(Untitled)

[shipwright]

Home again.

Let it never be said that Pennsylvania is like New England; it isn't. The grey snow, the hills bristling with leafless trees. Our wood that my father cut from our trees in April and cured over the summer, stacked outside the door and along the side of the house. SE PA may be magnificent in springtime, but home is home.

Comments

[uncleamos]

No, they're quite different.

[shipwright]

I ought to clarify: in the process of selecting colleges, I knew that I really-really wanted to go to Swat. "And," thought I, "it will be nice because it's still in the Northeast." (See, I had no desire to live south of the Mason-Dixon line, and little incentive to cross the Mississippi.) So, in my mind, the weather and the local sensibility would be more or less similar to what I'd grown up in (southern Connecticut). Alas, this was not to be. Something happens when you cross the border into New York (though upstate New York has a rugged climate all its own).

[mrandie]

Katie and I have decided that Pennsylvania is the Tropical South, compared to New England and upstate New York.

[runnerchild]

Yes. I've long felt this.

The months are all off in Philadelphia, as though the city hadn't checked its calendar. October didn't kick in until almost November, and November barely began before my calendar said December. It stabilizes for a little in winter (although some years November just lingers for months until suddenly it's March) and then spring arrives really a bit too early (although, as said before, beautifully).

I don't think I'd want to live farther south than Philadelphia.

[shipwright]

Most certainly, to both of you ladies.

I think what always surprises me is that, when the year winds down and the "r's" return to the months, I always feel plunged into the season when I go home for the weekend. Three and a half hours on the train and suddenly it's Fall - or, in this case, Christmastime (certainly its own season; less bleak than January will be, more hopeful. ["Always winter - and never Christmas!" makes sense to me.]).

I think I would wilt south of Philly. My mother - who grew up in Boston - lived in Florida for a number of years, where she met and married my Nebraska-native father and where I was born. It has only ben recently that I have come to understand and appreciate the intense longing that led her to bring her husband and daughter back to New England at the earliest possible opportunity.

[foxfour]

it's because new england is the Real part of the world. there's something about it that's Right. i have that intense longing for new england, and it's been a long time since my family lived in salem MA, or sharon CT.

[jano]

Having lived in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and upstate New York, I must say, Pittsburgh is awfully close. But no, not Philly.

[shipwright]

I've heard there are something-awful storms out in Pittsburgh - Pennsylvania's big, and I do have to keep in mind that, unlike Connecticut, the weather on one side of the state is not neccessarily the weather on the other (hehe). Philly's practically down-south, after all.

[jere7my]

You said it, sister. After fifteen years of miserable, grumpy winters in PA and the northern midwest, I am suddenly surprised to find myself enjoying a winter again. "Of course," I tell myself. "I'm practically in New England."