![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Aug. 23rd, 2001 09:40 pmThank you everyone for the birthday wishes. IRL I had to postpone the birthday celebration due to biz and travel, so the LJ well-wishing was appreciated even more :)
Woke up about 4:30 this morning to catch my plane. I'm in Boston, in, as far as I can tell, exactly the same hotel room I was in a month or so ago. At least my view of the parking lot and hotel roof seems to be the same. Biz is good, Boston is nice, and I'm trying to enjoy New England while it's still summer. I used to live in New England and upstate New York...this used to be home to me. This area felt so familiar to me once upon a time. Now, it's familiar in a deja vu kind of past life thing, but it's amazing how much the South is a part of me. And yet it's not. I am more comfortable in the South than anywhere else, yet I am not a Southerner. I never will be in the same sense I never really will be a part of any region. I've moved around far too much to be a native of anywhere except, perhaps, America. My accent is mostly midwest US, with slang from just about every region on the east coast. I'm comfortable with that; I like the places I've lived, the things I've seen, the people and experiences I've had, even though I have no regional identity. And, perhaps that lack of regionalism is attractive to me as well.
I wonder, sometimes, if this will end up being the trend, if regional affiliations will be the oddity rather than the norm. Atlanta is a good example -- 4.2 million people, as many non-Southern accents as Southern. A transplant town growing more from people moving in than its own internal growth. Half the population of Georgia now lives in the Atlanta metro area, something that is rapidly changing the politics of the entire state and, through that, the Southeastern US. Other cities are rapidly becoming the same.
Transportation is so inexpensive these days. I read an article recently: in 1975 80% of Americans had never flown in an airplane. I wonder -- the ease of travel, the trend of movement, the instant idea sharing of the Internet...will we get to a place where so much exposure to different cultures will mellow us? Perhaps make us less quick to believe our own, local experiences must be the only means of civilization? Or, will the inevitable melting pot of cultural blurring make us more homogenized, less tolerant of individualism and personal expression?
Woke up about 4:30 this morning to catch my plane. I'm in Boston, in, as far as I can tell, exactly the same hotel room I was in a month or so ago. At least my view of the parking lot and hotel roof seems to be the same. Biz is good, Boston is nice, and I'm trying to enjoy New England while it's still summer. I used to live in New England and upstate New York...this used to be home to me. This area felt so familiar to me once upon a time. Now, it's familiar in a deja vu kind of past life thing, but it's amazing how much the South is a part of me. And yet it's not. I am more comfortable in the South than anywhere else, yet I am not a Southerner. I never will be in the same sense I never really will be a part of any region. I've moved around far too much to be a native of anywhere except, perhaps, America. My accent is mostly midwest US, with slang from just about every region on the east coast. I'm comfortable with that; I like the places I've lived, the things I've seen, the people and experiences I've had, even though I have no regional identity. And, perhaps that lack of regionalism is attractive to me as well.
I wonder, sometimes, if this will end up being the trend, if regional affiliations will be the oddity rather than the norm. Atlanta is a good example -- 4.2 million people, as many non-Southern accents as Southern. A transplant town growing more from people moving in than its own internal growth. Half the population of Georgia now lives in the Atlanta metro area, something that is rapidly changing the politics of the entire state and, through that, the Southeastern US. Other cities are rapidly becoming the same.
Transportation is so inexpensive these days. I read an article recently: in 1975 80% of Americans had never flown in an airplane. I wonder -- the ease of travel, the trend of movement, the instant idea sharing of the Internet...will we get to a place where so much exposure to different cultures will mellow us? Perhaps make us less quick to believe our own, local experiences must be the only means of civilization? Or, will the inevitable melting pot of cultural blurring make us more homogenized, less tolerant of individualism and personal expression?
