Archive: Opinions

I have been a New Yorker for 23 years, and a Lansingite for 22 of those.  Since last week's 'quality of life' editorial I have been thinking about my own experience of Lansing.  In those 22 years I abandoned a career and had two others, married and raised a family, and got wider in the beam.  I almost, but didn't, move away twice, proving what I have always thought about the Tompkins/Ithaca area:  it's a black hole.  It sucks you in with its unique culture and amazing beauty, and you just can't get out.

I came here for a job in Cortland, and rented an apartment for the first year so I could scope out the area and decide where I wanted to live.  Ithaca seemed obvious to me, but I didn't want to be in the middle of the crazy politics and taxes.  Lansing, Groton, and Dryden were on the right side of Tompkins County for my commute, but there was something about Lansing.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought so.  Every time I called my realtor to see a house, or put an offer on one, it had just been scooped up by somebody else!  But eventually I found a modest house on Ridge Road, which I loved.

I heard about how good the schools were.  I didn't have kids at the time so to me that was only about real estate values.  People told me that taxes were reasonable (for New york), and the quality of services was high.  As if to underscore that the State paved Ridge Road within a month or so of my moving here -- I didn't know at the time it isn't a Town road so I took it as a good omen.  And it was.

When we thought about having a second child we realized we were outgrowing our little house, so we decided to move.  Our first child was only two, so it wouldn't be a matter of taking him out of school.  So we strongly considered moving closer to one of our families, in Florida or Minnesota.  But we also considered Lansing as a third option, because by now we were both hooked on the place.

When it came down to which of the three we wanted to raise our family in, we decided to stay put.  Instead of 1,500 miles south or west we moved two miles north.  Ah ahlways say, when ah lived in South Lansin' ah had a drawl, but since Ah moved narth Ah've lost it some...

Eventually I began working from home for a large Virginia based Internet content company.  I loved the work and I loved the company, and I loved being able to work for them here in Lansing.  When I went there for in-house meetings my boss's office was a Dilbertesque cubical in a cavernous, dark monstrously large room.  She didn't have a window.  My home office was about four times larger with a big window overlooking a steam in the woods.  I had to be very careful not to mention this fact when I visited Virginia!

When I got to a point where I would have to move to Virginia to continue working for that company my wife and I drove down to talk to a realtor and look at houses.  She was in 'supportive wife' mode even though she had a lot more to lose from such a move than I did.

By that time we had become embedded in the community, or rather, she had.  I just sat in a room in front of a computer all the time!  But Lansing had sucked us in and we didn't want to leave even if we could.  It was obvious to me that the cons (tearing my family away from a community they loved, much higher density, traffic jams, bigger schools, impossibly high house prices) vastly outweighed the pros (I could continue to work for an amazing company that I really believed).  It was a no-brainer.  We stayed.

The community has been incredibly nurturing to my family, and I am humbled by how it had embraced and nurtured my children.  We now live on a town-owned road, which is immaculate all the time.  My high school class numbered 557.  My kids' classes are around 100.  I felt lost in the crowd -- they are a part of it.  Church and community offer a lot and a lot of opportunities to give back.  There is a culture of 'giving back' in Lansing, not just talk, but action, and lots of it.

I'm not thrilled by our New York taxes, but I continue to be intrigued by our oddly homogenous community that shouldn't work and would surely fracture any other community by any social experience I know of, but somehow draws us together into a single forward-looking community.  Surely we have differences, but we're all for Lansing.

As black holes go, I'm thrilled to have been sucked into this one.  Since working on the Lansing Star I get out a lot more, and I like what I see.  Growing up in a big city I never imagined how satisfying it could be to be part of a community like ours.  You can't get out of black holes.  That's OK.  I don't want to get out of this one.

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