Bad Apologies

I've finally gotten around to checking out FindYourSpot.com, at the recommendation of Write Again Soon. It seems my top 5 of the exact same as Red, although in a different order. [Red, refusing to blog herself, has posted her thoughts on Write Again Soon.]

So here's my top 5:
1. New Haven, CT
2. Providence, RI
3. Boston, MA
4. Worcester, MA
5. Hartford, CT

There were many MA and CT cities, as well as a healthy peppering of the rest of the Mid-Atlantic, with occasional representation from the South and the West Coast.

But what's a bit disturbing about the website is that it seems to believe that at least a small fraction of those who take the survey will then start apartment/house/job hunting in one of these destinations they have identified for them. As I already elluded to in my comments to W.A.S., what this survey ignores is the relationships one has developed in our current cities, friends and familial, that can not be replaced easily were I to uproot and head to New Haven.

This is, in short, one thing that I think is wrong with America. We think we're so very independent, and that we'll be fine, so we discount the importance of these relationships as we go off chasing some other priority. I'm not saying I didn't do it as well, heading to NYC for school, but the assumption was that I would return. On the contrary, I get so mad at people who decide to retire and then move to the Southwest, only to bemoan their distance from grandchildren, depleated water table, excessive forest fires, etc. WELL WHAT THE HELL DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?!

On a smaller scale, I even get annoyed when people move across the region. Is the size of your house really more important than proximity to friends, family, work, and community? I know its not that simple, and I know I left the town my parents raised me in. But then again, we were relocated there when I was younger anyway, and EVERY SINGLE FRIEND has left that town since I left for undergrad (albeit not far). But my relationship with my family does suffer as a result -- I see my parents and brother perhaps monthly. The rest of my family, having been left across the country as we moved when I was younger, I see no more than once annually. On a day-to-day basis, I act as a sole individual, with no family.

I see this in the cities all of the time. The Lower East Side of Manhattan used to be the vibrant center of the immigrant Jewish community. Its still Jewish, but its mostly the grandparents, while the following generation moved to Long Island and the generation after that has moved beyond. Did running to L.I. find better schools and bigger houses, at the expense of the community lost by not being in a place entirely surrounded by the people you live and work and worship with? Did that second generation get fat with consumption and the other ills of suburbia? And all along, they probably applaud their choice every day, except maybe when cursing the traffic on the Long Island Expressway when heading back in to see grandma or go to a Broadway show.

I see it in DC too. My neighborhood is littered with old churches, almost one per city block, which largely sit dormant all week long, as voids in the neighborhood's fabric, only to be under-attended each Sunday morning by a congregation that drives in from PG County and chokes our streets with their double parking. The churches provide no sense of community to the residents who live here (since they are not ours) and the traffic just gets in our way. Meanwhile, these weekly visitors imply to me that they have not found a replacement community in the suburbs they ran to. So what was the point?

So no, I will not be going to New Haven. DC is my home, and my relationships are here. I am invested in its past and future. I hope to travel for work, and can't say I won't have stints in other cities, but I'm not going to seek it out as a panacea. I'll strive for employment here, I'll look for love here, and I'll hope to raise a family here. And if I don't like the schools, or the crime, or something else, I'll do what I always do -- write a letter, get involved, inform myself and my neighbors; not run.