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The Nation's Pulse
Staying Put
When will we stop pushing our young to leave their hometowns?
“You’ll go far,” a well-intentioned high school English teacher once told me. Wouldn’t he be disappointed to learn that I am still living a meager fifteen miles from my alma mater? No doubt he would protest that he was using the word “far” not as a measure of distance, but of achievement. But I am not so sure. As localist author Bill Kauffman has noted countless times, in America to achieve is to leave. And one’s success is often measured by the distance one travels from home. For young Midwesterners that often means lighting out for one of the big cities on the coasts.
And that is only the beginning of our hypermobility. Americans, on average, move every four years, whereas staid Europeans relocate on average twice in their adult lives. All this transience cannot be good for society. Try building ties, friendships, and deep connections when you know not whether you are coming or going. When you settle down in a community for the long haul, you are more likely to invest in that place. You attend neighborhood association meetings. You join garden clubs, the PTA, your church choir. It takes dedicated, longtime residents to create lasting institutions like museums and cultural centers. “The longer people stay in their homes and communities, the more they identify with those places, and the greater their commitment to helping local businesses and institutions thrive,” says urban expert Joel Kotkin.
The American lust for movement has its proponents. Those who favor rootlessness (oikophobes or home-haters, in philosopher Roger Scruton’s phrase) like to say that America was founded on the idea of movement, since many of our ancestors left their homes and families to settle here. And, once here, many kept right on tramping west as the country grew.
True enough, but isn’t the Great American Dream largely one of oikophilia? And isn’t a home something more than a house you inhabit briefly before relocating to the next city? What about family, roots, and community? Don’t they play a role in the American Dream as well?
You wouldn’t know it from the way we encourage our best and brightest to “go far.” It is no wonder smart small-town kids can’t wait to run off to college and begin their lives of vagabondage, when parents, principals. and teachers — especially here in the Midwest — actively encourage this, much to our own detriment and that of our towns.
SIMILAR TO THE mobile “achievers” are the “relos,” the rootless professional class, who follow the money from suburb to suburb (“relovilles”) and put ego, career, and money before the Ties that Bind. These are not the laid-off blue-collars whose factories shut down and they have no choice but to set out for the next boom town. These are executive gypsies required to relocate every few years to remain on the upward career track. Peter Kilborn, author of Next Stop, Reloville, estimated the total relo population at around four million in 2007.
Kilborn’s book made me think of a forty-something friend of mine who recently sold his small company for more bread than I could blow in a lifetime. Instead of enjoying the fruits of his success with an early retirement amid his family and friends, he — and by extension, his wife and young daughter — took another job hundreds of miles away in Dallas.
If it is easy to move away, it is considerably harder to come back. Returning home is regarded by many as a kind of defeat. When the always homesick Bill Kauffman decided to move back to his hometown of Batavia, New York, some years ago, the locals were saddened and somewhat embarrassed for him. Poor guy couldn’t make it in the real world.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy in all this is the effect of all this rootlessness on parents and grandparents. I am always a bit saddened by the slight of old couples schlepping through airports on their way to Orlando or Denver or Dallas to visit their grandchildren or to attend this or that graduation or wedding or birthday party. Such is the price we pay for encouraging our children to be successful somewhere else.
My own son will go away to college in the fall. Every parent wants to see his child be successful. And I am no different. I just hope he doesn’t take it the wrong way when I say I hope he doesn’t go too far.
About the Author
Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (46) | Leave a comment
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Paul Kotik| 6.7.12 @ 6:20AM
It's no wonder kids are confused. Our national marketing department has us calling houses "homes", and developments "communities".
Appleby| 6.7.12 @ 7:08AM
The two small towns where I grew up have disappeared. When we went to my Auntie's 100th birthday party nearby, we drove through the old neighbourhoods and one of them is mainly New York City people creating an upscale village and the other is pretty much deserted. I moved away from Smallville because I didn't want to marry a farmer and slave on a farm. I wanted to stand on all seven continents before I turned 21, to meet people who were not glued to a life I would never understand or enjoy, to speak other languages and read other opinions and raise the discourse above dishes, diapers and divorce.
I wanted to see the sun set over the Amalfi Drive through the windscreen of a Lamborghini. The people of my small-town childhood wanted to marry each other and farm, and the farthest away they wanted to go was Disneyland.
I am not sorry that I spent my youth meeting non-farm people and seeing the city-state world. I am glad my parents encouraged us to leave home and become people who don't wake up in the morning to Groundhog Day.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.12 @ 8:40AM
My wife's family lived in Texhoma. The town where her mother was born is gone, but several others have found a new lease on life. Towns and villages, and even cities, are born, live, die, and sometimes are reborn. Without this cycle, we wouldn't have archaeology.
Occam's Tool| 6.7.12 @ 12:12PM
Yes, Stuart, but I have to tell you that I have done both, and I like being settled in. Mr. Orlet has a superb point. My medical records person can tell me family histories on patients I have admitted that are from around the area I practice in far better than transient me.
Interestingly, I have NEVER practiced with a patient population that resembles the one I grew up in.
Drunken Sailor| 6.7.12 @ 3:03PM
Agreed OT,
In my Navy career I moved roughly every 3-4 years. Counting my first move from home, several short stays at different bases for training, etc. I moved 8 times in 20 years. The second to last time was to move back home to a rental. The last time was 7 years ago into the house I bought. It is very comforting to talk to people you have known for 30+years. I do not miss relocating as soon as I got to know the neighbors well.
numbatdog| 6.7.12 @ 7:48AM
Interesting article but it doesn't go quite far enough.
Ultimately the reason for all this rootlessness is the mindless pursuit of more and more money at all costs. The wholesomeness of American life has become lost in this futile scrabbling for cash. Becoming the richest person in the cemetery after living a hedonistic lifestyle has become an admirable goal. That is why we avidly follow the lives of wealthy Hollywood trash. But at what cost to the family?
The extended family is gone. Mom and pop can be safely consigned to a senior, then nursing home in a distant city to die quietly without fuss. But actually they played an important roll in the traditional extended family by mentoring and helping with grandchildren. The vital mentoring role is gone, now taken over by the State with its "one size fits all " and criminalizing childish behavior approach. The help grandparents used to provide at home and looking after the kids now has to be paid for. Which means working ever longer hours.
The nuclear family is now disintegrating which is not suprising. The warmth and comfort of a family home which kids love to come home to has been replaced with a front door key and a note on the refrigerator. Whats there to miss?
The wealthier the parents, the larger the home and the emptier it feels despite being filled with adult toys.
Somewhere, somehow, our generation's values seems to have gone terribly wrong.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.12 @ 4:36PM
What a crock, numbatdog.
This country was founded by people who moved across an ocean in search of more and more money. It expanded westward because people were looking for more and more money. It eventually filled the whole continent because of people looking for more and more money. That search for success, that mindless pursuit of more and more money, is what made America so wholesome in the first place. People here were willing to take risks and MAKE money, whereas, back home in good old Europe, where nobody ever moves, they either settled for the class into which they were born, or got money by taking it from others--usually by force. No, I like American mobility.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 6.7.12 @ 8:05AM
In some ways it seems lost on Mr. Orlet that life brings choices, and the consequences of those choices are not always irrevocable. As someone who chose to leave and chose to return to my roots, I made those decisions based on considerations for me and my family. I never saw my departure as a victory or my return as a defeat , but saw each as a step on the journey I was taking in life to pursue my interests and meet my obligations. I rarely considered the decisions I made a “True/ False” test with only one correct answer that could only be taken one time.
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 6.7.12 @ 8:28AM
There is no sure path to anything.
At 14 I left high school and traveled around for a year and a half. I met many incredible people and actually worked in a bar in Washington, D.C. serving beer by the pitcher. I think it was called the Keg and it was on Wisconsin Ave. in Georgetown. The place was a madhouse. I worked in many other Washington sites including the Washington Monument.
I then went back to high school and graduated with straight A's and then graduated from the University of Maryland with a grade point average of 3.67. It would have been 4.0 but I told a professor to get "F***D" in front of the class after he falsely accused me of cheating in front of the class but it was obvious I was no liberal and he was a typical liberal. I didn't need to cheat at anything. He was a kook but he was the professor so I got booted out of class.
After that I went on to many successful ventures including a career in law enforcement and designing computers and computer systems which sold by the thousands.
In short, there is no sure path in life. By the way, when I left school in the 60's nobody cared. Today the state would consider that a crime.
Occam's Tool| 6.7.12 @ 2:34PM
Yes, Bill, good point. The other point to consider is that Mr. Orlet lives in what can be charitably be described as a hellhole neighborhood. My neighborhood, although frigid in the winter, is 13 easy minutes from a 4 year State University, is crime free, has fantastic summers, affordable housing (2.5 acres, 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, $280 K), and my kids can run around the neighborhood in the safety I had in the Chicago suburbs in the 1960s. I'm happy here, and I think it would be a great place for my daughter to be a veterinarian, but we shall see.
If the kids are healthy, happy, and taking care of themselves honestly, life is an adventure and they should live and be well and visit the homestead once in a while. I grew up in Chicago's burbs. I went to Texas for undergrad and medical school, California for residency, and have practiced in Alabama, Kentucky, New Mexico, New Zealand, and Minnesota. I have lived where I have looked at stars over palm trees surrounding a lake in the South Pacific where it never snows, and live near the Canadian border and seen the stars outside the cities here in the clear winter sky. As I have said, it has been an adventure, and it sounds like yours has been, too.
But if I lived in St. Louis, that would be different.
Drunken Sailor| 6.7.12 @ 3:07PM
Moved out of East St. Louis when I was 6. One of the best thing my parents ever did for me.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.12 @ 8:38AM
The average European lives, works and dies within fifty kilometers of the place where he was born. This sedentary inclination makes him slave to local economic and political conditions, which is at least partially responsible for the European reliance on government for personal support. Unwillingness to move leads, inevitably, to socialism and to high structural unemployment.
This country was founded, and populated, by those Europeans who did not fit the paradigm, who, looking around, said, "Things here suck, I'm going where things have more potential". And we have retained that inclination, to our benefit. When things get bad in one place, we go to another. This not only keeps us fully employed, but it keeps states and localities competing to hold onto the best and brightest.
That said, Orlet plays fast and lose with the facts. Yes, the average American moves every four years, but that move is not normally out of his state, or even his metropolitan statistical area. Rather, it's from neighborhood to neighborhood, and is a sign not so much of physical mobility but of social mobility--people trading up. I hope Orlet considers that a Good Thing.
Finally, as a father who has already sent his daughter off to college (and just sent her off to study in Russia), I should hope Orlet would want his son to go where he could best employ his talents and earn his living. If that's next door, great, but if it's halfway around the world, that's great, too.
c. j. acworth| 6.7.12 @ 8:41AM
I didn't leave home, I brought it with me. Six weeks after I moved to New Hampshire some 26 years ago, my dad suddenly died. Mom moved up here from Connecticut, for a short time with me, then an apartment nearby, then back with me when she became too infirm to be independent. (I used to love the expression on people's faces when I told them I was a 57 year old bachelor who lives with his mother.) Meanwhile, my sister and her husband moved up here from New Jersey, living close enough to make visiting easy. Mom died in March, but what family I have is still near me. I've lived in the same house for 26 years, and God willing, have another 26 to go. S0 sometimes
you leave one home town to find another, not to become a rootless wanderer.
THKrupp| 6.7.12 @ 9:22AM
I came from one of those small towns in the Midwest Mr Orlet is speaking of. What he perhaps doesnt understand is that many of these places simply do not have opportunities available. Populations built on the agriculture industry are shrinking due to the ever increasing size of farms. There simply doesnt need to be as many people engaged in the cultivation of a given number of acres as there used to be. Its not even economically fiesable anymore. Most of the time the job opportunites that are available dont match with the persons skill set. Being mobile also increases a persons opportunites in even getting a job in this economy.
From reading Mr Orlet's previous articles it appears he lives fairly close to St Louis. If he lived in an area where you have to drive an hour just to see a movie in a theater he might have a different take on things. In my home town the people that stayed either became alchoholics or religious, in some cases both. Not that there is anything wrong with being religious. Its just thats all there is to do socially.
One thing he didnt mention is that moving away lets a person recreate themselves. Staying where everyone knows every stupid thing you did in high school makes it very hard to be a better person. In a small midwestern town its even more so. Since everyone knows you and are always more than willing to remind you of things you would rather forget or have outgrown.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 6.7.12 @ 11:35AM
Actually, I think from Mr. Orlet's articles, he lives in St. Louis in what students of urban studies call "a transitional area", though a few decades ago they were referred to as slums.
There is an expression to the effect of "No one is a hero in their hometown". While I don't necessarily subscribe to the absolute nature of the statement, I think the sentiment behind that thought is at the root of the last point you make.
THKrupp| 6.7.12 @ 11:53AM
Thanks,
I wasnt sure where exactly he was from but I have seen him reference the area in many of his articles.
Yes you stated it much better than I did. As you say its not a universal truth but often thats how it is. I remember reading a short story about an author who had died and his remains were being transported back to his home town. The people there talked about him as if he had stopped developing at 18. To them he would always remain in that stage of development. It was a good short story but I dont remember the title or author.
CJW| 6.7.12 @ 12:58PM
The people described as relos usually have no choice but to move to where the employer tells them to move. It is either move or lose your job.
ata777| 6.7.12 @ 9:35AM
to paraphrase Reagan, I didn't leave my home state of NY, NY left me, when it became a union-dominated, socialist-inspired hellhole.
Derek Leaberry| 6.7.12 @ 10:13AM
There will always be tension between traditionally-minded cultural conservatives and free-market conservatives. Perhaps that tension is good. Life can not be static yet a strong rootedness makes for a more humane, satisfying life. I am more on the side of Mr. Orlet and Mr. Kauffman. Yet cultural conservatives would be foolish to think a town like the mythical Bedford Falls can stay as it was when George Bailey contemplated jumping off a bridge at Christmas 1945.
Thoughtful people will always ponder whether someone can return to his roots. Thomas Wolfe wrote a thousand page tome on the question and thought no. George Eliot's Silas Marner leaves the English village of Lantern Yard, returns a generation later, and finds that his village is part of the factory city of Birmingham. His village is no more. Singer Chrissie Hynde goes back to Ohio and finds Akron an uglier place than when she left it. And Akron is an ugly city. I can attest to that. My wife's hometown is fifteen miles to the west.
Regarding Chrissie Hyde's "Back to Ohio", it is curious that the free-market conservative Rush Limbaugh uses it for his bumper music. He probably doesn't understand the inherent conservatism of the song.
Seek| 6.7.12 @ 6:07PM
Actually, the song is called "My City Was Gone." But the point in well-taken.
Bob K| 6.7.12 @ 11:09AM
Many people leave because there is no reason to stay.
Consider the towns and smaller cities in the rust belts of the Northeast. I write specifically of towns and cities in PA outside of the Philadelphia area and that includes Pittsburgh. Now, after the last census, smaller than Toledo, Ohio. These towns and cities saw their heydays in the years during WWII and the following decade thereafter.
The young left because there was no longer any opportunity there. I have friends who left because there were few, if any, opportunities for advancement. A couple of them became millionaires after moving to the South West and to the Seattle area.
The people who stayed were the vested interests, the 3rd and 4th generation of the established wealthy interests who remained in charge of the politics and growth of the areas and the unambitious who settled for the low wage jobs which the 1st two groups needed to retain their economic dominance and in other cases their political dominance. PA's politics, from the local entities and school boards is filled with relatives of the politically powerful.
It is curious that Mr. Orlet would write this kind of article in effect criticizing our freedom of movement which is not nearly as available to the peoples of Europe. the many opportunities that America gives the young to succeed
Bob K| 6.7.12 @ 11:12AM
The last sentence should read: One of the many opportunities that America gives it's young to succeed.
CJW| 6.7.12 @ 1:01PM
Bob
In Pgh we talk about the "Steelers Nation" of Steelers fans across the country. But the main reason for that is that so many Pittsburghers had to leave after college to find work, and now they meet at "Steelers" bars in Charlotte, Orlando, Atlanta, and other cities.
Riff Raff| 6.7.12 @ 11:27AM
One thing should be noted, Mr. Orlet. During the 18th and 19th centuries when countless Americans went West and left homes (both on the East Coast and in Europe) they didn't just leave everything behind, they took everything and eveyone they had. Whole familes moved and settled in the American frontier. But that is the key: they settled. Somewhere. And when they did, they built new towns, new communities, made new friends, grew new families. They re-built what they had left behind. This is human nature, to build communities. And this is the the uniquely American experience, that so many could have the freedom to move and start over and create a new community, free from the binds of old. Maybe one can "never go home" as the proverb goes, but Americans make new homes.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.12 @ 4:40PM
" they took everything and eveyone they had."
Often true, frequently not. Especially with European immigration, individuals came by themselves or with a sibling. It was too expensive for large families to come as a group. So, usually a younger son (more rarely a daughter) would come across and begin a life. Sometimes he would later bring over mom and dad, or another brother and sister, but the idea of three generations of an immigrant family crammed into steerage and getting off the boat at Ellis Island is a fiction.
Riff Raff| 6.7.12 @ 8:10PM
I apologize for being unclear in my effort to be brief. I did not mean to imply that large family groups would make a single voyage across the Atlantic or even from the East Coast inland across the "fruited plain" as it were. Of course such things were done in stages, and for many it was and remained a personal odyssey with no family to follow. But many did move West with family in tow and moving in stages, which accounts for ethnic groupings in several States. My own great grandfather arrived at Ellis Island at about the time of the Civil War, and he did bring his extended family. My paternal grandfather was born in Illinois in 1865 and most of the family settled in Kansas soon thereafter.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.12 @ 11:18PM
My German ancestors began arriving in the late 1840s, the Italians from the 1870s, and the Romanian Jews from some time in the early 20th century, after a detour into Canada. What I find interesting is different subgroups of each did different things when they arrived. I found, for instance, that the earliest of the Germans settled down in Brooklyn, no more than ten blocks from where my family was still living right down to the 1990s. In fact, some relatives are still living there. A lot of the Italians settled in New Jersey, between Newark and West Orange, and a lot of them are still there. But usually, within each group, there was a small faction that moved farther afield, and quite rapidly, too.
On my wife's side, her ancestors (mainly Anglo-Welsh and Scots-Irish) started in Virginia (not far from where we live today), and by the end of the 18th century they were pushing their way south and west into the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and were in Texas by the 1820s. So, from the very beginning, the people of this country were on the move, because they were on the make. Some, who got in on the ground floor, stayed put, but others looked to greener pastures. What was a virtue in our ancestors remains a virtue in us.
Occam's Tool| 6.7.12 @ 12:14PM
I must say, this is an unusually good thread. I must think about it.
Slacker| 6.7.12 @ 1:05PM
I’m from one of those little dying Midwestern towns. The older folks find themselves in somewhat of a paradox. The small town was sheltered place to raise a family but there are few opportunities for gown kids.
Most people must necessarily move away or small towns don’t stay small. In many ways this is what the established residents want. They came there for the relaxed pace. They like being the big fish in a small pond.
In a broader sense, Michigan didn’t really want me as a resident taxpayer. The state economy is structured for the benefit of the auto industry. The fortunes of everyone else are subordinate.
Funny that Michigan funds a public university system and many graduates immediately head for greener pastures.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.12 @ 4:41PM
In my wife's town, the population consists mainly of people over sixty and under sixteen. You can figure out the story behind that.
Appleby| 6.7.12 @ 7:29PM
The little Alabama town where Mama lived until she married Daddy and moved North is almost deserted now. Many beautiful homes are empty because the old folks have died and the family live in Phoenix or New York or Texas or Minneapolis and don't want to live in a town of 1200 people over the age of 70 (save for the Black families, of course). The main thing that drove the young people away was the Integration of the school system. Parents moved away to get good educations in private schools for their kids, and the town died off. There are places in the softwood lumber lots where you will stumble over the remains of a small farm that was, and that now is swallowed up by underbrush. Sic Transit Gloria Confederacy.
Citizen Jerry| 6.7.12 @ 1:13PM
With the multitude of things that are horribly wrong with big cities, you'd think people would encourage their young people to stay and build a brighter future.
Sadly, the brightest of our graduate, the entrepreneurs who will achieve big things, are encouraged to leave because they have no future in a small town. Short-sighted, I know.
Funny how it's only the achievers who are urged to leave. The underachievers, who work minimum wage jobs and spend all their spare time in the bars, are encourage by a conspiracy of silence to stay around.
I just can't understand why so many people are ashamed for being from a small town.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.12 @ 4:44PM
So, let me ask you this. Growing up in her small Texas town, my wife discovered she had a real talent for languages. She went off to the best school in the country for learning languages, became fluent in Russian and several other Slavic languages, and then went on to advanced study in that school in Massachusetts that begins with H.
What then should she have done? Gone back to Texas to wait on tables, or (like her mother) pick cotton? God gives you a gift, aren't you obligated to go where you can use it?
THKrupp| 6.7.12 @ 10:38PM
Jerry,
Ive noticed people being if not ashamed perhaps a little self conscience about being from a small town or rural area. Often you will hear a comment like "you cant get(stars, open space, nature etc etc) in the city. you could never get me to move there". The opposite is not true. Ive never heard a city person comment on why they would never live in the country or rural area. Perhaps they all want to live in a rural area. Im not really sure. Its just something Ive noticed over the years. Ive even said such things myself. Is there some sort pressure for people to justify wanting to live away from urban areas?
Petronius| 6.7.12 @ 1:17PM
We used to hear all the time that if we stayed put we wouldn't get anywhere. That started in freshman year of high school, which is the number one question asked of everybody in St. Louis. One of my best friends from that time got in at the brewery and left to join IBM. The acronym for that company still means, I've Been Moved. The first given of corporate life has always been and will be family and roots take the back seat or you can forget promotion. But it's not really about locality and dropping anchor. Look instead at the interplay of necessity, circumstance, and ambition or lack of it. The majority are mostly restless, irritable, and dissatisfied. The prescription for those used to be alcohol, until having another quit working. The objective of the exercise is Personal Autonomy. And very few can accumulate enough wealth to reach it unless they don't pursue that exercise or want anything. 50 years ago NBC used to televise the New Years Party at the Rainbow Room. And after midnight Guy Lombardo would step to the mike and ask, " Is everybody happy?" Happiness is such a relative term it is now undefined publicly. But that's where it's at.
THKrupp| 6.7.12 @ 10:56PM
You have hit upon a very important point. The idea of what it takes to make a person happy is very different here than what it is in other countries or even here in the past. In the USA we tend to focus on having things, money, and being successful. Very few people are just happy with what they have. Ive noticed the more money I have there is not a corresponding uptick in happiness after a certain point. The pursuit of more stuff is pretty empty. Family does indeed play second fiddle and I believe that it has consequences. Its not considered successful just to lead a fulfilling and interesting life. You have to achieve and buy a lot of crap you dont really need or use. No one considers the person who is a janitor to be successful even though he may enjoy his life and have great family. Ive got friends in other countries who are 10x happier than most Americans . They dont make a lot of money or have a lot of things in their homes, but they have friends and family that they spend a lot of time with. They dont spend a lot of time in their homes and they get out and do things even if its just for a stroll. We could probably learn something from them.
Who Knows?| 6.7.12 @ 1:25PM
“Lord, I was born a ramblin’ man, tryin’ to make a livin’ and doin’ the best I can.”
Or, to quote Satchel Paige, “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.”
I read where Beethoven moved 30 times, or so, in his lifetime. Why, in 1974, I moved 12 times, 4 times in one month, and figure I’ve slept in over a hundred different “beds”---not hotels!
May the Deity bless the Army—in 1966, it scooted my wet Oregon ass first to California, then Tennessee, Indiana, Vietnam, and back to my CHOICE, California. Bless my Democratic senator from the Beaver state—while in the Nam, with a year left in the Army, I wrote him and asked to be stationed in the Golden State, and he made it happen.
Leaving the dreary Portland and Eugene climate, and people like my brother, who reflected the overcast skies, and going back to graduate school at UCSB, after serving my country---well, all the friendly and happy people who crossed my path in Isla Vista, especially after 3 years of putting up with Army crap, made me marvel: how could anyone NOT move to such a place?
And, in my coming dotage---I’ve chosen to enjoy stable residence, going on nine years in one place, in a fabulous area, southern Oregon. A little too cold in the winter, but, hey---it’s got about all one could hope for.
Eat your heart out.
Dave Williams| 6.7.12 @ 1:31PM
I teach at a small college in a small heartland town, and I make sure to tell my students with drive and brains to GET THE HELL OUT as soon as possible. Otherwise, they are condemning themselves to the all-pervasive conformity, smugness, slowness, and mediocrity of the place. Those students lacking those qualities, of course, will stay, and will get the lousy lives they so richly deserve.
Citizen Jerry| 6.7.12 @ 3:10PM
Methinks you've just shown your own smugness and condescension. Here in Realityville, we call them ... liberals.
LiveFreeOrDie| 6.8.12 @ 8:41PM
Uh...you're still there!? Oh wait, as a member of academia you are above the riff-raff. Smug, indeed.
Who Knows?| 6.7.12 @ 1:47PM
“I met a nice old man today, oh, yes, oh, and he sure had a lot to say, a good long time ago.
I've led a soldier's occupation, oh, yes, oh, in every part of this big nation, a good long time ago.
I've seen the world and roamed its placed, oh, yes, oh. I guess I've been in a million places, a good long time ago.
But there are times when soldiering gets lonely, you long for friendly company.
So when you find an unfamiliar city, here's advice that always worked for me.
When your train gets into town, oh, yes, oh, just make a bee line to the pound, a good long time ago.
Don't just wander helter-skelter, oh, yes, oh, seek the nearest animal shelter, a good long time ago.
You soon will find the truest of companions. A little dog can melt a heart of stone.
Just when you think you're up a dreary canyon, a puppy's love can bring you close to home.
Find a store and buy some twine, oh, yes, oh. Now tie the doggie to the line, a good long time ago.
Thus prepared for any weather, oh, yes, oh. Dog and man will stand together, a good long time ago.
For mothers warn their daughters of the dangers of soldiers in their quest for girls.
Never, never speak to strangers unless they’re from the canine world.
Who Knows?| 6.7.12 @ 1:48PM
A sweet young maid in passing by, oh, yes, oh, saw my smile but made no reply, a good long time ago.
The puppy fixed his gaze upon her, oh, yes, oh, two steps more and she was a goner, a good long time ago.
The sands of time have swept away the heartaches, the tears, the parting, and the pain.
The pup I gave her for a keep sake will always remind me of what's her name (what's her name?)” “Oh, Yes, Oh!”
By Dave & Gretchen Guard, The Kingston Trio
cicero| 6.7.12 @ 1:49PM
Times change. The beauty of our modern world is that, while home may be where the heart is, it need not be where the house is. Unlike a century ago, we have instant communication, and thus can stay connected at the ring of a tone. We can encourage our children to pursue their dreams, while insisting that they stay in touch. We can see one another in an hour over distances that used to take a month of travel time.
Cobalt| 6.7.12 @ 3:02PM
"Sunday Morning Coming Down"
By Johnny Cash
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics.....gdown.html
EB in AZ| 6.7.12 @ 7:51PM
written by Kris Kristofferson
Taxpayer1234| 6.8.12 @ 12:11AM
My hometown was going down the economic toilet when I left to go to college in 1980. Unemployment was around 20%. When I graduated in 1984, there was nothing to come back to.