Regionalism and conservatism

How about the region where I was born, Wessex? Stonehenge, Winchester Cathedral, chalk figures carved into the land and the best cider (hard cider to Americans) anywhere in the world spring immediately to mind.

The blue-collar suburb I live in possesses the worst instincts of suburban life: the idea that progress is the golden mean for our lives just outside of Detroit. Up until two years ago most of our roads were dirt roads, but because the other nations surrounding us have a king, we demanded one two--a king named crappy asphalt. The just-exiting township supervisor pushed a "PRIDE program"--this means if you have a problem with your neighbor's house, don't talk to them, don't find out if perhaps they have a problem keeping their house/property up to suburban standards--call the government IMMEDIATELY.
OK, enough complaints. Yes, I'm still bitter about having to move my beehives to two communities away. The best thing about living in my community? I live a minute away from a riparian corridor--the Upper Rouge River is a short walk away. That means in my neighborhood which is a four-minute drive from the city limits of Detroit I can find bats, raccoons, oppossums, rabbits, toads, screech owls, deer, and even the occasional coyote. Sometimes in the sky a turkey buzzard or a hawk spirals. So, for me, the biodiversity in my neighborhood makes it a special place.

No offense to the previous posters, but none of those places sound ideal to me. Although I disdain big-box stores and many of the other aspects of urban and suburban living, I couldn't live in a city without multiple ethinic restaurants, movie theatres, live theatre venues, a concert hall, an opera, several different art/history museums and cultural diversity. I guess that makes me less of an American to the Sarah Palins of the world, but so be it.

Give me NYC, L.A., Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, Atlanta, etc, any day over a town where I have to drive 30 miles or more to go to a movie theatre.

I too live in Brooklyn. In my overwhelmingly liberal neighborhood of Victorian Flatbush, (which used to have a very similar population as Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge) we also talk to our neighbors over the fences and in the shops on the local main drag. We have a local email family network where we post listings about stuff that we either need or have that we want to give away. We have strong very strong neighborhood associations.

This is not necessarily a "conservative" thing, but I get your meaning. This is about community bonds that are vital and need to be preserved and nurtured in a world that militates against these things.

I live a ten minute walk away from a fast-flowing river with a terrific winter steelhead run. We have eagles and ospreys nesting everywhere. Our resident Canada goose population is fondly known as the "Gladstone Air Force". The largest independent bookstore in the world, the noble Powell's, is a half hour away in Portland. Life is good in Gladstone.

12:12 was new.

From Chapter Two of Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943) by Albert Jay Nock:

mises.org/books/nockmemoirs.pdf

DURING the period I have been canvassing we lived in
Brooklyn, the City of Churches. Our neighbourhood had
somewhat the appearance of a moderately well-to-do suburban
locality just before a congested population has crept up on it.
Chelsea, Greenwich, Harlem, probably looked more or less
like it in the early days of New York. The high-life of Brooklyn
lived on the Heights, which is still the most desirable residencesite
in the city, though the winter winds which sweep up from
the bay are colder than death. Between us and the high-life
lay a sprawling amorphous population of which we knew
little. Residence-blocks had but barely reached us, though
they were fast on their way. Apartment-houses were yet to
come; I think there were hardly any of them anywhere in
Brooklyn. The houses in our locality were roomy in a Victorian
style, hence ugly enough; their grounds were spacious, all
extremely well-kept, and almost all the properties were owned
by those who lived on them.
[19
Our district served the function of a modern suburban town,
for the heads of our families mostly had their occupations in
what is now called Manhattan, and were actually commuters,
going to-and-fro daily by way of the horse-car lines down
Gates or Fulton Avenue to the East River ferries. They spent
about the same length of time in transit as their successors
who now swarm in from Summit or New Rochelle; but the
pace being slower, their daily journey was less tiring, and
(since comfort largely resides in a state of mind) more comfortable.
It was also less tedious, for Ruskin's observation that
"travel becomes uninteresting in exact proportion to its rapidity"
applies as well to commuters' travel as to any other.
The rus in urbe type of existence prevailed among us quite
considerably. One neighbour kept a flock of guinea-fowl which
ran so wild over his rearward premises that when he wanted
one for dinner he would shoot it. Our own place, one of the
few rented ones there, must have had at least a hundred-foot
frontage, I think more. The house was well back from the
street, and the garden running the full length of a long block
behind it was remarkable for having large fruit-trees in it
and a line of oversized blackberry-bushes down one side. I
was more circumspect about blackberries after the day when
I came within an ace of pawing in on a hideous huge spider
which was sitting in the centre of its web amidst the thick
bushes. This monster was of a bright yellow colour with black
stripes. I have seen others of the same kind since then, but
never one much more than half its size.
Another neighbour, a patriarchal old Englishman with a
white beard, kept a great stand of bees. I remember his incessant
drumming on a tin pan to marshal them when they were
swarming, and myself as idly wondering who first discovered
that this was the thing to do, and why the bees should fall in
with it. It struck me that if the bees were as intelligent as bees
are cracked up to be, instead of mobilising themselves for
old man Reynolds's benefit, they would sting him soundly and
then fly off about their business...

>

One side of our premises was bordered by a big stretch of
vacant land which, with the garden, gave us a playground
practically illimitable. For some reason, huge piles of broken
rock had been dumped on these vacant lots, which vastly
increased their interest. We did tricks in Alpine-climbing over
these, picking out ways which involved the most hazardous
feats of balancing. One day I discovered some ten-cent pieces
scattered at the foot of one pile, and this set us off on a goldrush
at once, exploring all the depths and crevasses of the
[21
porous heap in a search for further loot, but we did not find
any.
In all, I led a very active, busy and wholesome outdoor life,
the year round. In summer, we were hard at work in all the
primitive occupations which youngsters devise for themselves
out of such resources as they happen to find in their way,
though curiously little imagination had play in our enterprises.
We did not build any castles in Spain or pretend to be Indians,
pirates, explorers, or the like. I do not know why this immemorial
privilege of childhood was lost to us, but our more
prosaic doings filled our days so full that we did not miss it.
Apparently our world of practical affairs was so large, abundant
and satisfactory that we had more than enough to do with
taking it as it was. Our nearest approach to the make-believe
was in organising snowball-battles. We would build a snow
fort, then divide ourselves into attacking and defending forces,
using shields made out of barrel-heads, with leather straps
through which to pass the left fore-arm, Roman style. We had
a tacit convention against "soakers"—ammunition dipped in
water and left to freeze hard—and also against snowballs
weighted with a stone core. All such practices were blacklisted
according to the doctrine that "fair's fair" even in war. We were
too young to know that this doctrine was fast going out of
fashion among our elders, but in our innocence it seemed quite
the right thing; so clearly the right thing that I do not recall
ever having heard it discussed or even mentioned.
>
In all our little cosmopolitan variety, I had the luck to see
examples which were invariably good, not only in the older
generation, but in my own as well. The boys of our neighbourhood
were a well-brought-up lot, manly and decent. By pure
accident one day a burly English lad named Growtege hit me
on the back of my head with a stone, hurting me severely.
When he helped me home and turned me over to my mother,
his manly shouldering of responsibility and the equally manly
way he "took on" about his carelessness, were quite remarkable.
I remember some trivial bits of mischief done now and
then, but I do not recall anything mean, low, shabby or
wilfully damaging, on the part of any among us.
A mysterious outsider turned up in our midst at irregular
intervals, and terrorised the neighbourhood. Nowadays he
would probably be called a problem child, whatever that is,
but as a matter of fact he was a born cutthroat and plug-ugly.
None of us knew who he was or where he came from, or
anything about him. Oddly, he was always neat, clean-looking
and well-dressed. He had the strange faculty of appearing
suddenly out of nowhere and then as suddenly disappearing,
like the prophet Elijah; and if he chanced to meet another boy,
26]
he would fall on him without a word and beat him unmercifully.
We soon became fed up with him and organised a posse
comitatus or vigilance-committee to lie in wait and demolish
him on his next arrival; which we did so effectively that he
never reappeared.
>
Our small section of Brooklyn resembled the modern commuter's
town in maintaining a social life of its own, distinct and
separate from those of the Heights and the nondescript district
lying between. Measured by the standards which the student
of civilised man would apply, our social life was perhaps a
rather commonplace affair; a poor thing, but our own, as Touchstone
said of his lady-love. Yet as measured by the standards
then prevailing in America, it had its merits; and as measured
by those prevailing now, it was attractive and agreeable. The
curse of hardness had not wholly come upon it, nor wholly
cleared a way for the attendant curse of hideousness, of a
blighting and dishevelling ennui. My mention of Offenbach a
moment ago reminds me that it had one thing which was
destined shortly to disappear from American life, a sound sense
of gaiety. Its spontaneous manifestations of true gaiety were
the first I saw in America, and they were also the last. I have
seen plenty of vapid frivolity since then; boisterousness,
hysterical nerve-tensions, mechanical escape-devices, all manner
of pitiful and vulgar travesties on the real thing; but not
since I was ten years old have I encountered the free play of
a collective instinct for the best in a civilised desipere in loco.
>
Besides the qualities I have previously mentioned, the social
life in our section of Brooklyn preserved some vestigial characteristics
which made it especially wholesome and pleasant
for children. It was leisurely, kept down to the tempo of the
horse-car. It was also cheerful. Nothing needful to our pleasure
or contentment cost much. Our people had resources in
themselves which enabled them to get on with few mechanical
aids to amusement. Living among them, one could see a great
deal of force in Spencer's observation that "happy people are
the greatest benefactors of society." I think our people were
perhaps as nearly happy as people could be in a land where
so acute an observer as Stendhal found that "the springs of
happiness seem to have dried up" in the general population;
and where Edison, at the end of his life, told reporters that "I
am not acquainted with any one who is happy." Like Napoleon
in exile, they may have been "not happy, precisely, but contented,"
but their contentment was a very passable imitation
32]
of happiness, quite good enough to enable us unthinking
children to get a vast deal of enjoyment out of very little.
Once or twice each summer I was taken down to Coney
Island's "long, bare, unfrequented shore," a Sabbath-day's
journey at that time. These excursions were usually made in
behalf of some visitor's turn for sight-seeing. Even then Manhattan
Beach was by no means so desolate as Whitman's line
suggests. It had a hotel of credit and renown, where some
notable persons spent their summers, and several smaller enterprises
had sprung up for the accommodation of day-trippers
like ourselves. There was a similar development at Brighton.
Gilmore's band played at one of the two beaches, but I do
not remember which one; I think it was Brighton. I remember
the cornetist Levy's playing to my complete satisfaction, and
I was also impressed by the fine stirring effects of a small park
of artillery brought in at the ending of the programme with
some piece like 1812.1 do not remember what the piece I heard
actually was, but it was something in the military way.
What I most enjoyed on these excursions was digging clams
to take home. Excellent small quohaugs abounded on those
shores, especially at Canarsie; I suppose the last one disappeared
from Coney Island all of forty years ago, probably
dying of chagrin. The general cheapness of things in our
neighbourhood is fairly well indicated by the price of clams.
Once a week or so a large round man in his shirt-sleeves, with
a yellow paintbrush beard and a tattered straw hat, would drive
up from Canarsie and around our district with a wagon-load
of quohaugs in bulk. My mother said he had three prices;
his cry was "Hard clams, twenty-five cents a hundred; hard
clams, quarter a hundred; hard clams, two shillin' a hundred."
Four fresh sweet quohaugs for a penny, delivered, seems nowadays
like good living; and indeed we did live royally well.
The outings I most enjoyed were when my father would
take me over to New York with him for the day. He had an
office there, where I was vastly entertained by observing all
sorts and conditions of men who dropped in to hob-nob with
[33
him. I never knew another man who had a genius for friendship
like his; I have sometimes wished I had inherited some
of it. He had what Cardinal de Retz called "the terrible gift
of intimacy"; a terrible gift indeed, if one misuses it, which
my father never did; with all his gregariousness and his immense
power of attracting people to himself, he remained
always one of the best of men. He had an unerring flair for
queer originals, odd fish like old Irons, and got no end of
amusement out of them. My mother did not share his partialities,
regarding these peculiar cronies as mostly the scum
of the earth, though she never interfered with his enjoyment
of them, but rather countenanced it and even mildly encouraged
him in it.
Aside from these human oddities, the feature of my excursions
to New York which most fascinated me was the shipping
in the East River. The wharves were lined with sailing-ships;
it is hard to believe now that the harbour was full of sails right
up to the turn of the century. Now they are no more, and
sailors are no more; only mechanicians of sorts. Coentjes Slip
was full of canal-boats when I saw it then; they are scarce
now, and I presume the canalboatman of early days has given
way to some anomalous type.
>

I was the earlier 'your name' that asked "Why bring it up?".

To be fair, Sarah Palin took a shot at him first.

Palin wasn't part of Rod's posting nor was her name mentioned in any of the early comments. Rod wanted to know what readers like (or don't like) about where they, not other people, live. I asked the 'why bring it up' mainly in response to none of those places sound ideal to me. He did the exact same thing he whined that the "Sarah Palins of the world do."

I think it is ridiculous to favor small towns over large cities or vice-versa. Both small towns and urban areas both have good and bad things about them, and whenever I read any romatic biased essay saying either place is ideal, I know that the author is full of crap or full of a nostalgia that exists only in his/her mind. I think of Sarah Palin right away when I hear any excessive praising of regionalism or small towns. I don't think it is unjustified to associate Sarah Palin with such an excessive belief in the unadulterated goodness of small towns. She brought this issue up again and again during the campaign, so its totally accurate to think she thinks the small town is an ideal place. My thoughts, as I said, are more realistic - small towns have good and bad things about them, just like big cities and suburbs. Its great to like the place one lives in and write about it, but its very defensive and strange to have to present your place as the ideal place for goodness in the world to florish, as Sarah Palin did. Palin obviously has some kind of inferiority complex or else feels as though she has to live in a place better than others.