(no subject)

[urbpan]

"...just when you start getting used to being able to walk down the street without tensing every muscle in your body, you get reports of an incoming blizzard. You brace for it, but instead of snow, it rains for 12 hours and then drops to the 20s, encasing the entire city in ice and gutting your hopes for an early spring.
...It's a killer, but Boston beats out warmer parts of the country in other ways. I'd rather be stuck in eternal winter, for example, than to have to stand for a minute in the company of Creationists and people who think the Blue Collar Comedy Tour is funny."
-Joe Keohane, editor of The Weekly Dig. (our alternative weekly paper, from this week's issue)

Can someone out there please refute this? Not because I don't believe it, but because I do. Must I choose between a comfortable social climate and a comfortable weather climate?

Comments

[richmackin.livejournal.com]

Tucson, AZ
Austin, TX
New Orleans, LA (Within reason)
Portland, OR (yeah boyeee!)

[ninthraven.livejournal.com]

I lived for 8 years in Houston, TX. There are liberals and free-thinkers in the South, I swear. But they are of a different ilk than Yankee liberals and it takes some getting used to. Most of the people I hung out with in Texas were Pagans like myself (and yes, it was a pretty large and cohesive community).

Living in DC with a best friend who is from the Boston area, I am constantly running up against the disconnect.

Although I don't know that I would really want to hang out with someone who couldn't stand "for a minute in the company of Creationists..." While I may not agree with them, they are humans, too. Arrogance is arrognace - and people from both the North and the South have it.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

The arrogance that New Englanders have toward our countrymen south of the Mason-Dixon line is pretty firmly established. In that newspaper, its almost an official editorial position.

[ninthraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, and vice versa.

I only choose not to live in the NE because I hate the snow and cold that much.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

I think the blue collar comedy stuff is kinda funny. Sheesh.

[lynsage.livejournal.com]

yeah,because there are no creationists anywhere but down here...

*eyeroll*

some of the most liberal people i've ever met are from atlanta, btw.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I hesitate to defend what is basically (my own) bigotry, but no, I've never met a creationist in New England. Now, I'll admit that New England is a hostile environment to them, and they would not be eager to out themselves, but I've never met them. Is their suppression a good thing? I don't know--I can't stand up for any suppression.

But what I'm worried about is places where they are the majority, or at least vocal enough to be trying to change public education to insert pseudoscience into my beloved Life Sciences.

Do people in Atlanta and Austin feel like they live on desert islands surrounded by hostile seas? How far from Austin do you have to go before you get someplace where you can safely have a rainbow flag or a Darwin fish on your car, without someone slashing your tires?

there are advantages

[(Anonymous)]

I live in Las Vegas, which is the easily the weirdest city in the country, particularly as far as politics go. We're at once wide open libertines and painfully conservative. There's a certain joy in having people with extremey polar views to bump up against, particularly when your doing political cartoons. Regardless, weather is weather and people are people. You live with it, you enjoy whatever aspects you can and try not to let the other parts drive you nuts.

As for my esteemed alt-weekly colleague, perhaps he's never left the confines of the city and met the redneck swamp Yankees living just down the road a piece.
-Andy

[wakarusa.livejournal.com]

try austin, TX.

I am so used to creationists... it's sick. and blue collar comedy is funny like country music is funny. but I do admit it is not suited to most liberal senses of humor. you have to already be comfortable with the fact that the world looks nothing even remotely like you want it to - ie, that all folks are interested in diversity and positive, constructive social change and tolerance. most of us - and probably me, too - have a natural tendency to grab onto the small privileges we have, rather than risk anyone else getting a piece. I'll never forget talking to this biker, who was drunkenly explaining why he, a born-again Christian, sold drugs - "I have to live like a white man!"

so not funny/ ha-ha, but funny/warped.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

But do you ever feel ashamed to live in Kansas (the way that many of us, living under the current Christianist regime, feel ashamed to be American?)

[wakarusa.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I had to think about this a little bit, and sort through some - until now- unarticulated feelings.

I am often pissed as hell with the people who are running Kansas, and frustrated out of my mind with the people who go along with what they say - because they are scared, in denial, or just don;t want to know. Folks who lack moral courage drive me insane. But am I ashamed to be a Kansan? I don't think so. I am ashamed to be American, though, and I am trying to figure out if this is an inconsistency, or just a difference. I'm not ashamed to be a Kansan because I have such a history here - my family has been here since 1864, off the boat from Ireland. And because my roots here are so strong, I know in my gut that we are so much more than this current evangelical hysteria. I suppose I have always seen this millenial type of thinking as a not entirely unexpected reaction from a population whose roots have been so severed from the land in the past few generations. Folks have lost their grounding - either through losing farms, losing jobs, or losing a way of life to corporate farming - and evangelicals were throwing the only lifelines when this was going on. The rest of the country mostly ignored the farm crisis. Now, of course, there's a lot more to the evangelical movement than the farm crisis, but that's a lot of what I see, living here. Part of the reason this religious upheaval is taking place is because our food systems became so massively fucked post World War II. So I guess shame is not a response for me, since I am so embedded and invested - and, I'm not leaving. This is no time to leave Kansas. The more crazy it gets, the more I know I have to stay.

That said, I can also well understand B's desire to move to France NOW, because being an American is so painful and shaming right now. People - children, civilian populations - are dying in our names. That is never okay. We are being rude and discourteous and dangerous and loutish and inconsiderate on a scale that blows the mind. I am ashamed of that - and maybe the shame comes from feeling I am so powerless as an American citizen. As a Kansan, I feel I have options. And resources. I guess it's all in the roots.

Creationists in Oregon "God's Country"

[aemiis-zoo.livejournal.com]

Awww...did you read all the stuff on my LJ about teaching to lil' creationists? *sigh* The climate here is quite mild. I can't speak for all of Oregon, especially after only having lived here a little over a month. I live in a town of 5,000 though, so I guess it's to be expected. *shrug*
I didn't encounter too many creationists in Jacksonville, Florida (though I am sure there were some out there). Jax is very much a blue collar town though...and you'd be trading an icy tundra for a steamy swamp, where there are 2 seasons, hot and hotter.

Re: Creationists in Oregon "God's Country"

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I spent a week in February, two or three years ago, in Jacksonville, and I kind of liked it. I remember wading in the ocean, and a woman who was bundled up from head to toe said "You're not from here, are you?"

I desperately want to see Oregon.

I haven't read about you teaching lil' creationists--I'll go look for it.

Re: Creationists in Oregon "God's Country"

[aemiis-zoo.livejournal.com]

It's not all that exciting, and hidden amongst rants. You have been warned. =)