Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Nobody Smart Wants to Live in New England?

I saw the headline today Nobody Smart Wants to Live in New England during my morning trawling for information of general interest on the googles and the internets, and had to read it. As I think I've mentioned, we moved here in Fall 2009 from Berkeley, California, and I found New Englanders to be partly fascinated and partly horrified when I told them so.  A very typical response from folks was "WHY??" Our thrifty New Englander friends understood "why" immediately once we told them about The Fahm, and that we live here rent-free; but it was always just a teensy bit shocking to me, the vehemence accompanying the question. 


"Why??" was often followed with a raised eyebrow, a patronizing tone, and another question. "Have you ever experienced a New England winter? And I would falteringly reply that I hoped to be able to actually enjoy the cold and the storms and the snow and the ice and...and...Winter: Still a Novelty to Me.


We are now facing our third Winter here at The Fahm and I do know two things unequivocally about the part of New England where The Fahm is. First, the neighbors here are really truly neighborly in the very best of ways, and second, to quote from the article discussion thread, "[New Englanders are] tough as fuck. You have to be to tough to survive that weather. It feels like mother nature is trying to kill you eight months out of the year."


I won't speak to the smart/not smart allegation that first got my attention in the headline; it would be *very* unwise to do so in a town as small as ours and, it would also be un-neighborly.