Wednesday, May 20, 2009

musing

just a kind of thoughtful day. here are three of my thoughts:

1. "a new lease on life." what? my crazy brain keeps making this ="a lease on a new car." like, you only have it for two years or whatever, and you can't drive it too much and you're supposed to keep it pretty clean. and you pay $399 a month.

2. what is it, exactly, that people in portland, maine have against tourists? i really don't understand this. even if you disregard the money that tourists bring into the economy of a town like mine, what is it that's so distasteful about people who are lucky enough to be on vacation, and who have chosen - from myriad possibilities - your town?*

3. i felt kind of bad, but then i baked some cupcakes. and now i feel better. and i haven't even eaten any of them (yet)!




*this actually kind of upsets me - i imagine these happy tourists walking around admiring portland, completely unaware that all around them are natives narrowing their eyes, thinking, "pah! tourists!"

6 comments:

erin said...

Oooh! We were just talking about coming up your way on our vacation!

I didn't know that we tourists were so hated. ;)

Liz Woodbury said...

well, not by me and my kindred spirits! do come, it's lovely here and much friendlier than i just made it sound!!

mama d said...

In the 32 years I've lived here, I've always been heartily in favor of tourists, and I could never understand the anti-tourist bias. What's not to love about them? I really appreciate Maine and Portland, and I don't mind sharing...even on the 4th of July weekend that it took me five hours to get home from Concord, NH! Really, heavy holiday traffic is the only downside I see to tourism, and you get that everywhere....One of my best friends is a woman who came here as a tourist from NYC, fell in love with the place and moved here.

Julie Falatko said...

I've always been shocked by the anti-tourist feelings too, especially here in PORTLAND where we don't actually really get any (I could see it maybe getting tiresome in Bar Harbor or something). I'll never forget talking to some store merchant a few months after we moved here and she said, "I don't understand why they call it tourist season if we can't shoot 'em!" which was completely flabbergasting. I definitely agree with you: I'm so psyched that people like my town enough to actually come here on vacation.

Liz Woodbury said...

i love walking around town on pretty days thinking, "i get to live here!" seeing visitors just makes me appreciate it even more.

Julie Falatko said...

Plus I like that sense of superiority and coolness that comes from having a beach bag packed in my car at all times, because we live somewhere where we can go to the beach on a whim.