Where would I live if not here?

Graves wrote in a recent blog posting of her own that there aren't many places other than where she's living now that she'd like to live. With the move from Seattle to Indiana in 2002 and the subsequent escape from the 7th Bolgia of Hell two years later to Eugene, I have given a lot of thought about where I'd be willing to live. While in Indiana, "where am I willing to live?/where would I like to live?" was something of constant consideration while digging the escape tunnel.

First of all, I don't ever want to live in the Midwest again! Let me emphasize this further: Indiana is a place that makes Texas look pleasant and desirable. While we met a few nice people there (and the folks in the UU church out there are very nice) and I was lucky enough to work with a few more, the populace for the most part should be sporting "Ask me about my extra chromosome" bumper stickers. I might be willing to live in parts of the East Coast except the hurricanes are getting worse thanks to global climate change and the winters can be really frightful. The South? There's minimal civilization outside of the big cities and bloody hell, it gets hot and sticky! I alluz say that if I'd wanted heat, I'd have stayed in Tucson. There are lots of people very dear to me in and around Tucson, but the heat is just too much for me to take in the summer. (I believe in cool, temperate climes.)

California? 'Sfar as SoCal, I never could tolerate smog, and the Bay Area, though beautiful and my heart yearns for it the way it was decades ago, is just too crowded and expensive. But I'll visit it often. The Rockies? Well, possibly: parts of Colorado are nice and there's all kinds of civilization and mountains--mountains are very important, I've come to realize. Oregon, the current location, is lovely on the wet side of the state. Parts of Washington up the I-5 corridor or even possibly on the peninsula might do, but we're drying out (global climate change again) and things will be very different in 15-20 years.

So, like Graves, I think the next major move might well be to another country. I liked the idea of living in Ireland. Scotland's very pretty. Might even consider parts of Europe, too. Australia and NZ are real possibilities. But if it gets to the point where there's no reason to stay in Eugene, there may well be no reason to stay at all. I love the country and love seeing it--there's just so much to see--and I dearly love my friends and relatives... but there's darned few places I think I'd like to live outside of where I am now.

P.S. Lorne Elliott, crazy Canadian folksinger (who is notorious for "Morris the Moose" and other songs of Dr. Demento ill-repute), is also the host of the CBC radio show Madly Off in All Directions. On a recent show, he did a song about

Air Canada that will be appealing to most anyone who's a fan of Canada or p'raps who's flown on Air Canada.

Where would I live if not here?