Pleasant towns

[Arab Nights (imported)]

My job tends to involve working in a lot of places thru the year. In the course of that, there is the odd town that is aa pleasure. I moved where I live now because it was a pretty area and kind of central. It is a good thing I did not move for the people or I would have been disappointed.

I remember in the 70s finding Ashboro, N.C. and nice place. People were friendly. Globe, AZ impressed me the same way. Wickenburg, AZ is an interesting little town with authentic ranchers, working folks and so on. It happens all the time in Wickenburg when you are in the grocery store checkout line with 2 or 3 things for lunch that the person in front will tell you to go ahead. That has never once happened to me in the 15 years I have lived where I do.

I wonder if people can recommend other towns that are just a pleasure to be in?

[Riverwind (imported)]

Funny you should say that, but its happened several times to me in this area, people are just good people, even the republicans do it. Hudson Wisconsin, near the Twin Cities. Its one of the reasons I love it here, good people.

River

[DeaconBlues (imported)]

My job tends to involve working in a lot of... It happens all the time in Wickenburg when you are in the grocery store checkout line with 2 or 3 things for lunch that the person in front will tell you to go ahead. That has never once happened to me in the 15 years I have lived where I do.

I wonder if people can recommend other towns that are just a pleasure to be in?

Strange that you should mention that, because in the last week alone I have told three other people to take the place ahead of me at the check-out since they only had a few items. That MIGHT or MIGHT NOT be a common occurance where I live, but it is a common thing with me - when I am "healthy." I notice that there are clear and definite times in my life when my "awareness" and perception of people and things around me are at a good level, when things are like that I tend to be more outgoing, more confident, just all around "nicer" and all that. Yet I can also clearly remember times in my life when I am sort of a monster, not really mean or evil, but more unaware and uncaring about people and things around me.

I REALLY have wanted to do some sort of study of this, the "confident-aware-nice" versus "unaware and don't care" pole of human personality, and most importantly WHAT CAUSES the shift from the good to the bad and back to the good and such. While I have absolutely NO "scientifically collected data" or proof, I do have my observations of my own and other's behaviour.

Obviously, good things happening to me helps me to feel better about me and my perceptions of the universe (no great discovery there huh?), and bad things, well no duh, bad things happen to me or anyone else, bad people cross my path, my world seems to be populated by assholes exclusively... and I become an "asshole" myself in the "dog eat dog" world that I percieve around me. Yet ODDLY ENOUGH... I see in myself and others that too many good things and no bad (or at least difficult things) in life make people into selfish, self absorbed assholes. Hardship, tough times, while highly over-rated by some idiots, do in fact have a positive effect on developing a personality. Just to clarify my own position on this, I absolutely hate most ASSHOLES who are often saying things like "pressure makes diamonds" and "what does not kill you, makes you stronger" and "the easiest way is never the right way" and finally "no suffering can come into this world without some good comming of it."

I don't want to hijack your thread Arab Nights, so I will cut this posting short and answer your question, I could go on and on and on about this particular subject because it is a bit of a "hobby horse" for me, but this is your thread and you asked a simple, straight forward question.

You are not the first to ask this sort of question, "where is a good place to live?" is a common concern among people, so I offer my best straight forward answer:

Places change, people change, sometimes rapidly, so my information may not be up to date.

The most important bit of "wisidumb" that I have picked up in my travels is this: People see the world as they are, and not so much as it actually is. The people who are always making "strained accusations" of thievery are in fact the ones most likely to have "sticky fingers" themselves. The woman who constantly accuses her husband of having affairs is the one most likely is herself having an affair or at the very least wanting to. So I try to moderate my opinion of others, by asking myself "do the people here (or there) really act all that badly, or is it rather my own thought to act badly myself?"

Some of the best places I have ever been, and where I would live today if I could afford to, are the Spanish "Cote de Azur," and the Baleric Islands of Palma de Mallorca, Palma de Menorca, and Ibiza. Cannes (pronounced "can") France, was great, and I myself found none of the "French snobbery and rudeness" that everyone seems to talk about all the time, I spoke no French at all, yet people still talked to me and we communicated. Tell me honestly and truly, IF a French sailor or soldier were to suddenly appear in your average U.S. town, speaking NO English at all, and with no U.S. money at all, do you think he would be treated well? Aided in where to go to exchange money? Maybe the French and Spaniards were nice to me because I was in "tourist areas" and the locals saw me as a source of money, but I do believe that they were nicer and more aware of other people around them than the average local in most U.S. towns.

Within the U.S., I saw both extremes of hospitality and hostility in the "Old South." There were lots of places where I swear you could FEEL the hate from everyone, and yet there were places where people behaved very nicely, the local Waffle House was an island of joy for my family, and yet the Church's Fried Chicken place was actually dangerous to go to. Augusta, Georgia, is the only place I have lived where I truly felt the NEED to carry a weapon whenever I drove up to the ATM. I would never ever ever again live in the "Old South" of the U.S.

Recently, my son and I travelled to Leavenworth, Kansas, and drove back to Arizona. It seems to me that people in "the mid-west" were actually pretty nice, but again, we were only travellers passing through, but it sure looked like some good country. I echo Riverwind's opinion about the area, though we did not pass through the Twin Cities.

I have read, but not observed first hand, that Seattle, Washington, was a place where good citizenship is more often the rule. For example Seattle was the city that had the highest percentage of people trained in life saving CPR and first aid in the whole U.S.

One place in the U.S. that was very pleasant when I visited was Saucilito, California. It is a place for really wealthy people who want to live close to San Francisco, everyone there seemed nice enough, but there again, I was in the tourist areas, so it may have been artificial pleasantry. But wheather it was genuine or fake niceness, I still have to say the place is just beautiful, expensive as all hell, but beautiful to look at.

[Arab Nights (imported)]

People see the world as they are, and not so much as it actually is.

I thought you were going to recommend Pahrump and I was going to have to make like Hank Hill and come up there and kick your ass. Thankfully and as usual, you make a good point. You have my permission to hijack my post.

For background info, DeaconBlues and I live in the same state and have visited and have met family members.

I know from talking with a political science professor at the U of AZ who was formerly mayor of Tucson that among the politicos there is awe that the more Arizona changes with newcomers, the less it changes. Areas that historically are conservative grow 100% and stay c6nservative and areas that are liberal grow 100% and stay liberal. It is like people have a beacon guiding them to a place with people like themselves.

I wonder if assholism is like political leaning? There are towns that are friendly and towns where you feel the hatred? Note that hatred can be at either end of the political scale.

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