be an anomoly. (perhaps depressed elderly people?)
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