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‘Too many old people’: A rural Pa. town reckons with population loss
(www.washingtonpost.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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No duh. Have you ever been out there? Sure, it’s pretty, but that’s it. Absolutely nothing to do. Except meth. Oh, and drunk driving and KKK rallies.
Food and flower gardening, community or personal, waking, biking, swimming in rivers, fishing, sewing, knitting, getting to know your neighbors, barbecuing on wood or charcoal, building treehouses and swings, book clubs, picking up litter, mutual aid, sitting around and singing/playing instruments/swapping stories or making up tales to entertain children and each other, reading, pick up basketball/football/soccer/hackeysack, ride horses, hunt, fish, ride horses, dirt bikes,, cards, dominoes, bird watching, butterfly watching. Board games, video games, potlucks. Plenty of stuff to do, it's just usually a slower-paced activity.
While this is indeed a list, it pales in comparison to what you can do in or near a large city.
I enjoy a ton of things on your list but there's stuff you just can't easily do outside of a metro area. Especially stuff you need a specialized teacher for.
I'm in an online class now with an instructor who merely reads the chapter previously assigned as homework and won't answer questions about anything other than their social activities. In an ivy League University area. Conversely an instructor in tiny little Katy, TX a couple of years ago and originally from Alabama gave plenty of homework, had well - planned classes, actually thoroughly explained independent reading material, and also could answer in-depth questions on an ELI 5 level. It's more to do with personal ability, interest and integrity and actually caring about/liking the job.
Katy ain't tiny. Well, in and of itself it is but it's part of the Houston metro. I live off the Energy Corridor. I can be in Katy in a few minutes. I can also be at a dozen grocery stores, an insane number of taco trucks, any type of bar you'd care to visit, escape rooms, several gyms (I've recently started rock climbing in one again!), and shit loads of white collar industry for a good paying job within a few minutes. My first IT job making more than $125k was 10 minutes out of Katy. It's suburban, not rural.
I stand corrected! She said it was tiny, and at the time, I had plenty of work keeping me busy! Thanks for the information!
No worries! It's less than half an hour to downtown Houston from here at this time of night and probably right at half an hour from Katy proper.
I grew up in a true rural community of less than 1000. It was half an hour to the outskirts of the nearest city, and that place had 75,000 people. It was hours away from the outskirts of the closest REAL city, Dallas, with 1.3 million people. In contrast, Katy has 25,000 people and sits half an hour from the center of a city with 2.3 million people, nevermind the size of the metro area.
So if she lived on the west side of Katy, she was describing the place as she saw it and that's not on you. A small place as compared to Houston, and more on the rural side of the suburbs. I take my motorcycle out that way because if you leave headed west it's pretty empty for a while.
Thank you, for your magnanimity and description. Happy trails, friend.