Syracusa, I would be interested in seeing the neighborhood that did not feel right for you. I'm curious as to how it would strike me. I also wonder about your husband saying that the sort of people that you are looking to live near have stretched themselves to live in an even more expensive area. Does he know that for certain, or could it be that he is deceiving himself because he would prefer to stretch to live in a more expensive area, perhaps more like the one he is familiar with, as you say his family does have more money than the two of you at this point? It is too bad that the downtown area that might interest you is too expensive. I have always told myself that if I would have to relocate quickly to an unfamiliar city, I would just find a place to live near a university. I feel like my chances of living near people who are open minded and accepting of many kinds of people go up if I live in a university neighborhood.
Nonetheless, I don't live in a university neighborhood now. The median household income in my neighborhood is only about $30,000, there are a lot of pick-ups, and lately I find someone's big screen TV blinking at me through their living room window when I sit on my front porch in the evening. On the other hand, the by far busiest branch of the public library is in my neighborhood, so I suppose someone is reading , eh, "to save their lives."
I find my neighborhood pleasant. I am not the best of friends with my neighbors, but we do have some meaningful friendships. I am able to have friendships and just kindly interactions with people pretty much without regard to things like whether they have even read a book recently. Oh, I wish that everyone would, but that doesn't stop me from liking and enjoying them. Come to think of it, I've had neighbors over who were quite surprised to see two 8 foot bookshelves in the living room and who asked, "Don't you have a TV?" I smile to myself and do not mention that these shelves contain the overflow from the shelves in the bedrooms.
Yes, there really are people who don't read books, newspapers, magazines, anything (except internet?), but we can still talk and visit. But then, there are other people who also "have books on their shelves," if I may use that metaphorically. There is a ballerina who dances internationally, a professor of painting, one of English, a director of archives for a history museum, a musician, a photographer for an alternative paper. A few others I know very little about including 2 police officers, a firefighter, a woman who cleans offices at night, a man with a concrete business, a tree trimmer, an apprentice plumber, several restaurateurs, a funeral home owner, a couple of low level landscapers and mowers, a woman who retired from the city water sanitation lab, a man who works in the field on the water system, someone who does high tech "clean room" maintenance, a couple who worked all their lives after 1945 in a light bulb factory. We bought our house from that couple. They moved just seven houses down the street, and yes, we did go to barbecues at their house. They've both died now, but they were anchors of the neighborhood.
I understand that you don't like characterizing people by what they do to earn their money, but for some of my neighbors, that is about all I know about them. I just want to show that there is a mix of people in my neighborhood and it is not one in which too many people are stretching very hard to live. Oh, doubtlessly, some are stretching, especially those whose income is well below the median, but those would be stretching to live pretty much anywhere. So maybe the key is to find a place to live where people are not scared of one another, where people are comfortable with a simple pleasant sufficiency, and where they live genuinely rather than in giddy fashionability that too easily becomes critical anxiety. That can even be found among people who drive trucks, have big TVs, watch ball games, and _gulp_ don't read.
By the way, check out the first section of my blog entry of April 6 for a little encouragement about truck driving. The link is in the upper right hand corner of my post in this thread.
You know what? I don't follow any sports; I don't know much about any sport. Popular music is the same. But I think that is too bad. I see other people getting a lot of enjoyment out of sports and music. I see that I have missed out on a lot of pleasure and enjoyment of other people by never having taken up these two things. Well, I guess I just have other priorities, but I still see that sports and popular music and probably a number of other things I've never delved into do have value. I'm glad people enjoy them and participate in them, too.
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