(1) The weather. We're only fifty miles north of where we used to live, but the weather is so much better. Clearer, crisper air, about five degrees cooler on the average, and one beautiful day after the next. Well, we did have that tiny tornado on Easter Sunday. But other than that!
(2) The library. So many books! Also, it's three stories tall and I need books on all three levels (first floor is where the holds are picked up, second is the fiction, third is the large print and non-fiction), so why join a gym when I can just go to the library.
Downside: everyone in town loves the library as much as I do, as it not only has a ton of books but also programs for every age group -- story hour, cooking classes, yoga -- all day long. So sometimes it is not just hard but impossible to find parking at the library, despite the three-story parking garage and auxiliary parking out back. I mean, this is good, I love a city where people love the library; but it's a little frustrating when I have to leave without going in because I can't park.
(3) The Co-Op, or Ozark Natural Foods Co-op. Locally owned and supported by residents, the Co-Op provides "locally grown, responsibly sourced" food, some of it from local farmers and artisans. I could live on their chicken pies. The kid says I already do.
(4) The infrastructure. Fayetteville is inhabited by people who care about the community. It's a city being built for and run by the people (who are pretty much 90% progressive). So we have bike and walking trails and parks everywhere, recycling not just permitted by encouraged, green spaces (though not as many as there used to be), that library, and a planning board that thinks about the aesthetics of the town, not just giving tax breaks to billionaires. You don't know what most cities are like until you live in a city that makes sense.
There's also free public transit, funded by the university and the city, but only in certain areas. If you don't happen to live in those areas, the free public transit isn't that useful. Nor does it really keep students from bringing their cars to school and then driving like toddlers around the city, sadly. (We do have a lot of rich kids from Texas whose daddies have bought them GIANT trucks and SUVs to tool around town in, and like many 18 year olds they have no sense of self-preservation.)
(5) The variety of restaurants. In Fort Smith, we had one good restaurant -- Las Americas -- and a couple of burger joints that were okay. The Chinese food sucked, the pizza sucked, the general American food restaurants were mediocre. Here, these are so many good restaurants that we are hard pressed to choose what we want. And there are other good ones we haven't even tried. Excellent pizza, outstanding Chinese food, diners, breakfast places. Amazing.
(6) The university. I'll admit I've only skirted the edge of this resource. Come fall, I plan to be studying Greek and Latin there. And there's a theater, a huge library, museums, an immense gym -- all of this will be accessible to me once I'm a student. Cannot wait.
(7) Bookstores. All Fort Smith had was Bibles a Million. Here, there's the Dickson Street Bookstore, as well as a Barnes and Noble, and several smaller secondhand shops. With the library, though I have less need of bookstores. And my purchases from Thrift Books have plummeted.
(8) Jeni's Ice cream. I can get it via Whole Foods but also through my local Harps. The kid accuses me of being obsessed, and I do admit I tend to horde pints of it. My favorites at the moment are the Cold Brew and Coconut Milk; Milk Chocolate; Darkest chocolate; Brown Butter Brickle; and Boston Cream pie. However, Jeni's is coming out with new flavors, which I await in anticipation.
(9) Bird song. There are so many more birds here. I love their singing, especially in the morning, though they sing all day. A hawk hunts the green space behind the house. Watching him hunt is beautiful. There's a rooster living next door, whose crowing charms me. There are more insects here too, which is why there are more birds, I suspect. Fort Smith residents tended to their yards drench their yards with Round-Up, which killed off the insects, and maybe the birds that ate them. Though maybe the birds just left for better fields -- I did used to see birds in the park down by the river there.
(10) The children. There are children here, and they play outside. I could go weeks without seeing a child outside in the Fort. The kids here walk home from school, which is possible because most of the neighborhoods here have sidewalks. An ice cream truck trawls my neighborhood every day around 4:00. An ice cream truck! Do you know how long it's been since I saw one of those?
(11) Dogs. Partly this is because I live by the dog park, but I'm seeing so many dogs. All on leashes, I might add, again opposed to the Fort, where people let their dogs run wild. Also, hardly any of them are pit bulls.
(12) My new house. It's on this quiet street not too far from a dog park. I have a deck. I have that marvelous view off the deck, of the green space behind the house. This neighborhood is also so quiet at night. It's wonderful.
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| Junti Contemplates the Green Space |
