For once the ad is true

It’s good to be home. When I got off the plane this sign greeted me. It certainly sums up the situation. I found the contrast between Seattle and Baltimore to be quite stark.

My understanding of Seattle is affected by where I went to college. Hampshire College is in the Pioneer Valley (western Massachusetts) and is part of a 5-college system with Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Amherst, and UMass. At Hampshire I wasn’t a freshman, I was a first year student. There were classes in Womyn’s Studies, Herstory (not history), and the best dances were hosted by the LGBA. I was a sweet young thing from the Midwest and went through two years of culture shock before getting acclimated to the politically correct, emotionally intense East Coast. In Amherst, there was a bit of PC Nazism going on. If you believed in absolutes you were a corrupt bigot who’d clearly never learned to think for yourself. It was the tyranny of tolerance. The Absolute that nothing is absolute was taken for granted. How DARE you say there might be Truth, don’t even THINK it within my breathing space! It was a great place for figuring out what I really believed. I came away from college with a true ability to think critically!

Seattle is a big city, yet laidback version of Amherst. Very PC, environmentally friendly, but with a ‘do what you want’ attitude underneath. Sure, it’s not cool to think in terms of absolutes, but whatever. Just don’t push it on me and we’re good. To emphasize the laid back thing: NO ONE speeds on the highway! The fast lane goes 68 mph in a 65 mph zone. I’m used to driving I-95 where 75 mph is the slow lane. In fact a law was recently passed in Maryland that, regardless of the speed limit, if you’re going slower than the car coming up behind you, you have to move right. Seattle is willing to spend whatever it takes to make their rivers and shorelines hospitable for the salmon. Baltimore won't fix the sewers that keep dumping raw sewage into the Chesapeake Bay. Here’s a shot of the Boeing parking lot in Seattle. Minimize the black top and you minimize runoff, pollution, and CO2.
(I actually love that they do this since it’s a great idea.)

In contrast to all that, Baltimore is a really gritty city. No matter how much they dress up the Inner Harbor and the culture centers, at heart, Baltimore is a blue-collar town. In Baltimore, no one has time to bother with PC stuff. When there are over 300 murders a year, who has time to plant grass in the parking lots? Baltimore has relentless row-houses. Walls of brick with little porches jutting out in front, even the suburbs tend to be townhouses in a row-home style. The streets are full of pot-holes and vacant lots. The truism for Baltimore is “The pace of the South with the manners of the North.” I’ve never been very good with pretense, or BS. I keep trying to learn to be tactful, but I have to focus to maintain it. Guaranteed tough. I like it here.