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Citizens of the Left
Nov. 6th, 2007 07:01 pmCelo Community is a hippie land trust in rural Western North Carolina. Like most hippie communities, its inhabitants are mostly transplants from elsewhere in the state, the country, the world. It's also home to a summer camp and a boarding school, so it has a lot of temporary foreign inhabitants. As such it has a tendency to define itself as separate from--and, often enough, in opposition to--the 'locals'.
What's interesting to me is that even the kids grew up in that community see themselves as separate from the non-Celo, non-hippie local people. A friend of mine was born not far outside of Celo, as local as they come; but she was adopted by hippie transplant parents from Up North, lost her accent (mostly), and refers to people from outside of Celo as 'local', thereby seeming to distinguish herself from them, despite having lived in the county her entire life.
Similarly, the 'Triangle' area of central North Carolina, where I grew up, has major identity issues simply from the fact that the majority of its population only moved there recently. This is from the software boom, the East Coast epicentre of which is in that area. The Silicon Valley of the South. My Daddy was born and raised in Raleigh, and so was his mother, and his family is from North Carolina way back forever. But my mother's family moved there from New England in the 1970s, part of the very first IBM wave. Still, even they have been there for ages compared to most; from the year I was born to the year I left for school, the area doubled in population, and it's continuing its astronomical population growth (with vastly inadequate urban planning!)
My point is, the true locals in Wake County have been basically eclipsed, and even though I actually am (or at least was) local to that area, I never felt like it. I suspect this had a lot to do with never going to the public schools. My parents ran and taught at a Montessori school, so I went there, where even for that area I think we had a disproportionately high number of 'outsiders', especially among the staff.
So I am puzzled when I hear my sister reminisce about our 'Southern' upbringing, which to listen to her was just a collection of stereotypes. Oh, we were located in the South, and as I said our Dad's family is very Southern. But it was all tempered by our mother's family, who are all so very New England, especially her parents. Furthermore, we pretty much lived at the school, and nearly all of our socialising was through the school. We were not really of the South.
I think it was the school, mostly, that brought this about. It was self-consciously in opposition to the local norm. My parents were, too, at least to a degree. Celo parents are even more so, even those who really are fully integrated into (or of!) the local community. They are the hippies, the counter-culture. We are the second generation of the counter-culture, I and most of my friends from home. Because we were born of those who set up their own identities in opposition to the norm, we never really did fit in to the geographical communities we were born into. I suppose this is why I spend so much time in this journal agonising over geographical identity: because, when it comes right down to it, I don't really feel one. My familial identity, and political, come first and have always, though I only realised it quite recently. I am a citizen of the Left.
What's interesting to me is that even the kids grew up in that community see themselves as separate from the non-Celo, non-hippie local people. A friend of mine was born not far outside of Celo, as local as they come; but she was adopted by hippie transplant parents from Up North, lost her accent (mostly), and refers to people from outside of Celo as 'local', thereby seeming to distinguish herself from them, despite having lived in the county her entire life.
Similarly, the 'Triangle' area of central North Carolina, where I grew up, has major identity issues simply from the fact that the majority of its population only moved there recently. This is from the software boom, the East Coast epicentre of which is in that area. The Silicon Valley of the South. My Daddy was born and raised in Raleigh, and so was his mother, and his family is from North Carolina way back forever. But my mother's family moved there from New England in the 1970s, part of the very first IBM wave. Still, even they have been there for ages compared to most; from the year I was born to the year I left for school, the area doubled in population, and it's continuing its astronomical population growth (with vastly inadequate urban planning!)
My point is, the true locals in Wake County have been basically eclipsed, and even though I actually am (or at least was) local to that area, I never felt like it. I suspect this had a lot to do with never going to the public schools. My parents ran and taught at a Montessori school, so I went there, where even for that area I think we had a disproportionately high number of 'outsiders', especially among the staff.
So I am puzzled when I hear my sister reminisce about our 'Southern' upbringing, which to listen to her was just a collection of stereotypes. Oh, we were located in the South, and as I said our Dad's family is very Southern. But it was all tempered by our mother's family, who are all so very New England, especially her parents. Furthermore, we pretty much lived at the school, and nearly all of our socialising was through the school. We were not really of the South.
I think it was the school, mostly, that brought this about. It was self-consciously in opposition to the local norm. My parents were, too, at least to a degree. Celo parents are even more so, even those who really are fully integrated into (or of!) the local community. They are the hippies, the counter-culture. We are the second generation of the counter-culture, I and most of my friends from home. Because we were born of those who set up their own identities in opposition to the norm, we never really did fit in to the geographical communities we were born into. I suppose this is why I spend so much time in this journal agonising over geographical identity: because, when it comes right down to it, I don't really feel one. My familial identity, and political, come first and have always, though I only realised it quite recently. I am a citizen of the Left.
