avery of the dead
from Kentucky is reading Cipher SistersSeptember 21, 2012 - 9:10am
Also, Idaho has this Josh Ritter song.
bryanhowie
from FW, ID is reading East of Eden. Steinbeck is FUCKING AMAZING.September 21, 2012 - 9:17am
What's a josh ritter?
avery of the dead
from Kentucky is reading Cipher SistersSeptember 21, 2012 - 9:18am
antelope
bryanhowie
from FW, ID is reading East of Eden. Steinbeck is FUCKING AMAZING.September 21, 2012 - 9:20am
josh ritter is an even-toed ungulate.
OtisTheBulldog
from Somerville, MA is reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazSeptember 21, 2012 - 12:17pm
I don't even have any attractive first cousins and I have something ridiculous like 30 something cousins. Makes me think about my lineage makes me think procreation is a bad idea makes me realize why I left my hometown makes me realize the root of all my problems makes me realize 9 bucks a month is not that bad a fee.
Alex Kane
from west-central Illinois is reading Dark OrbitSeptember 21, 2012 - 12:58pm
Galesburg, Illinois has a couple nice coffee shops, an indie bookstore, library, and community college. Pretty cool comic book store. Public bus transportation that's dirt-cheap, if you need that kind of thing. A guitar store that sells drums out of the basement, a "Music Makers," and some place that sells trumpets, trombones, and pianos. Hmm. Two Taco Bells, two Dairy Queens, two McDonald's, two Walgreens, two Hy-Vees. Two of freakin' everything. Cool people. The occasional violent crime in Wal-Mart's parking lot, in which case my sympathy is often with the perp. Lot of cool locally-owned businesses and such. An old Amtrak station.
Class Facilitator
Emma C
from Los Angeles is reading Black Spire by Delilah DawsonSeptember 21, 2012 - 5:39pm
I was born in Idaho, so it's not all bad.
Covewriter
from Nashville, Tennessee is reading & SonsSeptember 21, 2012 - 10:16pm
Emma that is hilarious. I'm planning to go slow when I visit Charleston first week in Oct. And Howie, when you described Idaho I thought for sure you were maybe from my Appalachia.
bryanhowie
from FW, ID is reading East of Eden. Steinbeck is FUCKING AMAZING.September 22, 2012 - 12:35am
We have a lot of hillfolk around here. Vietnam vets with flashbacks, families that stay too close-knit, alcoholic speedfreaks, religious zealots, and bigots. Lots of witches and lovely hippies and hard-working, good, caring people, too.
Poor people come in all flavors, but they mostly come in crazy.
Dwayne
from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updatedSeptember 22, 2012 - 4:06am
That sounds like a stereotype of Kentucky Howie.
Class Facilitator
Emma C
from Los Angeles is reading Black Spire by Delilah DawsonSeptember 22, 2012 - 8:01am
Fact: Idaho produces more white supremacists per capita than any other state in the union. Also potatoes. It's all very white-and-starchy. Also quite pretty.
underpurplemoon
from PDX
September 22, 2012 - 8:16am
Feast Portland 2012! Maybe I should be a food/travel writer....
bryanhowie
from FW, ID is reading East of Eden. Steinbeck is FUCKING AMAZING.September 22, 2012 - 9:19am
In northern Idaho, there isn't much for potatoes. We get ours from Washington.
And I don't know if I'd call them 'supremesists'. There's very little 'supreme' about them.
They usually say, "I'm not racist, I just wouldn't want to live around them."
I hear a lot of sentences that start "I'm not racist, but..."
And I stop them right there and say, "If there's a 'but', then you are racist. Just embrace it. Be the kindest racist you can be."
Stacy Kear
from Bucyrus, Ohio lives in New Jersey is reading The Art of War September 22, 2012 - 9:57am
Be the kindest racist you can be.
Best response ever, because it's damn near impossible to convert them. I spent some time in Arkansas, and wow, it's like stepping back in time.
Jack Campbell Jr.
from Lawrence, KS is reading American Rust by Phillipp MeyerSeptember 25, 2012 - 8:19am
Actually, it isn't that much different in rural Iowa. I heard my great-uncle say, "Now, I'm not racist, I'm as liberal as the next guy. I don't hate the <censored> I just don't want them around me."
Ah, the joys of returning to a small, conservative town for family reunions.
Dwayne
from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updatedSeptember 26, 2012 - 4:42am
It is odd I don't hear that much in small towns in Kentucky, but I don't spend as much time in them as I used too.
avery of the dead
from Kentucky is reading Cipher SistersSeptember 26, 2012 - 5:09am
For Dwayne:
When I worked in a bookstore I had a conversation with a woman who was trying to convince her daughter not to date a black kid. Her exact words to me: I just told her, you can be friends with them, but a lady doesn't date black men.
I feel ugly just typing that out.
Dwayne
from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updatedSeptember 26, 2012 - 5:31am
Was that a while back? I was getting at that I don't hear that stuff as much as I did 10 or even 5 years ago.
avery of the dead
from Kentucky is reading Cipher SistersSeptember 26, 2012 - 6:22am
Well, it was about a year or two ago I guess.
Dwayne
from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updatedSeptember 26, 2012 - 7:35am
Sigh.
avery of the dead
from Kentucky is reading Cipher SistersSeptember 26, 2012 - 10:03am
Courtney
from the Midwest is reading Monkey: A Journey to the West and a thousand college textbooksSeptember 26, 2012 - 11:56am
I think it may be sort of spreading out of Kentucky, if that makes sense. I have a lot of family from areas like Bullitt County who live in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee now. As they travel farther out of Kentucky, they spread the racism further.
The family I do have in Kentucky are an interracial couple. The family I have in Tennessee disowned their daughter because she shacked up with a black man (my aunt literally tries to be racist to fit in with her husband's family on issues like this) and my dad's parents still treat the aforementioned interracial couple like shit. They're all from Kentucky.
Stacy Kear
from Bucyrus, Ohio lives in New Jersey is reading The Art of War September 26, 2012 - 12:09pm
In Arkansas, my two friends had dreadlocks, white boys mind you. Our welcome to the neighborhood was a man holding a rifle and his first words were, "Everybody in Arkansas had a gun. Better watch yourself nigger lovers." That actually made me sick typing. Our car was broken into, with the doors unlocked they smashed the window to get in, dumb asses. I could go on and on, it was like being in Deliverance.
Dwayne
from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updatedSeptember 26, 2012 - 5:11pm
@Stacy - On a more upbeat and unrelated note I was totallaly shocked when I read that you have a daughter in high school, you look much younger in the pics I've seen.
Stacy Kear
from Bucyrus, Ohio lives in New Jersey is reading The Art of War September 26, 2012 - 6:07pm
@Dwayne, thanks. I'm shocked I have a daughter in high school too. Don't put me in a home, I'm not that old yet. You have to take into consideration I'm from Ohio, we birth babies early. I do look younger than I am, it's because I have been forced to stay out of the sun. That or good genes, my mom looks really young.
Dwayne
from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updatedSeptember 26, 2012 - 7:46pm
Yeah, but to be as young as I thought you were you'd have had to have had here at about 7.
Stacy Kear
from Bucyrus, Ohio lives in New Jersey is reading The Art of War September 26, 2012 - 7:49pm
Now that would be West Virginia style breeding. Haha
I like you Dwayne :-)
Dwayne
from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updatedSeptember 26, 2012 - 8:25pm
Stop, you'll make me blush!
Bruno Hat
from Glasgow, Scotland is reading writing and arithmeticSeptember 27, 2012 - 10:59am
I think it may be sort of spreading out of Kentucky, if that makes sense.
I think people must have spread out from Kentucky to Europe as well then because people seem way more racist over here than they used to be.
Bracchos
from Albuquerque is reading Translated WomanSeptember 27, 2012 - 1:00pm
Albuquerque (I live there 70% of the time)
Housing's not bad, schools I would have look up, but interesting people there are in abundance, it's the only important city in all of New Mexico so most people either make lots of pilgrimages (George RR Martin, David Morell, etc.) or live there (me)
Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazSeptember 27, 2012 - 8:20pm
I have heard really good things about Albuquerque.
Class Facilitator
Emma C
from Los Angeles is reading Black Spire by Delilah DawsonSeptember 28, 2012 - 11:35am
I heard a Virginian say on NPR the other day he voted for Obama "to be post-racial" and does not plan to vote for Obama this election because the country did not become "post-racial" and he's disappointed. Um.
jyh
from VA is reading whatever he feels likeSeptember 28, 2012 - 12:53pm
^ yeah, that was me
jk
I don't understand some of those 'man-on-the-street' clips NPR uses; many are totally devoid of any actual insight. Then again, the same could be said about many of the politicians' quotes, so whatever.
Dwayne
from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updatedSeptember 28, 2012 - 6:59pm
@J.Y. - I'm not a NPR, but maybe that is their point.
jyh
from VA is reading whatever he feels likeSeptember 29, 2012 - 10:05am
Well, I don't need a radio to tell me that a lot of people don't know what the hell they're talking about.
Stacy Kear
from Bucyrus, Ohio lives in New Jersey is reading The Art of War September 29, 2012 - 10:13am
Don't turn my pathetic, desperate to escape, post break-up thread into a political discussion. Thank you very much.
jyh
from VA is reading whatever he feels likeSeptember 29, 2012 - 10:17am
It's Emma's fault.
bryanhowie
from FW, ID is reading East of Eden. Steinbeck is FUCKING AMAZING.September 29, 2012 - 10:46am
I blame the demopublican tea party.
Dwayne
from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updatedSeptember 30, 2012 - 2:38am
You should have titled it "my pathetic, desperate to escape, post break-up thread" so we'd know to stay on topic. Duh.
Arlen
from Virginia is reading The Waste Lands, Stephen KingSeptember 30, 2012 - 5:00am
Charlottesville VA is a great town. It has UVA, a great music and performance art scene, and is a short drive from the shenandoah national park. Job opportunities are decent with UVA being the largest employer in the town. I have heard it compared to Portland in spirit if not in size.
Michael J. Riser
from CA, TX, Japan, back to CA is reading The Tyrant - Michael Cisco, The Devil Takes You Home - Gabino IglesiasOctober 1, 2012 - 3:32pm
I have never understood the appeal of Albuquerque. Know several people who've moved there, and while I've never visited properly, just flying in and seeing everything from above seems like more than enough for me. It's an endless sea of brown.
I'm with Dwayne though, Stacy. I kept thinking the pictures you posted on FB must have been with your little cousins or nieces or something. You're full of surprises!
I'm in Fort Worth, Texas... some decent schools, some not. Reasonable prices compared to what I'm used to, at least (California), which is almost the only reason I'm here. People are pretty nice, and I've met some cool folks. It wasn't quite so... Texasy as I expected it to be. That said, I sort of hate it here. It's dry except when it's humid as hell, summers are beyond disgustingly hot (this year was 60-something days of 100+ heat and awful humidity), nobody in the bloody state apparently knows how to drive a car, the quality of animal care in the average home is abysmal, especially in a couple demographics (I've tried to rescue over 10 dogs just within 2 blocks of my house in the year and a half I've been here, including the rescued pit bull who lives with me now, and these were literally animals that wandered into my yard—I think I've returned about 4 pets that had tags to owners who let them escape, some of them multiple times, and the number of stray animals I've seen but not been able to do a damn thing to help is probably around 40 or so. Oh, and I watched a man ignore his dog running across a 4-lane road. I tried to get the dog to come to me and get off the street, but he got hit by a car about 6 feet away from me.). I really sort of hate the place. I have no idea why Texans think Texas is so awesome. Some neighborhoods don't even use cans or anything for garbage. They just throw bags of trash onto their lawns once a week.
That said, downtown Fort Worth is quite nice, you couldn't ask for more restaurants per square mile, Trader Joe's just opened a store here (I know, I sound like some snob-ass Californian... maybe that's what I am?), and jobs are supposedly somewhat more plentiful here than a lot of other places in the US. I really like my school even though it's just a JC, and people here generally seem to mean well and treat people nicely.
ekmahoney
from New England is reading lots of short storiesSeptember 8, 2013 - 4:29am
Boston.
Good schools? We've got Harvard and MIT I challenge you to find better. also some of the best hospitals in teh country. People are up front and lack pretention. They can be a bit rough but are mostly interesting characters. More than one person has told me we are the most like a european city. Also good coffee and cheaper than new york... mainly because if you don't have a college degree or two or have been working at a trade skill your whole life you're making minimum wage. but yaknow the atmosphere makes up for it I swear!
Also, Idaho has this Josh Ritter song.
What's a josh ritter?
antelope
josh ritter is an even-toed ungulate.
I don't even have any attractive first cousins and I have something ridiculous like 30 something cousins. Makes me think about my lineage makes me think procreation is a bad idea makes me realize why I left my hometown makes me realize the root of all my problems makes me realize 9 bucks a month is not that bad a fee.
Galesburg, Illinois has a couple nice coffee shops, an indie bookstore, library, and community college. Pretty cool comic book store. Public bus transportation that's dirt-cheap, if you need that kind of thing. A guitar store that sells drums out of the basement, a "Music Makers," and some place that sells trumpets, trombones, and pianos. Hmm. Two Taco Bells, two Dairy Queens, two McDonald's, two Walgreens, two Hy-Vees. Two of freakin' everything. Cool people. The occasional violent crime in Wal-Mart's parking lot, in which case my sympathy is often with the perp. Lot of cool locally-owned businesses and such. An old Amtrak station.
I was born in Idaho, so it's not all bad.
Emma that is hilarious. I'm planning to go slow when I visit Charleston first week in Oct. And Howie, when you described Idaho I thought for sure you were maybe from my Appalachia.
We have a lot of hillfolk around here. Vietnam vets with flashbacks, families that stay too close-knit, alcoholic speedfreaks, religious zealots, and bigots. Lots of witches and lovely hippies and hard-working, good, caring people, too.
Poor people come in all flavors, but they mostly come in crazy.
That sounds like a stereotype of Kentucky Howie.
Fact: Idaho produces more white supremacists per capita than any other state in the union. Also potatoes. It's all very white-and-starchy. Also quite pretty.
Feast Portland 2012! Maybe I should be a food/travel writer....
In northern Idaho, there isn't much for potatoes. We get ours from Washington.
And I don't know if I'd call them 'supremesists'. There's very little 'supreme' about them.
They usually say, "I'm not racist, I just wouldn't want to live around them."
I hear a lot of sentences that start "I'm not racist, but..."
And I stop them right there and say, "If there's a 'but', then you are racist. Just embrace it. Be the kindest racist you can be."
Best response ever, because it's damn near impossible to convert them. I spent some time in Arkansas, and wow, it's like stepping back in time.
Actually, it isn't that much different in rural Iowa. I heard my great-uncle say, "Now, I'm not racist, I'm as liberal as the next guy. I don't hate the <censored> I just don't want them around me."
Ah, the joys of returning to a small, conservative town for family reunions.
It is odd I don't hear that much in small towns in Kentucky, but I don't spend as much time in them as I used too.
For Dwayne:
When I worked in a bookstore I had a conversation with a woman who was trying to convince her daughter not to date a black kid. Her exact words to me: I just told her, you can be friends with them, but a lady doesn't date black men.
I feel ugly just typing that out.
Was that a while back? I was getting at that I don't hear that stuff as much as I did 10 or even 5 years ago.
Well, it was about a year or two ago I guess.
Sigh.
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heavy sigh
I think it may be sort of spreading out of Kentucky, if that makes sense. I have a lot of family from areas like Bullitt County who live in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee now. As they travel farther out of Kentucky, they spread the racism further.
The family I do have in Kentucky are an interracial couple. The family I have in Tennessee disowned their daughter because she shacked up with a black man (my aunt literally tries to be racist to fit in with her husband's family on issues like this) and my dad's parents still treat the aforementioned interracial couple like shit. They're all from Kentucky.
In Arkansas, my two friends had dreadlocks, white boys mind you. Our welcome to the neighborhood was a man holding a rifle and his first words were, "Everybody in Arkansas had a gun. Better watch yourself nigger lovers." That actually made me sick typing. Our car was broken into, with the doors unlocked they smashed the window to get in, dumb asses. I could go on and on, it was like being in Deliverance.
@Stacy - On a more upbeat and unrelated note I was totallaly shocked when I read that you have a daughter in high school, you look much younger in the pics I've seen.
@Dwayne, thanks. I'm shocked I have a daughter in high school too. Don't put me in a home, I'm not that old yet. You have to take into consideration I'm from Ohio, we birth babies early. I do look younger than I am, it's because I have been forced to stay out of the sun. That or good genes, my mom looks really young.
Yeah, but to be as young as I thought you were you'd have had to have had here at about 7.
Now that would be West Virginia style breeding. Haha
I like you Dwayne :-)
Stop, you'll make me blush!
I think people must have spread out from Kentucky to Europe as well then because people seem way more racist over here than they used to be.
Albuquerque (I live there 70% of the time)
Housing's not bad, schools I would have look up, but interesting people there are in abundance, it's the only important city in all of New Mexico so most people either make lots of pilgrimages (George RR Martin, David Morell, etc.) or live there (me)
I have heard really good things about Albuquerque.
I heard a Virginian say on NPR the other day he voted for Obama "to be post-racial" and does not plan to vote for Obama this election because the country did not become "post-racial" and he's disappointed. Um.
^ yeah, that was me
jk
I don't understand some of those 'man-on-the-street' clips NPR uses; many are totally devoid of any actual insight. Then again, the same could be said about many of the politicians' quotes, so whatever.
@J.Y. - I'm not a NPR, but maybe that is their point.
Well, I don't need a radio to tell me that a lot of people don't know what the hell they're talking about.
Don't turn my pathetic, desperate to escape, post break-up thread into a political discussion. Thank you very much.
It's Emma's fault.
I blame the demopublican tea party.
You should have titled it "my pathetic, desperate to escape, post break-up thread" so we'd know to stay on topic. Duh.
Charlottesville VA is a great town. It has UVA, a great music and performance art scene, and is a short drive from the shenandoah national park. Job opportunities are decent with UVA being the largest employer in the town. I have heard it compared to Portland in spirit if not in size.
I have never understood the appeal of Albuquerque. Know several people who've moved there, and while I've never visited properly, just flying in and seeing everything from above seems like more than enough for me. It's an endless sea of brown.
I'm with Dwayne though, Stacy. I kept thinking the pictures you posted on FB must have been with your little cousins or nieces or something. You're full of surprises!
I'm in Fort Worth, Texas... some decent schools, some not. Reasonable prices compared to what I'm used to, at least (California), which is almost the only reason I'm here. People are pretty nice, and I've met some cool folks. It wasn't quite so... Texasy as I expected it to be. That said, I sort of hate it here. It's dry except when it's humid as hell, summers are beyond disgustingly hot (this year was 60-something days of 100+ heat and awful humidity), nobody in the bloody state apparently knows how to drive a car, the quality of animal care in the average home is abysmal, especially in a couple demographics (I've tried to rescue over 10 dogs just within 2 blocks of my house in the year and a half I've been here, including the rescued pit bull who lives with me now, and these were literally animals that wandered into my yard—I think I've returned about 4 pets that had tags to owners who let them escape, some of them multiple times, and the number of stray animals I've seen but not been able to do a damn thing to help is probably around 40 or so. Oh, and I watched a man ignore his dog running across a 4-lane road. I tried to get the dog to come to me and get off the street, but he got hit by a car about 6 feet away from me.). I really sort of hate the place. I have no idea why Texans think Texas is so awesome. Some neighborhoods don't even use cans or anything for garbage. They just throw bags of trash onto their lawns once a week.
That said, downtown Fort Worth is quite nice, you couldn't ask for more restaurants per square mile, Trader Joe's just opened a store here (I know, I sound like some snob-ass Californian... maybe that's what I am?), and jobs are supposedly somewhat more plentiful here than a lot of other places in the US. I really like my school even though it's just a JC, and people here generally seem to mean well and treat people nicely.
Boston.
Good schools? We've got Harvard and MIT I challenge you to find better. also some of the best hospitals in teh country. People are up front and lack pretention. They can be a bit rough but are mostly interesting characters. More than one person has told me we are the most like a european city. Also good coffee and cheaper than new york... mainly because if you don't have a college degree or two or have been working at a trade skill your whole life you're making minimum wage. but yaknow the atmosphere makes up for it I swear!