Le Sabot Post-Moderne

I agree about living in a red state being a little scary. Spent four years in college in mostly rural north Georgia and went through more culture shock in my first week there than I did going to a major city in Spain for a week.

Hi there!

I tried to comment on your blog, but it kept telling me my comment was way out of line or spammy or something. . .

Anyway, I noticed you're from Bradenton and you went to Covenant. :) The Duchess and I are from Sarasota. Can I ask you what church you worship at? When we're in the States, we usually attend Covenant Life PCA.

As far as the Red/Blue thing, Sarasota is about as culturally blue as one can get, though we do vote country club Republican.

Meanwhile, I live somewhere culturally red (small-city almost Midwest with LOTS of deer rifles), that consistently votes blue. Go figure.

pentamom-

I have a buddy who's a devout Dem. He's also pro-Life, Presbyterian and very pro-gun.

He's from south Illinois farm country, where apparently they don't hear much about the national party or something. People there have just always voted Dem. And they seem to have no clue that the people they send to Washington become part of an apparatus that's completely opposed to the values these voters hold.

It's interesting how you end up with such demographic pockets.

Now, one might not consider Dallas in the category of the cities listed, but I will say that our move for practical reasons into the city from the burbs a couple of years ago has surprisingly found us more at home. And fresh on my mind is one of our more significant cultural venues, the Morton Meyerson Concert Hall... Just got back from a field trip there with my son's third grade class. We do have a wonderful hall and symphony. And, while it's probably no Redeemer NY, our new home church, New St. Peters PCA is very culturally engaged. Who'd a thunk your pastor would be chewing on T.S. Eliot's work. If your this way sometime, John, you should come visit. There's also always some homebrewed 'Pecos Porter' in the fridge - and of course being culturally minded, there's also some homebrewed Merlot too...

That's weird about my blog spam thingy coming up, because it doesn't seem to do much to stop actual comment spam.

Anyway, I think I actually know you--didn't you go over to Melbourne and do prolife stuff with the McGlades back in the early '90s? As for what church I'm involved with, I go to Hope Presbyterian.

You're definitely right about Sarasota being culturally "blue," and I think Bradenton is probably more blue than red as well (and both counties actually went more Republican this time around than in 2000). In any case, I'm much happier in a place where country music is not king and where I can see movies that aren't big studio fare. Growing up, I thought that the Bradenton/Sarasota was boring and small town, until I got to Covenant and discovered that most of the students thought that Chattanooga was a big city with tons of things to do while I'm thinking precisely the opposite.

Why, thank you, Mr. Bush.

The red attitude/blue voting thing is a little different here -- I think what you've got is more like an old-time labor-oriented ethnic community who think that the Democratic Party is still fundamentally the party of FDR, but really have little time for the Hillary wing of the party. Do NOT take their guns away and do NOT mess up their pop concert with left-wing propaganda, but also don't bother trying to tell them that Ken Lay and Martha Stewart are not Republicans.

Of course that little taste of heaven named Babel was a city as well.

Russ-

Sadly, for every Prague, there must be a Philadelphia to provide balance or something. I'll just avoid the terrestrial Babels and do okay. :)

The stigma of big cities as "sprawling, sinful places full of Catholics and vice" should apply equally as well per capita to smaller rural cities and towns. At least from my experience, these smaller population centers are "[stagnating], sinful placed full of [Baptists] and vice."