(Untitled)

[altoidfowler]

So I'm in a music history class right now. After getting clusterfucked by chemistry, it's nice to listen to Chopin all day and watch winter settle in over the hills. As a result I'm doing a lot of music-related stuff both in and out of class lately. In addition to noise-rock projects of various natures (covers of Heroin and drum machine/recorder

Comments

Remember that movie "city slickers"?

[xitsme_itsmex]

I think that those of us who live in the city do forget about our small town comrades in the same way that people in small towns forget about the fact that racism still exists. we're not confronted with rural poverty on a daily basis, and we don't see the devastation that it inflicts on entire communities. I am totally with you on the urban provinciality issue, though: Because I grew up in this huge city, I take a lot of things for granted, like the fact that I don't need a car to get around. I'm sure that transportation is a huge, painful burden for people in small towns who have been ruined by poverty. Birdsall and I actually talked about this issue at length, and I think he helped me understand it. We in urban areas often have a very negative view of people who live in small towns-- Not like Ames, but places like Mt. Vernon. You'd be surprised at the things people say to me when I say that I go to school in Iowa. Or maybe you wouldn't be; I bet you deal with that all the time. But in Chicago, we look at "downstate" Illinois (actually a word used to describe pretty much anywhere outside of Chicago and its close suburbs) as backwards meth heads, if we even think of them at all. I guess that's a sad fact, but one can only fight so many battles, and the decision I am faced with is whether or not I should fight a battle that I am personally invested in, or if I should fight one that is more closely related to someone else's reality.

I choose the former, but I think there are plenty of us city folk who choose the latter.

Re: Remember that movie "city slickers"?

[altoidfowler]

You see, I don't think that small town folk in general feel that racism no longer exists. Granted, this is because a lot of small town people actually are racists (and anti-Semites and homophobes). And granted, we (we meaning Northern rural Americans, not Southerners) aren't exposed to racial discrepancies as frequently as urbanites are. Yeah, it sucks when people discount everything you say about the way the world works because you're from Iowa. See: Resignato, Schroeder, the list goes on...