18. A usually reliable poster being irrational.

Have you ever lived in the South?

Do you think friends and contacts anywhere make it easier to live somewhere, especially when they are among the wealthiest people on earth who can afford every luxury?

And have it all wiped away in a mudslide overnight? No thanks.

And sure, I'd love to move to Uruguay. Or Amsterdam. Or maybe even back near the NC mountains.

But choice in life sometimes is limited by circumstances way beyond one's control.

>> Ironically, it was the NC mountains that were recently wiped away in a hurricane, not the CA coast.

I'd take what happened to people I know in Spruce Pine, NC, any day over what happened to people I know in the Pacific Palisades, and which events are forecast to continue there, along with wildfires, earthquakes, etc.

I grew up in New York City, went South in 1977, never returned, and New York would have been the logical course for my line of work. To each their own. No regrets.

==

And yes, Eberly, by reliable, I mean that I usually agree with Speaks' content and enjoy their perspective.

You can choose a place that is always humid and bug infested and gets occasional hurricanes and tornados, and I'll choose a place that has the best climate in the country and gets occasional wildfires.
At least CA has people in charge who want to address climate change, whereas NC is full of morons who call climate change a hoax and literally cosplay as confederate soldiers on the weekend.

#27 | Posted by SpeakSoftly

You're ignoring economics and structural poverty and a thousand other things you're usually here railing about, correctly.

People in Western NC, poor white generally (or in more well-to-do enclaves or compounds), don't have the option to "choose a place" like Pacific Palisades, or California in general, where housing prices continue to drive teachers out of cities.

Educate yourself, California:

PS, Eb: I'm not sure what you're getting at that it's a fact that I (mostly) agree with Speaks' policy positions, as much as I can determine them.

Everyone has their own way of presenting themselves. If I agree with someone, it doesn't mean I'd say it the same way.

But whatever your takeaway, that's fine. There are crazed rightwingers here I read with some delight, and one of my two plonks is someone whom I'd probably enjoy in person.

Calling all the South essentially unworthy of habitation is as dumb as saying [choose your US city] is a nest of left-wing anarchy and too dangerous even to enter.

I've heard that from seemingly intelligent people these days.

You can live in lots of the South and have plenty of land there and never encounter people you don't want to see, if that's your desire. If you have enough money to live on the Pacific Coast, you can set yourself up pretty well in the South, with all the modcons.

I lived in a place that was 70 percent Bush/Trump/Morgan Griffith and right next to East TN, which except for Dolly Parton and ETSU and some of Knoxville is pretty ignorant. I told Mark Warner back in 2020 that I wouldn't move a mile across the state line because of the crazy senators Tennessee has, and I'd take him and Kaine anytime.

As things got weirder, personally and nationally, I learned that to enjoy my own life and let others enjoy theirs, I had to get along with people. It's become a lot easier. I don't doubt it was messed up, but whatever made people Trumpers, they are still human. Except for maybe Trump.

In a grocery store parking lot couple weeks ago (Wegman's, so a pricey store for this area), I saw a young country white guy proudly displaying his truck and his flag and his Trump stickers, and my more peaceful 2008 Prius with a Buddhist bumper sticker was sitting next to his. I went up to unload my groceries, and he had his hackles up, expecting some guff. I smiled at him, waved, asked how he's doing, and he honestly returned the exchange.

Beats hate. Or dragging it around with you. Even for hours behind a keyboard.

42.

We have friends who were able to retire in the late 1990s. Could go anywhere. She's from New Hampshire and hasn't lost a touch of her accent in 80+ years: he's from Georgia. They met when she was an Air Force nurse and he was intercepting Russian radio transmissions over SE Asia.

Drove all over the East and settled in the Shenandoah Valley.

He's happily retired. His wife started working again, and has been at it 22 years, although not as a nurse.

Yes, the South can be very pleasant. Small cities too, not just the big ones.

I took a family of France once on a drive up 441 through Georgia from the Florida to the NC state line. For a group that thinks all of the US is Orlando, New York, and Hollywood, yes it was revelatory.

If you hate pine trees, stay away from Georgia. At last count, 4000 for every man, woman, and child in the state. What horrors.

Speaks, care to speak of conditions in inland California, aside from your idyll?