Return of Memoryfest - Day 17/31

[bironic]

I have read all of your lovely memories as well as your conversations about vision quality and blurry monitors -- thank you, again, for sharing and chatting and generally making life that much cheerier, informative and interesting. I hope no-one is put off when it takes me a while to reply.

And now I shall solicit more comments. More! More, I say!


17. Elementary School

I was staying over at my friend E's house, which was only a few miles from mine and in a similar neighborhood. Her family had a nice, country-style, two-story house, a little bigger than ours and with a bigger back yard. Her bedroom was on the second floor like mine. They hadn't turned on their air conditioners that cool summer night, and her windows were open. I remember lying on my back in the spare bed in the dark, listening to the strange sound of crickets chirping in a silence foreign to a child raised in a house with central air conditioning.


WTF

Comments

[purridot.livejournal.com]

I remember that in Grade 1 we were read a story about a city mouse who visited a country mouse, and then vice versa. The moral of the story was that the city was an EVIL PLACE and the country was where all was beatific and serene.

Even at that young age I felt frustration at this moral. I could not understand how anyone could not love the buzz and opportunity of the city. Since then I have had the chance to "farm-sit" for profs and I have to admit that indeed you can hear yourself think in the peace of the countryside and it is nice to smell all the fresh air and growing plants. And yet, my heart still shivers happily when I catch sight of that green Starbucks sign.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that story always annoyed me a little, too. Everyplace has its own sound and everybody has their own preference, dammit. I grew up in the middle of nowhere but I lovelovelove city sounds, and don't tell me I'm wrong! XD

The only thing I really prefer about rural areas and would/will miss if/when I move to a city? The stars.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

The country/city dichotomy in that story always seemed annoyingly exaggerated. Both types of places have their good points and bad points.

I guess the ideal solution would be to be rich enough to have a place in the city and one in the country (preferably in the middle of nowhere). I'd definitely go for that solution.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Or a friend or relative in the country to go visit when all the people and noise and bustle and cement get to you. :)

[roga.livejournal.com]

The only thing I really prefer about rural areas and would/will miss if/when I move to a city? The stars.

Oh, yes. You can hardly escape the light pollution where I live, so I'm used to seeing one or two constellations at best.

I spent this summer traveling in the US, from middle-of-nowhere to middle-of-nowhere, and my god, I have never seen so many stars in my life. It was breathtaking.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

I live in the middle of nowhere -- cable lines don't even run past my house -- so I get to see lots of stars all the time. :D Always have, and it really never stops being breathtaking. There are a lot of things I take for granted, but that's never been one of them. Sometimes when I get home after dark I wind up spending ten or fifteen minutes standing in the middle of the road in front of my house, just looking at the sky. ♥ So so so pretty.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

my god, I have never seen so many stars in my life. It was breathtaking.

Yeah, the stars in the middle of nowhere are incredible. I have very fond memories of watching meteor showers while staying in the Poconos in the summer—even though the visibility was probably somewhat affected by light pollution from Philadelphia, it was still spectacular to a city-raised kid.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I have yet to see a really good meteor shower. I remember waking up at some ungodly hour to go out into the backyard with my dad for the ... Perseids? The one in August. We each saw maybe a half-dozen streaks until we got too tired to stay up. One day, we'll be in the right place on a clear night and it will be dazzling.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Best stargazing I ever had was in Utah. That was the most middle-of-nowhere I've ever been, and the skies were unbelievably crisp and clear. There were so many stars, several magnitudes weaker than what we could make out on the best nights at home, and it was so quiet. We could even make out wisps of the Milky Way, which isn't all that extraordinary in itself but was pretty much impossible in the middle of Long Island. It was such a delight to see everything for "real" after being raised on astronomy books and documentaries and planetarium visits. My dad and I lay out there staring up for quite a while.

[roga.livejournal.com]

As they say, best in the west :-) Utah and Wyoming definitely had the most amazing skies of all the places I visited, and the thing that killed me was that I didn't know their names and stories. So I looked for a small astronomy pocketbook at every bookstore I could find, and when I finally found one I forced convinced my friends to spend our last night in the west camping outdoors, instead of at a motel. It was worth it.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I remember that story too. There was the "country cousin" and the "city cousin," I think, or maybe I'm mixing up the memory with a cartoon. I don't remember the book putting forth such a strong statement against city life; strange. I don't see why they'd need to condemn one over the other. What's wrong with a little compromise?

See, I'm a suburban girl at heart, and while there are things about suburbs I can't stand -- strip malls and poor building planning and senseless use of SUVs and the like -- I do love them for being fairly lively like a city while still having plenty of greenery and quiet places that aren't stuffed with people. I've found that I can't live too long in a city because I miss trees, or too long in a remote area because it gets boring.

[purridot.livejournal.com]

I don't know why that anti-city vibe was so strong in my memory; maybe it was not the story itself, but the slant the story-teller took? Childhood memories are so strange! That is what is so interesting about the memoryfest!

[pynelyf.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realized this was a children's story!

This is going to drive me crazy because I can't remember exactly *which* Medieval English poet wrote it even though I just read it this semester, but there's a poem about a country mouse who has it really rough--it's cold, food is scarce, etc. so she decides to go visit her sister in the city. The sister lives in a mousehole in house, there's no drafty wind, they gorge themselves on food and wine left out by humans, and the country mouse wonders why she lives in the country in the first place. She spills her woes to her city sister who responds that life in the city is all fine and grand but--and here the city mouse breaks off her response and makes a mad dash for the mousehole. The housecat has discovered them, and the country mouse, being too engorged and somewhat tipsy and having no experience with housecats anyway freezes up and gets eaten. And the moral of the story is you should be happy where you are because you get eaten if you leave.

I think the poet was Skelton or Crowley but am not sure...

[pynelyf.livejournal.com]

Wow, I was totally off the mark. It's "OF THE MEAN AND SURE ESTATE WRITTEN TO JOHN POINS" By Thomas Wyatt!

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/mothersmaids.htm

[purridot.livejournal.com]

That fable is quite the spooky one :-O

I'm twisting my brain to think of how I might apply that moral to my life -- you can't be too careful, after all!