My dog also likes to come into my office to fart. Little jerk.
But yeah, as someone who grew up in the Midwest but no longer lives there, people will say the rudest shit about where you're from? Like I'm allowed to make fun of it because I lived there and so many people I love still live there. But when outsiders do it, it often comes across as really mean and like they don't think of us as humans in the same way they are. BTW I also gladly defend "coastal elites" from stupid Midwestern stereotypes about them.
I've lived in a lot of places and people are people everywhere. Nobody is as unique as they'd like to believe.
Wonderful essay. And yes, Jess! I well remember when I moved to CA in 1991 from a very liberal place - Iowa City - and the ignorance I kept getting about where I was from. "Oh San Diego must really knock your socks off!" Hardy har har. No, actually, you're far more provincial and clueless than the people I'm used to hanging out with. But then, through the years, I heard the same stuff from IA HS classmates who thought/think Iowa is the end all and be all. "Surely you can't be happy living in CA - so many homeless people and earthquakes and the housing prices are off the charts." Well, guess what? Yes, I can be very happy here. And yes, I am. But also, maybe I'll move back in Iowa when I'm old? Who knows? I guess we all want to think our choices are the best. And they are - for us.
My old aunt who grew in the midwest would snort "each of us is unique, just like every one else" I always thought someone should write a book - "Midwest Humor and Other Myths"
We're used to getting shit on in Georgia, but it's been more pronounced and annoying since we became a swing state. Thanks for the two democratic senators, but also here are some jokes about how you're probably married to your cousin.
Fireflies, mockingbirds, sweet tea, some of the best food in America. Hip-hop and bluegrass. Nine months of summer, heirloom tomatoes and juicy peaches. People so friendly they excuse themselves if you walk within five feet of them on the street. An endless calendar of neighborhood festivals. Big oaks and pines even in the densest part of the city. I'm not saying there's nothing to criticize in the south, but there's also a lot to love. Atlanta is one of the best places to live in America and I will fight a bitch.
I live in Idaho which means it gets confused for Iowa! Yes! to all you’ve written. This is a place worth staying and fighting for. What makes me sad is that young people like my kid and his friends, many of whom are queer/trans, don’t want to or CAN’T stay here because this state is so hostile to them. And I’m sad that every so often (too often, lately) I think how glad I am to not be in the pregnancy stage of life since I wouldn’t be able to access the standard of care where I live thanks to our supermajority red legislature and their theocratic ideas for running this state.
When I was working at the NYT, there was a moment when my colleagues from less overtly NYT backgrounds—primarily BIPOC, although I think there was LGBTQ rep—did a thing where they shared their picture with the words “I am the NYT.” Or something like that. And I kinda wanted to put on my Kansas State hat and join them… although I also knew that was not at all the point and would have been wrong. But truly, I was more rare at the NyT as a midwesterner than most of the represented identities. It’s NOT THE SAME. I get that of course. But it was, in its own different way, a “thing”.
From a fellow K-State grad, yes! The beliefs people hold about places they've never been continue to fascinate me. Our daughter lives in Chicago, our son lives in Connecticut. So you can imagine the questions about Chicago and isn't she scared. I feel as safe where she lives in Chicago as I do here in rural Kansas. Maybe more because I'm a teacher and I'm not at school when I'm there.
Explaining to my Connecticut friends, colleagues, and acquaintances that Iowa is actually pretty similar may be my favorite frequent conversation to have. There are no perfect places. There are people like us (whoever "us" happens to be) everywhere, so we should not write anyplace off either.
And despite leaving Iowa, I go back as often as I can. I'm making home here of course, but Iowa feels like home to me too which is why I want people to stay there and thrive there.
I love this post. I've lived in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, and California. I've lived in areas now considered red, and those that outsiders think are deep blue, and each time my experience is that it is much more complicated than that. All you have to do is tune into Portland politics to understand this. I consider myself to be a northwesterner, which means a lot of different things. I have lived through the Seattle Freeze (when restaurant servers determine your worthiness and either embrace or freeze you out) and overly friendly people getting in your business in Spokane. Okay, Spokane is where most of my family lives, so that may be the issue there. When I lived in Idaho, it wasn't nearly as "red" and the people I love who still live there are fighting the good fight. They did not just succumb and acquiesce. Now I live in Western Oregon, and we have sheriffs who are defying voter approved gun control legislation. OTOH the local police are holding a memorial procession for a K-9 "cop" that died suddenly after a day of very active law enforcement. I love the whole place.
Yes! Portland is so much more than what people see Fox anchors screeching about and/or Portlandia episodes. It's the city that gave me everything, but also one I can no longer afford to live in.
I read your piece and think about how much I daydream about living someplace cheaper than LA, where I make a good living yet can barely afford living here (most of my money goes to my mortgage) and envy you in a good way. I stay here because my brothers and their families live here and because my parents also live here and are very old. I find it bizarre that people still say you need to live here in LA or in New York to make it. Really, if I could make it feasible to move to the Midwest or anyplace less expensive, I would in a heartbeat. My jobs for the last 10 years have been remote anyway …
Yes, Robyn! I was going to write nearly the same thing. It is SO expensive here! I actually do have family in the Midwest (two of my three young adult children), and a MIL in Syracuse. But this is home. If I can't wake up and look at mountains, and then drive down the road to see where they drop into the ocean, I don't know who I am or what I'm supposed to do with myself. It's a terrible dilemma. Plus, I'm Jewish and that's an easy thing to be in West LA, or at least as easy as it can be anywhere these days. I think I would feel my minority status more distinctly in other places, and I'm not eager for that experience.
Me too! And from visiting my boys (one living in Chicago, one in school in East Lansing, Mich), I can attest that there are lovely places out there with neighborhood spirit (Chicago) and open space that no one is eyeing for (much-needed) mixed use developments. It's like, ahhh.....
I could see living in Chicago, maybe because my dad was born there and I know people, including my niece and nephew.
I have the same mixed feelings about mixed use developments. Two new ones were built down the street from me on Sunset, and after 9 months, they appear empty. Maybe that's because the starting monthly rental for a studio starts at $2400 with the cheapest 2 bedroom starts at $5,675. I mean, who can afford this who isn't making a really high salary—and then why would they want to live on a block overlooking a 7-Eleven and tent encampments filled with people who could, I don't know, live there instead and have a better chance at life?
That is a horrifying rent for a 2-bedroom! It's hard to believe LA has come to this. In the early aughts, when my kids were little, it was so much cheaper. And accordingly, our unhoused population was so much smaller.
Agreed! Been in LA for 20 years and feels like such a con job that being here is "making it" versus almost anywhere else. Big city living is a real drag sometimes and I need to escape back to Iowa (family is still there) to regain some sanity again. (Also still floored that Iowa is confused with Idaho or Ohio or (insert name of state here) and then people have the audacity to slam a state they don't even know where geographically it is located--but "know" how all the people are there.)
I lived in big cities all my life until I came here, to a college town in Upstate New York. I'll admit it was years of adjustment to feel like this was my home and not just a place I ended up because I'd followed a man. And, sure, it's a blue state, but the town tagline is also "10 square miles surrounded by reality." There are Trump signs and Confederate flags flying (which boggles me, but who cares about a little thing like history?) just a dozen miles outside of town.
It's an hour from any major highway. The middle of fucking somewhere, as my ex-husband used to correct me when I'd complain that we'd moved to the middle of fucking nowhere. And now, 23 years after I got here, I wouldn't trade it. It's maddening, in the way all smaller communities can be, but I like that I always run into people I know at the grocery store or sitting out in front of a restaurant downtown. I like that I can afford to live here as a single mom in a big, old Victorian with lots of porches. I like that my kids can be free-range in a way that would make me anxious in a big city. I know my kids might not stay. That they'll need to go off and have adventures and experience different types of communities. But I'll confess I hope they realize how sweet it is to be embedded here and come back. I'll be here to receive them.
I grew up in a tiny town in Upstate (or Central depending on who you ask) NY and couldn't wait to leave "the shit-hole" as my friends called it in high school. I ended up a couple hours away for undergrad then in Louisiana for grad school and South Carolina for training then I moved back as soon as I could. I bought a house seven minutes from where I grew up, primarily because my mom was still there at the time. So here's to hoping your kids return, too!
It certainly has some problems and I wish it were more diverse, but I love my small town.
I absolutely love this piece. I’m a Southern Californian living in a Great Lakes state, and nobody from my hometown believes me when I say I love it here. Yes, abortion is illegal here and yes our fuckhead politicians keep diminishing LGBTQAI plus protections for children. Still, home is where you can craft a life for yourself full of richness, beauty, meaning, and love— and SHARE that meaning and love with others. I’ve got all of that here in spades, plus a community that is warm-hearted and frank instead of self-serving and narcissistic. I’ll take it.
I loved this...We deserve people who stay. We deserve people who care, who love it here. Who are not just living always with one foot out of the door. We deserve people who stay and fight. People who lose elections but keep running. People who run the neighborhood associations and the tourism bureaus, and play the saxophone in the park.
I grew up in Cedar Rapids but moved to Washington DC after law school. I had never been anywhere and I thought my job in DC would give me the opportunity to travel the world. It did and I loved the first 18 of the 20 years I spent there. Moved back to CR in 2009 because my mother was getting elderly, and the internet allowed me to continue my practice (with primarily European clients) without actually being in DC any longer. It is not now the same state I moved back to, what with the R influence, but it is home. Cost of living is low, I live in a house I could never afford in DC, it is easy to get around, and the CR-IC corridor offers almost anything one could wish for, just in smaller amounts than DC. Making friends has been a bit of an effort, as you don't just slot back into those friendships that you left so many years ago. While I might make a different choice today, with my mother gone, life is still pretty good here, and I will be here for the rest of my days.
being from outside Boston, going to school outside NYC, the understanding of everyone when I was younger was that to "make it" I would have had to choose one of those places. I chose New Hampshire, and for years had a self-deprecating story about choosing it for a boy who broke up with me four months later and then, 20 years later, here I still am, entropy, small pond, etc. But like, I like it here. I like knowing my legislators really obnoxiously well. I like knowing who to call when I have a problem, and who to call when I want to make a difference. I LOVE that the women I see around me for the most part wear birks and no make up and grey hair.
I grew up in NH, so I get your love for the Granite State. I swore I would never move to Massachusetts, but alas the boy I loved lived here and now I'm a Masshole. But my parents still live in my childhood home, so I get back pretty frequently.
Living now in a part of Florida that even the rest of Florida doesn't think about, I feel that sentiment. It's taken many years to accept that the things I like about this place are worth liking and the things that suck are worth fighting against with dignity and not just packing up and moving (although I will still zillow houses in upstate new york to keep the dream alive)
When I went to Boston for grad school I was a little nervous that people would judge me from being from the Midwest and be more worldly than me. And instead, I got a ton of people applauding me for being brave enough to go halfway across the country. Turns out, a lot of people in the Northeast are from that area and don't move away, just like in the Midwest! They just happen to have been born in area that has been deemed cooler.
I miss living there sometimes but it definitely had its own issues and I've made my peace with being back in the Midwest. It works for us! And my county leans ever so slightly blue now because of us who stayed. (Although Kansas has big issues too, for sure.)
Yes, this. When I moved to New York City the embarrassment of being from Oklahoma (which, of course there are amazing Oklahomans, and beautiful places, but the sneer I still get when I mention it...ugh) meant I often just said "Texas" since I had lived there as well, although for not as long. Which is funny. I had this idea that Texas was to be admired because when I lived in Texas everyone believed it was the best place in the universe with zero thought to how it might be perceived in the rest of the world. Anyhoo, I quickly realized that some people who had never left the city they were born in could be just as provincial as anyone from small towns I lived in in OK/TX. Having bounced around the country to both coasts and in the middle, I understand where I feel the most at home. Where I feel most at home, however, is just that—my feeling. To expect everyone to have the same is some serious narcissistic shit.
Lifelong proud Iowan here. I went to college in Chicago where people liked to make fun of my Iowa roots but most of them had never been out of the Chicagoland area. At least I tried something new people!
Lyz. You make a lot of very good observations here, and I am embarrassed to say that I have participated in some of these snide behaviors myself. I think many of us think we are above the ugly and divisive discourse within our country and we have retreated to our "tribes". I am a Californian, and I grew up in the sun with the smell of hillside sage in the air. It is in my blood. But I left my home state and moved north because I worried my daughters would never afford an apartment, or a life there. And I was so tired of concrete. It was a very hard move that took all of our resources to do. I moved just before COVID slammed and we were really rocked. I was humbled, is what I mean to say. Life smacked that regional snark right out of my mouth. But I know this - Anywhere is heaven when you have your family, and where you have your village. My village is here in the north, now. Some people have pain, and I think they will die if they don't leave home. That's real. But the idea that we all need to run away from home if it's a red state, or sweaty, or simple, or full of croco-dillys or something, that's not real. I still love California, but I am glad I left. Except, sometimes, in February. ;)
My dog also likes to come into my office to fart. Little jerk.
But yeah, as someone who grew up in the Midwest but no longer lives there, people will say the rudest shit about where you're from? Like I'm allowed to make fun of it because I lived there and so many people I love still live there. But when outsiders do it, it often comes across as really mean and like they don't think of us as humans in the same way they are. BTW I also gladly defend "coastal elites" from stupid Midwestern stereotypes about them.
I've lived in a lot of places and people are people everywhere. Nobody is as unique as they'd like to believe.
your dog is surrounding you with love with the limited tools it has. lol
Wonderful essay. And yes, Jess! I well remember when I moved to CA in 1991 from a very liberal place - Iowa City - and the ignorance I kept getting about where I was from. "Oh San Diego must really knock your socks off!" Hardy har har. No, actually, you're far more provincial and clueless than the people I'm used to hanging out with. But then, through the years, I heard the same stuff from IA HS classmates who thought/think Iowa is the end all and be all. "Surely you can't be happy living in CA - so many homeless people and earthquakes and the housing prices are off the charts." Well, guess what? Yes, I can be very happy here. And yes, I am. But also, maybe I'll move back in Iowa when I'm old? Who knows? I guess we all want to think our choices are the best. And they are - for us.
My old aunt who grew in the midwest would snort "each of us is unique, just like every one else" I always thought someone should write a book - "Midwest Humor and Other Myths"
We're used to getting shit on in Georgia, but it's been more pronounced and annoying since we became a swing state. Thanks for the two democratic senators, but also here are some jokes about how you're probably married to your cousin.
Fireflies, mockingbirds, sweet tea, some of the best food in America. Hip-hop and bluegrass. Nine months of summer, heirloom tomatoes and juicy peaches. People so friendly they excuse themselves if you walk within five feet of them on the street. An endless calendar of neighborhood festivals. Big oaks and pines even in the densest part of the city. I'm not saying there's nothing to criticize in the south, but there's also a lot to love. Atlanta is one of the best places to live in America and I will fight a bitch.
Born and raised in the 404! i cosign on all of this. I live in Florida now which people also love to dunk on.
I love Savannah!
You had me until "Sweet tea"... 🫡
The real trick is half unsweet so you still retain your full suite of taste buds
I live in Idaho which means it gets confused for Iowa! Yes! to all you’ve written. This is a place worth staying and fighting for. What makes me sad is that young people like my kid and his friends, many of whom are queer/trans, don’t want to or CAN’T stay here because this state is so hostile to them. And I’m sad that every so often (too often, lately) I think how glad I am to not be in the pregnancy stage of life since I wouldn’t be able to access the standard of care where I live thanks to our supermajority red legislature and their theocratic ideas for running this state.
I came here to say this! Idaho/Iowa! ;). I could have written all of this word for word! I'm in Boise.
When I was working at the NYT, there was a moment when my colleagues from less overtly NYT backgrounds—primarily BIPOC, although I think there was LGBTQ rep—did a thing where they shared their picture with the words “I am the NYT.” Or something like that. And I kinda wanted to put on my Kansas State hat and join them… although I also knew that was not at all the point and would have been wrong. But truly, I was more rare at the NyT as a midwesterner than most of the represented identities. It’s NOT THE SAME. I get that of course. But it was, in its own different way, a “thing”.
From a fellow K-State grad, yes! The beliefs people hold about places they've never been continue to fascinate me. Our daughter lives in Chicago, our son lives in Connecticut. So you can imagine the questions about Chicago and isn't she scared. I feel as safe where she lives in Chicago as I do here in rural Kansas. Maybe more because I'm a teacher and I'm not at school when I'm there.
That last sentence.
Explaining to my Connecticut friends, colleagues, and acquaintances that Iowa is actually pretty similar may be my favorite frequent conversation to have. There are no perfect places. There are people like us (whoever "us" happens to be) everywhere, so we should not write anyplace off either.
And despite leaving Iowa, I go back as often as I can. I'm making home here of course, but Iowa feels like home to me too which is why I want people to stay there and thrive there.
I love this post. I've lived in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, and California. I've lived in areas now considered red, and those that outsiders think are deep blue, and each time my experience is that it is much more complicated than that. All you have to do is tune into Portland politics to understand this. I consider myself to be a northwesterner, which means a lot of different things. I have lived through the Seattle Freeze (when restaurant servers determine your worthiness and either embrace or freeze you out) and overly friendly people getting in your business in Spokane. Okay, Spokane is where most of my family lives, so that may be the issue there. When I lived in Idaho, it wasn't nearly as "red" and the people I love who still live there are fighting the good fight. They did not just succumb and acquiesce. Now I live in Western Oregon, and we have sheriffs who are defying voter approved gun control legislation. OTOH the local police are holding a memorial procession for a K-9 "cop" that died suddenly after a day of very active law enforcement. I love the whole place.
Yes! Portland is so much more than what people see Fox anchors screeching about and/or Portlandia episodes. It's the city that gave me everything, but also one I can no longer afford to live in.
I read your piece and think about how much I daydream about living someplace cheaper than LA, where I make a good living yet can barely afford living here (most of my money goes to my mortgage) and envy you in a good way. I stay here because my brothers and their families live here and because my parents also live here and are very old. I find it bizarre that people still say you need to live here in LA or in New York to make it. Really, if I could make it feasible to move to the Midwest or anyplace less expensive, I would in a heartbeat. My jobs for the last 10 years have been remote anyway …
Yes, Robyn! I was going to write nearly the same thing. It is SO expensive here! I actually do have family in the Midwest (two of my three young adult children), and a MIL in Syracuse. But this is home. If I can't wake up and look at mountains, and then drive down the road to see where they drop into the ocean, I don't know who I am or what I'm supposed to do with myself. It's a terrible dilemma. Plus, I'm Jewish and that's an easy thing to be in West LA, or at least as easy as it can be anywhere these days. I think I would feel my minority status more distinctly in other places, and I'm not eager for that experience.
lol, same as far as being born here and being Jewish and not being "eager for that experience." But I do think about it a lot :)
Me too! And from visiting my boys (one living in Chicago, one in school in East Lansing, Mich), I can attest that there are lovely places out there with neighborhood spirit (Chicago) and open space that no one is eyeing for (much-needed) mixed use developments. It's like, ahhh.....
I could see living in Chicago, maybe because my dad was born there and I know people, including my niece and nephew.
I have the same mixed feelings about mixed use developments. Two new ones were built down the street from me on Sunset, and after 9 months, they appear empty. Maybe that's because the starting monthly rental for a studio starts at $2400 with the cheapest 2 bedroom starts at $5,675. I mean, who can afford this who isn't making a really high salary—and then why would they want to live on a block overlooking a 7-Eleven and tent encampments filled with people who could, I don't know, live there instead and have a better chance at life?
Completely. This is exactly the problem.
That is a horrifying rent for a 2-bedroom! It's hard to believe LA has come to this. In the early aughts, when my kids were little, it was so much cheaper. And accordingly, our unhoused population was so much smaller.
Agreed! Been in LA for 20 years and feels like such a con job that being here is "making it" versus almost anywhere else. Big city living is a real drag sometimes and I need to escape back to Iowa (family is still there) to regain some sanity again. (Also still floored that Iowa is confused with Idaho or Ohio or (insert name of state here) and then people have the audacity to slam a state they don't even know where geographically it is located--but "know" how all the people are there.)
I lived in big cities all my life until I came here, to a college town in Upstate New York. I'll admit it was years of adjustment to feel like this was my home and not just a place I ended up because I'd followed a man. And, sure, it's a blue state, but the town tagline is also "10 square miles surrounded by reality." There are Trump signs and Confederate flags flying (which boggles me, but who cares about a little thing like history?) just a dozen miles outside of town.
It's an hour from any major highway. The middle of fucking somewhere, as my ex-husband used to correct me when I'd complain that we'd moved to the middle of fucking nowhere. And now, 23 years after I got here, I wouldn't trade it. It's maddening, in the way all smaller communities can be, but I like that I always run into people I know at the grocery store or sitting out in front of a restaurant downtown. I like that I can afford to live here as a single mom in a big, old Victorian with lots of porches. I like that my kids can be free-range in a way that would make me anxious in a big city. I know my kids might not stay. That they'll need to go off and have adventures and experience different types of communities. But I'll confess I hope they realize how sweet it is to be embedded here and come back. I'll be here to receive them.
I grew up in a tiny town in Upstate (or Central depending on who you ask) NY and couldn't wait to leave "the shit-hole" as my friends called it in high school. I ended up a couple hours away for undergrad then in Louisiana for grad school and South Carolina for training then I moved back as soon as I could. I bought a house seven minutes from where I grew up, primarily because my mom was still there at the time. So here's to hoping your kids return, too!
It certainly has some problems and I wish it were more diverse, but I love my small town.
I absolutely love this piece. I’m a Southern Californian living in a Great Lakes state, and nobody from my hometown believes me when I say I love it here. Yes, abortion is illegal here and yes our fuckhead politicians keep diminishing LGBTQAI plus protections for children. Still, home is where you can craft a life for yourself full of richness, beauty, meaning, and love— and SHARE that meaning and love with others. I’ve got all of that here in spades, plus a community that is warm-hearted and frank instead of self-serving and narcissistic. I’ll take it.
I loved this...We deserve people who stay. We deserve people who care, who love it here. Who are not just living always with one foot out of the door. We deserve people who stay and fight. People who lose elections but keep running. People who run the neighborhood associations and the tourism bureaus, and play the saxophone in the park.
I grew up in Cedar Rapids but moved to Washington DC after law school. I had never been anywhere and I thought my job in DC would give me the opportunity to travel the world. It did and I loved the first 18 of the 20 years I spent there. Moved back to CR in 2009 because my mother was getting elderly, and the internet allowed me to continue my practice (with primarily European clients) without actually being in DC any longer. It is not now the same state I moved back to, what with the R influence, but it is home. Cost of living is low, I live in a house I could never afford in DC, it is easy to get around, and the CR-IC corridor offers almost anything one could wish for, just in smaller amounts than DC. Making friends has been a bit of an effort, as you don't just slot back into those friendships that you left so many years ago. While I might make a different choice today, with my mother gone, life is still pretty good here, and I will be here for the rest of my days.
being from outside Boston, going to school outside NYC, the understanding of everyone when I was younger was that to "make it" I would have had to choose one of those places. I chose New Hampshire, and for years had a self-deprecating story about choosing it for a boy who broke up with me four months later and then, 20 years later, here I still am, entropy, small pond, etc. But like, I like it here. I like knowing my legislators really obnoxiously well. I like knowing who to call when I have a problem, and who to call when I want to make a difference. I LOVE that the women I see around me for the most part wear birks and no make up and grey hair.
I grew up in NH, so I get your love for the Granite State. I swore I would never move to Massachusetts, but alas the boy I loved lived here and now I'm a Masshole. But my parents still live in my childhood home, so I get back pretty frequently.
Living now in a part of Florida that even the rest of Florida doesn't think about, I feel that sentiment. It's taken many years to accept that the things I like about this place are worth liking and the things that suck are worth fighting against with dignity and not just packing up and moving (although I will still zillow houses in upstate new york to keep the dream alive)
When I went to Boston for grad school I was a little nervous that people would judge me from being from the Midwest and be more worldly than me. And instead, I got a ton of people applauding me for being brave enough to go halfway across the country. Turns out, a lot of people in the Northeast are from that area and don't move away, just like in the Midwest! They just happen to have been born in area that has been deemed cooler.
I miss living there sometimes but it definitely had its own issues and I've made my peace with being back in the Midwest. It works for us! And my county leans ever so slightly blue now because of us who stayed. (Although Kansas has big issues too, for sure.)
Yes, this. When I moved to New York City the embarrassment of being from Oklahoma (which, of course there are amazing Oklahomans, and beautiful places, but the sneer I still get when I mention it...ugh) meant I often just said "Texas" since I had lived there as well, although for not as long. Which is funny. I had this idea that Texas was to be admired because when I lived in Texas everyone believed it was the best place in the universe with zero thought to how it might be perceived in the rest of the world. Anyhoo, I quickly realized that some people who had never left the city they were born in could be just as provincial as anyone from small towns I lived in in OK/TX. Having bounced around the country to both coasts and in the middle, I understand where I feel the most at home. Where I feel most at home, however, is just that—my feeling. To expect everyone to have the same is some serious narcissistic shit.
Lifelong proud Iowan here. I went to college in Chicago where people liked to make fun of my Iowa roots but most of them had never been out of the Chicagoland area. At least I tried something new people!
Lyz. You make a lot of very good observations here, and I am embarrassed to say that I have participated in some of these snide behaviors myself. I think many of us think we are above the ugly and divisive discourse within our country and we have retreated to our "tribes". I am a Californian, and I grew up in the sun with the smell of hillside sage in the air. It is in my blood. But I left my home state and moved north because I worried my daughters would never afford an apartment, or a life there. And I was so tired of concrete. It was a very hard move that took all of our resources to do. I moved just before COVID slammed and we were really rocked. I was humbled, is what I mean to say. Life smacked that regional snark right out of my mouth. But I know this - Anywhere is heaven when you have your family, and where you have your village. My village is here in the north, now. Some people have pain, and I think they will die if they don't leave home. That's real. But the idea that we all need to run away from home if it's a red state, or sweaty, or simple, or full of croco-dillys or something, that's not real. I still love California, but I am glad I left. Except, sometimes, in February. ;)