Why I Live Here

I’ve lived in many different countries, growing up as the daughter of a Foreign Service Officer and a portrait painter. With them, I lived in England, France, Germany, and Senegal; we also lived in the US in Washington, DC and Boston, and i spent one year in high school in Rome. Later on after college, I lived (alone, then with my husband and then again with our children) in Somalia, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Indonesia, Tanzania, Honduras, Kenya, and South Sudan. I could have written about why I lived in lever place I have lived, and the answer would always be the same: The practical “why” was always about work (my parents, then mine and my husband’s), the more fundamental “why” because I lucked out and truly loved every place I have lived.

For many years, I identified as a Parisian because it was my home for so long. I still adore Paris which is without a doubt the most beautiful city in the world. Later, I would have chosen to write about why I lived in Tanzania not once, but twice, for a total of eight years, because I just love Tanzania and our years there were special for all in our family.

And now I live in a converted barn on ten acres outside of Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Our property, in the country, is about six miles from Shepherdstown, seven miles from Harpers Ferry, and five miles from Charles Town. We’ve had a home here since 1984. I love being here because we live in a great community, with a perfect post office, a few good restaurants, a wonderful library, a “sweet shop” that makes amazing bread, one of the oldest pubs in West Virginia; and in this ideal community, we have wonderful friends, who are interesting and open minded and curious, and who welcome us home from our travels and absences with open arms and hearts. Everyone in our family calls the barn home - even when we are living overseas; we’ve lived here whenever we’ve lived in the US since 1984. What we do every time we return home after a long time away, after a week of work in DC, after a trip to the library, is to stand at our kitchen window, look out at South Mountain in the Blue Ridge mountains, exhale our worries and concerns away and gaze at the beauty beyond our backyard.

Grace and Jean are life-long friends who live in Clarion, PA.  They shared their stories with me at a local Subway.

I grew up in Snydersburg, came to work in Clarion, and married the boss of the company. He was one of seven brothers in the business.  I'm the 11th in my family, and he was the 11th in his family.  We settled down here; my husband's older brother was building homes, so we moved into one of the homes he built.  55 years later, I'm still in it.  

My husband died a day after our 49th wedding anniversary, but I won't leave; this is home.  The people are nice and we know everybody...the problem is, everyone knows us ;)

- Grace, Clarion, PA

*****

We met at a square dance.  All he was looking for was a girl, anyway - he wasn't looking to dance.  He was Italian, and a businessman.  We married on June 6, 1956, and moved into our house on June 6, 1966.  What do all those 6's mean, anyway?

We had five children, and now I have 8 grandkids: Kayla, Kyle, Kimmie, Kelly, Justin, Sal, Chantal, and Katie.  Grace and I volunteer at the hospital twice a week, and we do a lot of church work.  We have a huge Catholic church uptown - one of the largest Catholic churches in the region.  

My son Rick died at 49 with diabetes. My husband passed as well. I still live in the same house and I'm not moving, ever. I've lived her my whole life and I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

I don't have a story. I grew up here and never left. I was too stupid to get out when I could, when I was young. The truth is, if you don't get out by the time you're 25, you never leave.

Beauty and the Beast: Life in Barrow 

Did I say Beast? No, sorry. I meant Best. The title should have read, Beauty and the Best Life in Barrow. Having lived here now for 18 years – longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere – I can tell you that life here isn’t for everyone. It’s an acquired taste. The population of Barrow is about 65% Inupiat which gives it its distinct cultural flavor. It is pervasive. The Inupiat are the most welcoming and truly friendly people I’ve ever met. They kindly share their culture, their food and their prosperity with hundreds of foreign workers that come here every year to earn a good living.

The guest workers sometimes come for the excitement of living in an exotic place: their northern exposure year. They stay for a year or two then move somewhere else. Others find Barrow relentlessly boring bereft as it is of bar, bowling alley and cinema. The singles scene here is nonexistent – or so I’m told. Still others come with unshakably preconceived notions of what life should be like, what’s fair and unfair and exactly which parts of nature are beautiful. They find Barrow to be dark, cold and insanely flat and windswept.

I came here because I desperately needed a job. The one I found may well be the best library job in Alaska. I go to work everyday happy and anxious to be in the finest building on the North Slope. But it’s more than just the job that keeps me here. For the first time in my life I feel that I can really make a contribution to librarianship in ways that I wasn’t able to before. But that isn’t all.

When I came here I believed like most of the rest of the world that mountains and trees and rivers were natures way of saying, “Here’s the best and the most beautiful.” It never occurred to me that nature had no intention of being either beautiful or ugly. These are human perceptions. Nature just is. Flat is just as beautiful and awe inspiring as mountainous. Ice and snow are just as varied and intricate as trees.

It isn’t really dark here in the winter as the snow and ice reflect the sun’s light from below the horizon as well as the starlight and moonlight from above it. The sky goes through amazing hues of blue. The human body adjusts to this place like any other and one sleeps as well in the summer as the winter. The cold is a dry cold and you dress for it. Your body acclimates to that too. The easterly wind in your face at -20 degrees bites and braces. I’m fascinated with life in the arctic. It makes me glad to be alive.

There are no cockroaches, spiders, ticks, fleas, mice, snakes, toads, or other pesky creatures here including mosquitoes for most of the year. Even in the summer, mosquitoes hang inland as the coastal breeze keeps them from Barrow. Living in Barrow sometimes feels like living in a foreign country. Sometimes it even feels like living on another planet. I try to remain mindful that I am a guest here and even though this is part of Alaska, it is truly the land of the Inupiat. It is their land and their home. If Alaska had been part of the lower 48, this would have been a Native reservation and the people here would have sovereign control of the land.

Attempts by the Governor and Legislators and the oil companies to take from the North Slope Borough its control over the land and take from it the wealth that is rightfully theirs is misguided and smacks of racism. The people of Alaska benefit greatly from North Slope oil. They should not be so greedy that they insist on taking it away from the people to whom it has belonged for thousands of years. We should all be thankful that the Inupiat are more than willing to share the bounty of their land. I know I am.

See photos of Barrow taken in March, 2005 at the annual Alaska Library Association’s Conference or photos taken during sessions including the Nuvukmuit Dance Group, also from the conference.

- David Ongley, Director, Tuzzy Consortium Library Barrow, AK

This letter was republished courtesy of David Ongley.  Photos courtesy of David Ongley and the AKLA. 

Hi Sarah, I received your letter yesterday. My wife Lori and I were born and raised here in Dickinson, ND. Both of our families homesteaded In SW ND. Both of our immediate families are here. We live here because we both have great careers and we have a successful property investment business.  Lori is an accountant and I am a Civil Engineer.  We are fortunate to have not experienced the bad economy and unemployment that most of the nation has gone through. We are very thankful for that.

Aaron A. Dickinson, ND 

It would be easy to say that I live in Oakland because I've always lived here.  But inertia only goes so far! What's not to like about a city where fans kept cheering their team after they lost their last playoff game.  Our mayor, Jean Quan, said it best in her newsletter: "But it is the defeat on Thursday I will never forget. Hoping for that 16th walk-off victory and cheering at the window, I felt the immediate heart ache... But then I looked down at the crowd...No one had moved, instead everyone was on their feet shouting "Let's Go Oakland" during what seemed like a five minute standing ovation drowning out the ceremonies for the Tigers. I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW PROUD IT MADE ME FEEL TO BE FROM OAKLAND.  We as a City are so much like this team: so much heart, we never give up."

"It's a Y'ALL world, after all..."

I wrote this as a possible t-shirt for my company, Dodge's Chicken; Southern Style is our motto.  I hope it captures the essence of the South and explains why we live where we do.  You know, during the summer heat and humidity (and Southern women glisten A LOT, we don't sweat!) I sometimes question why on earth I live here, but the I think about everything I have listed here and I am reminded about what a wonderful place it is.  You always read about spring being a time of renewal, but here, it is the fall, the first day that the humidity drops and temps are in the seventies, you can hear a collective deep breath being drawn in and we spring to life again.  This is the place when you can say the most insulting things about someone, but because we smile and say "Bless their hearts", it is acceptable.  The South is full of contraditions, but that is because there are so many layers, just like our biscuits!   My South is also very inclusive, but we do try very hard not to let on how wonderful it is to live here, because we don't want to be crowded with people that don't understand us.  I personally think Florida isn't a Southern state at all, that is broke loose from New York at some point and floated down.  But if someone is lucky enough to be transplanted here and loves it, we tell them that we know they got here as quickly as they could.  But we also may say "Just because a cat has kittens in a oven, doesn't make them biscuits"- again, layers and contradictions.  Makes it so much fun to live here and I sure hope you will come see us soon! 

Sarah,

Good morning.  I live where I do because this is where my parents and kids are and where my animals have also been buried.  I love this area because we have all 4 seasons, we have mountains (hills compared to Washington state) on all sides (Blue Ride and Appalachian Mountains), we are 2 hours from DC or Richmond.  About 4-5 hours from the beach.  You can do almost anything on a day trip.  We have a lot of history here as well.  It is a large city but not nearly as big as a metropolis.  We have farm land around us everywhere once you leave the city.  There are some amazing sunsets from my front porch and beautiful sunrises from my back porch.  I love the clear skies too.  We don’t have all of the pollution from a big city either.  It is big enough that everything is right there but small enough that traffic backups happen like in the big cities (you aren’t stuck in traffic for hours).

I live in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

We moved here in 1966 from N.Y.C. when my husband’s company received a contract to build a portion of the Bart Subway system. We chose to rent a house in Marin County because we were told it had a great climate and was very beautiful. We were only going to stay for two years (the length of the job). The project was extended for two more years and by the end of that time we were no longer temporary residents. We bought a house in 1968 and became Californian, all seven of us.