An announcement(!), snow, and musings

Announcement: This is the first post I've been able to write using my very own wireless connection!! Finally I was able to make it work today. - happy dance - I never want to call tech support or tech-related customer service again. Ever.

Normal blog post: Well, it began snowing this morning just as I was leaving for the farmer's market, and it hasn't stopped yet. The farmer's market was a bit sparse anyway, being winter, and with the snow causing some of the booths to pack up early, it became even sparser. But I got to romp around in the snow with a new friend from church to get there, and I discovered a place that sells farm fresh eggs cheaper than the pseudo-farm eggs at the grocery store. Very exciting.

The snow is beautiful, and powdery, and it has been interesting to spend the evening watching it blow in gusts and swirls off the roofs of the rowhouses.

So, hearkening back to my last post: I've been thinking about Portland and Baltimore, and how Portland has a reputation for being friendly and community-oriented, and Baltimore, well, doesn't; yet I spent a year in Portland without any friends, and have been in Baltimore three weeks and have already exchanged phone numbers several times and met up with people to do random things. Granted, I have inherited some of my new friends here from my brother, but most of them are my very own (thank you very much). And--while I know I haven't had enough time or experience in either place to make these wild conjectures--I'm going to conjecture wildly anyway about why I think this is.

I think that Portland is a lonely city, because--while it's all about civic pride and community and all that jazz--it also holds so tightly to a fierce sense of independence. It's like it's "community"-oriented in the sense of having community gardens and city-wide litter-pick-up days and comfortably friendly conversations with the random people you encounter in the elevator...but that after that brief event everyone goes their own way and does "their own thing." Because that's what Portlanders do: their own thing. They are proud to be from Portland, and share a yes-I'm-a-recyling-nut-and-love-trees-too bond with other Portlanders, but that seems pretty much to be the extent of it.

While here... Well, actually, I have found the people to be friendly (much to the shock of natives, when I tell them this); but it's more that people seem to be involved with each other's lives. Like maybe it's less common to accept everything and everyone, but that once you are accepted, you're in all the way, and your life is now a part of their lives. Like Baltimore people don't have an I-am-my-own-person attitude in the same isolating way that Portlanders do (even while they remain some of the quirkiest people I've ever met).

Please understand, I love Portland. It's beautiful, and weird, and granola-y, and bookish. I love it's earthiness and openness to ideas and laid-back atmosphere, and I love it's sense of independence. But--at least where I lived--it was undeniably lonely. And for a place that prides itself in community, I think that's kind of sad.

Anyway, like I said: Wild conjectures without much basis in fact or research. But such are my unscientific musings...