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Post by Cornflake on Jun 20, 2024 16:47:15 GMT -5
Hobson and Paul Kay might appreciate this. It's from a column by Ed Montini of the Arizona Republic.
[W]hile climate change has made rising temperatures more difficult for other parts of the country — and here, too — it’s not like we are unaccustomed to it. Not like we don’t embrace it. Not like we don’t thrive in it.
As far back as 1976, the great Edward Abbey, author of “Desert Solitaire,” “The Monkey Wrench Gang” and other books, a man who lived near a dry wash in the magnificent desert outside of Tucson, wrote in an essay for The New York Times that read in part:
“Arizona is desert country. High desert in the north, low desert in the south, 90 percent of my state is an appalling burnt‐out wasteland, a hideous Sahara with clip‐joint oases, a grim bleak harsh overheated sun‐blasted goddamned and God‐forgotten inferno.”
“In Arizona, the trees have thorns and the bushes spines and the swimming pools are infested with loan sharks, automobile dealers and Mafiosi. The water table is falling, and during a heavy wind, you can see sand dunes form on Central Avenue in Phoenix.
“We have the most gorgeous sunsets in the Western world — when the copper smelters are shut down. I am describing the place I love. Arizona is my natural native home. Nobody in his right mind would want to live here.”
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Post by Marty on Jun 21, 2024 8:42:08 GMT -5
Living in Minnesota also has it challenges and rewards.
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Post by epaul on Jun 21, 2024 11:14:14 GMT -5
North Dakota has its challenges.
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Post by coachdoc on Jun 21, 2024 11:30:05 GMT -5
Here’s to New Hampshire. I’ve settled in and won’t be moved.
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Post by Hobson on Jun 21, 2024 12:55:31 GMT -5
I like it. Anything to keep people from moving here.
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Post by james on Jun 21, 2024 13:14:14 GMT -5
Evidently Edward Abbey lived in Tucson at some point. I remembered that he'd had some connection with nearby Oracle. I spent a while in a cabin near there with some artist friends at the Rancho Linda Vista artist commune. That was cool. Javelinas and cholla cactii (ouch!) galore.
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Post by Cornflake on Jun 21, 2024 13:29:29 GMT -5
"North Dakota has its challenges." epaul, I think we once discussed that you knew (or knew of ) Clay Jenkinson. He used to do a program here every year and we always wound up seated next to each other at dinner. I once asked him why he lived in North Dakota. His answer was "quality of life." Despite the challenges, he found it a better place to live than anywhere else.
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Post by coachdoc on Jun 21, 2024 13:52:26 GMT -5
He never tried NH.
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Post by theevan on Jun 21, 2024 14:20:02 GMT -5
Here’s to New Hampshire. I’ve settled in and won’t be moved. Can't say as I blame you. |
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Post by Dave Poor on Jun 22, 2024 0:00:39 GMT -5
Living in Minnesota also has it challenges and rewards. In the 1970s in the winter, in St Paul, I would put my shoulder to the bumper of any car spinning its wheels in the snow at the curb. We all would. I didn't have a car, but my friends who did said it was a reliable rescue. The next pedestrian who could help, would. There was a real sense of common purpose. I was doing day labor at the armory, living down in the Mac neighborhood a few miles south. When I got off work one day in late November, getting dark, the bike wouldn't start. It was starting to snow. I tried to bump-start it down a little hill to a park.. no luck. I chained it to a tree. Life was going to suck for a day or two until I figured out how to get the dead motorcycle home. But as I was walking back to 35W to stick out my thumb, some guy pulled up in a pickup truck. He asked me where I needed to get to, and we loaded my bike in the bed of his truck. He dropped me off in front of my house. It's my favorite memory of Minnesota. Every time I bail some stranger out because I can, I remember that guy. (Turned out the condenser was shorted.) |
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Post by millring on Jun 22, 2024 6:30:59 GMT -5
I've come to appreciate Indiana's lack of extremes. We don't possess the superlatives of best, worst, biggest, smallest, brightest, dimmest, tallest, shortest, or deadliest from which is drawn the greatest of art. But we seem to really revel with great humor in our mediocrity.
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Post by Marshall on Jun 22, 2024 8:06:09 GMT -5
You can get used to anything. Then it becomes home.
When I was in Basic Training, the first time I saw, and rode in, the cattle car trailer (literally) that they shuttle troops around Fort Polk, I was appalled and depressed at the whole dehumanizing aspect of the situation. . . . , then after a cold wet (snowy even) rough day of training in the field, there was no prettier sight than that cattle car truck showing up that was going to take us back to the barracks and a hot shower.
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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Jun 22, 2024 10:04:55 GMT -5
My Mom was born in Marana, Arizona, and grew up in Casa Grande. She met Dad while he was in the Army guarding Italian POWs at a base in Arizona. After service they moved to his Indiana hometown, Kokomo. I think she always missed Arizona. She would have rather killed rattlesnakes with a stick than ride in a car on snowy roads.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 20,471 
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Post by Dub on Jun 22, 2024 10:44:37 GMT -5
Speaking of living in the desert, did you read about the haboob in ew Mexico last night?
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Post by Cornflake on Jun 22, 2024 10:53:41 GMT -5
"Speaking of living in the desert, did you read about the haboob in ew Mexico last night?"
No. Just ran a search and didn't find anything.
Most people I know call them "dust storms" but "haboob" isn't wrong.
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Post by John B on Jun 22, 2024 11:48:11 GMT -5
"Speaking of living in the desert, did you read about the haboob in ew Mexico last night?" No. Just ran a search and didn't find anything. Most people I know call them "dust storms" but "haboob" isn't wrong. When I lived down the street from you there was a haboob. I recall wondering what was going on outside, so I opened the door. Bad move. |
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Post by epaul on Jun 22, 2024 12:01:57 GMT -5
"North Dakota has its challenges." epaul, I think we once discussed that you knew (or knew of ) Clay Jenkinson. He used to do a program here every year and we always wound up seated next to each other at dinner. I once asked him why he lived in North Dakota. His answer was "quality of life." Despite the challenges, he found it a better place to live than anywhere else. Yep, I loves my North Dakota. I just hope it doesn't get too crowded. Lately, all kinds of people from Montana have been moving here (to get away from Californians). Nice people, but they are getting to be a little pesty. They keep driving around in circles asking where the mountains are. "30 miles that way" we say pointing off in some direction or other. And off they go, to a new set of directions. |
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Post by TKennedy on Jun 22, 2024 19:44:55 GMT -5
My theory is that you are most comfortable in the climate you grew up in. I grew up in the high plains of western Nebraska about 200 miles north of Denver and with a lot of similarities climate and season wise. High and dry.
I have never felt totally normal in MN and when I visit my hometown or Denver it somehow feels “normal”. MN has a lot going for it though so I am OK with my choice.
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Post by Cornflake on Jun 22, 2024 20:10:55 GMT -5
"My theory is that you are most comfortable in the climate you grew up in." Hmmm. I grew up in Houston. It's a cool city in many ways but climate isn't one of them. I never want to live in a humid climate again.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 20,471
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Post by Dub on Jun 22, 2024 22:54:21 GMT -5
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