[senior citizen]

Would anyone care to wager a guess why oftentimes "kids" from very small towns, surrounded by nothing but rural landscapes, choose to strike off on their own at a younger age, travel the world after college, generally seeking adventure & a change from the same old, same old careers that their parents might have expected them to follow in......?

Case in point, all of their cousins, raised in New Jersey, chose safe careers while remaining in their birth state......raising their children in the "suburbs"........while most of those in our small town, after graduating top universities, chose to enter the military in order to attend medical school; see the world, etc..........or else chose careers where they travel extensively (not the typical nine to five) , chose to return to "city living" as opposed to living in the "burbs"...........also they choose to vacation "abroad" not "down the shore" like their cousins.

This change all occurred during their high school/university/grad school years.

We are thinking (in a lightbulb moment) that the ones in the metro areas saw a lot of "diversity" whereas ours living in the small rural towns "seek out that diversity" by leaving their home state .........although some do return to raise their families, after becoming nostalgic for the good old days. Most make a life for themselves elsewhere. It's all GOOD.

Re the "diversity" when our foreign exchange students would arrive in our small town, our high schoolers would literally put them on a pedestal as very very special guests. Plus, in their adult lives, they've formed lifelong bonds with those of other nationalities/cultures/races.

I'll have to open a dialogue with my 43 year old son when he returns east this August for his 25th high school reunion............seems like yesterday it was ours.

The world is definitely a smaller place as our kids' friends took jobs in Japan , Singapore, the Netherlands, Africa, Europe, plus others too numerous to recall at the moment...........raising their families abroad.........plus those in the military around the world. Also, of course, those who just resettled all over the United States....
　

[44Ruger]

And that is a good thing. Better to understand the rest of the planet than fear it causing war.

[jblum315]

The days of children settling and marrying within their birth community have been gone about a century.

[Taltarzac725]

Looking at my own situation and my choices....

I basically left the Reno, Nevada area in 1982 because there was no accredited law school in Nevada at that time. That put me at BYU's law school for about 10 days or less mainly because I had not realized how different I would feel being a Non-Mormon in a mostly Mormon community at BYU. The worst part though new roommate at BYU who was the recent Mormon convert who set his sights on making me a new convert. He was a dancing major as well from Puerto Rico. (I chose BYU because of my fascination with religions and a Merit Scholarship they offered me which had me paying the same rate as Mormons to attend BYU).

I returned, regrouped after getting the advice of one Philosophy professor Frank Lucash, took a battery of additional classes at the University of Nevada, Reno beyond my already two BAs -- a speech class, a computer programming class, and some others. I had been terrified that someone would call on me at Law School as well because my speech problems come up when really nervous. The speech course was required as I planned to get a MA in Librarianship to have something practical to fall back on and then go back to law school later in life if the opportunity presented itself.

I had also wanted to do something about the niche in information available for survivors/victims of crimes accessible in libraries but wanted to make sure I had had enough degrees and work experience to give me some credibility when I tried to do this. I started noticing that niche at Washoe County Library around February 28, 1976 in Reno, Nevada.

I did make a stab at it while at the University of Denver Graduate School of Librarianship while out to dinner with an Alaskan public library employee who was getting a MA at the University of Denver. This was her birthday dinner and the talk got around to past birthdays and the like. I talked about Mrs. Mitchell and the murder of her daughter Michelle on 2-24-1976 but this topic scared Joan E., who basically told me not to bring this up in professional settings of librarians and the like. It was just the two of us at her birthday dinner.

So, I had always after this tried to be careful about pushing this concern I had had about this niche and how to address it.

I am not sure just how worldly some well traveled and very well educated people really are especially if they are challenged with ideas like what would happen if they were victims/survivors of crimes and were faced with handling this situation.

In 1992-1993 and afterwards, I wrote a number of victim assistance providers about all the problems I had when trying to be honest about a niche in services to victims of crimes and my life experiences with the Michelle Mitchell murder (2-24-1976) investigation and they said that people have a very hard time accepted that they too might become a victim of crime at some future date. So instead of getting involved they just put aside any idea that they might be in that situation.

Joan E. at the University of Denver seemed to have that problem during her birthday dinner around 1984 but her advice of me not pushing the issue probably helped me get through law school at the University of Minnesota where I graduated in 1989. I brought it up but only in situations where I thought it might be pertinent to the matter at hand like when I was interviewing for a position on the Journal of Law and Inequality when they asked about my personal experiences with inequality and the law. I talked about the niche in practical information for survivors of crimes in the U of MN Law Library and elsewhere where I had looked for useful information. If other law students told me about their own experiences with being victims of various types of crimes-- and there were many law students at the U of MN who shared such stories with me-- I would tell them about my own experiences. These experiences though never seemed to conflict with whatever answers they would have in law school classes or in whatever advice they would give to potential clients.

I myself even represented two boys who had burned down a school library in upstate Minnesota while I was Student with the Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners (LAMP). I basically just wrote them letters about their case. Tough thing to do for someone with a MA in Librarianship who has always loved libraries.

I tried to get people around the world concerned with these experiences of mine mainly because when I pushed the issue in early (January) 1991 when informed I was losing my contract with the University of Minnesota Law Library instead of addressing the issue of this niche in practical information, they first subtly, then not very subtly put my mental health in question. I just wanted to be honest with future employers --other than the U of Minnesota-- that there was this niche in practical information for survivors/victims of crimes. I did represent quite a number of prisoners though at the Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners at the U of MN-- including the boys who burned down the school library-- and did this objectively and well as I was Co-Director of the LAMP office for the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater. Stillwater was the biggest prison in MN serviced by LAMP.

So, my battles have landed me in the Villages even though I have tried to get people from all over the world to look at their own community's libraries from the eyes of the survivor/victim of crime. Starting in mid-1993, I tried to enlist Hollywood in spotlighting my own experiences at these various institutions using 224 and 613 to inform them about these via many e-mails I had sent people with media connections.

I do believe that even if you live in a not so small community like the Villages, you can have an international impact if you have something very important to say or give or whatever especially since people from all over the world MIGHT read TOTV.

And, for my looking for work in libraries after I lost my contract at the U of MN Law School Library, I would only bring this interest of mine up if it was relevant to what I might be doing if that library hired me. More often than not, it never came up because my task was not relevant to the experiences I had involving the niche in practical information for survivors/victims of crimes. If for instance, I was applying for a job as a cashier at Publix, I would certainly not bring up my experiences with victim/survivors of crimes and their access to information as it would not be relevant to being a cashier.

[Villages PL]

Originally Posted by senior citizen

Would anyone care to wager a guess why oftentimes "kids" from very small towns, surrounded by nothing but rural landscapes, choose to strike off on their own at a younger age, travel the world after college, generally seeking adventure & a change from the same old, same old careers that their parents might have expected them to follow in......?

Case in point, all of their cousins, raised in New Jersey, chose safe careers while remaining in their birth state......raising their children in the "suburbs"........while most of those in our small town, after graduating top universities, chose to enter the military in order to attend medical school; see the world, etc..........or else chose careers where they travel extensively (not the typical nine to five) , chose to return to "city living" as opposed to living in the "burbs"...........also they choose to vacation "abroad" not "down the shore" like their cousins.

This change all occurred during their high school/university/grad school years.

We are thinking (in a lightbulb moment) that the ones in the metro areas saw a lot of "diversity" whereas ours living in the small rural towns "seek out that diversity" by leaving their home state .........although some do return to raise their families, after becoming nostalgic for the good old days. Most make a life for themselves elsewhere. It's all GOOD.

Re the "diversity" when our foreign exchange students would arrive in our small town, our high schoolers would literally put them on a pedestal as very very special guests. Plus, in their adult lives, they've formed lifelong bonds with those of other nationalities/cultures/races.

I'll have to open a dialogue with my 43 year old son when he returns east this August for his 25th high school reunion............seems like yesterday it was ours.

The world is definitely a smaller place as our kids' friends took jobs in Japan , Singapore, the Netherlands, Africa, Europe, plus others too numerous to recall at the moment...........raising their families abroad.........plus those in the military around the world. Also, of course, those who just resettled all over the United States....
　

Going to foreign countries might be for more reasons than seeking diversity, otherwise they could have gone to a metro area like New York City, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Perhaps they were seeking adventure on a larger scale.

[bkcunningham1]

Who knows? Maybe that sense of adventure, questioning, wonder, exploration and wanderlust was taught to them by the small town parents who raised them. Maybe the spirit of their ancestors-who were just like them and adventured away from home and who settled their small towns-are alive inside these young adults.

[graciegirl]

Maybe they needed to find employment. It happens in small towns all across this country. People can only travel all around the world if they have enough money to do it.

[Average Guy]

You are looking at an awfully small sample to draw conclusions from. There are other factors that you are not considering when comparing people raised in small tons versus larger communities. For example, the New Jersey cousins were not raised by the same parents as those in the smaller town.

I grew up in a small town, and as I look back at many of my high school classmates, many of them stayed in rural America and lived lives that seemed to follow relatively closely in their parents footsteps.

Just my 2 cents worth.

[senior citizen]

Originally Posted by Taltarzac725

Looking at my own situation and my choices....

I basically left the Reno, Nevada area in 1982 because there was no accredited law school in Nevada at that time. That put me at BYU's law school for about 10 days or less mainly because I had not realized how different I would feel being a Non-Mormon in a mostly Mormon community at BYU. The worst part though new roommate at BYU who was the recent Mormon convert who set his sights on making me a new convert. He was a dancing major as well from Puerto Rico. (I chose BYU because of my fascination with religions and a Merit Scholarship they offered me which had me paying the same rate as Mormons to attend BYU).

I returned, regrouped after getting the advice of one Philosophy professor Frank Lucash, took a battery of additional classes at the University of Nevada, Reno beyond my already two BAs -- a speech class, a computer programming class, and some others. I had been terrified that someone would call on me at Law School as well because my speech problems come up when really nervous. The speech course was required as I planned to get a MA in Librarianship to have something practical to fall back on and then go back to law school later in life if the opportunity presented itself.

I had also wanted to do something about the niche in information available for survivors/victims of crimes accessible in libraries but wanted to make sure I had had enough degrees and work experience to give me some credibility when I tried to do this. I started noticing that niche at Washoe County Library around February 28, 1976 in Reno, Nevada.

I did make a stab at it while at the University of Denver Graduate School of Librarianship while out to dinner with an Alaskan public library employee who was getting a MA at the University of Denver. This was her birthday dinner and the talk got around to past birthdays and the like. I talked about Mrs. Mitchell and the murder of her daughter Michelle on 2-24-1976 but this topic scared Joan E., who basically told me not to bring this up in professional settings of librarians and the like. It was just the two of us at her birthday dinner.

So, I had always after this tried to be careful about pushing this concern I had had about this niche and how to address it.

I am not sure just how worldly some well traveled and very well educated people really are especially if they are challenged with ideas like what would happen if they were victims/survivors of crimes and were faced with handling this situation.

In 1992-1993 and afterwards, I wrote a number of victim assistance providers about all the problems I had when trying to be honest about a niche in services to victims of crimes and my life experiences with the Michelle Mitchell murder (2-24-1976) investigation and they said that people have a very hard time accepted that they too might become a victim of crime at some future date. So instead of getting involved they just put aside any idea that they might be in that situation.

Joan E. at the University of Denver seemed to have that problem during her birthday dinner around 1984 but her advice of me not pushing the issue probably helped me get through law school at the University of Minnesota where I graduated in 1989. I brought it up but only in situations where I thought it might be pertinent to the matter at hand like when I was interviewing for a position on the Journal of Law and Inequality when they asked about my personal experiences with inequality and the law. I talked about the niche in practical information for survivors of crimes in the U of MN Law Library and elsewhere where I had looked for useful information. If other law students told me about their own experiences with being victims of various types of crimes-- and there were many law students at the U of MN who shared such stories with me-- I would tell them about my own experiences. These experiences though never seemed to conflict with whatever answers they would have in law school classes or in whatever advice they would give to potential clients.

I myself even represented two boys who had burned down a school library in upstate Minnesota while I was Student with the Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners (LAMP). I basically just wrote them letters about their case. Tough thing to do for someone with a MA in Librarianship who has always loved libraries.

I tried to get people around the world concerned with these experiences of mine mainly because when I pushed the issue in early (January) 1991 when informed I was losing my contract with the University of Minnesota Law Library instead of addressing the issue of this niche in practical information, they first subtly, then not very subtly put my mental health in question. I just wanted to be honest with future employers --other than the U of Minnesota-- that there was this niche in practical information for survivors/victims of crimes. I did represent quite a number of prisoners though at the Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners at the U of MN-- including the boys who burned down the school library-- and did this objectively and well as I was Co-Director of the LAMP office for the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater. Stillwater was the biggest prison in MN serviced by LAMP.

So, my battles have landed me in the Villages even though I have tried to get people from all over the world to look at their own community's libraries from the eyes of the survivor/victim of crime. Starting in mid-1993, I tried to enlist Hollywood in spotlighting my own experiences at these various institutions using 224 and 613 to inform them about these via many e-mails I had sent people with media connections.

I do believe that even if you live in a not so small community like the Villages, you can have an international impact if you have something very important to say or give or whatever especially since people from all over the world MIGHT read TOTV.

And, for my looking for work in libraries after I lost my contract at the U of MN Law School Library, I would only bring this interest of mine up if it was relevant to what I might be doing if that library hired me. More often than not, it never came up because my task was not relevant to the experiences I had involving the niche in practical information for survivors/victims of crimes. If for instance, I was applying for a job as a cashier at Publix, I would certainly not bring up my experiences with victim/survivors of crimes and their access to information as it would not be relevant to being a cashier.

Very interesting history !! Our son went west to Boulder Colorado at age 22, after graduating from the University of Vermont........he later got his M.B.A. at Univ. of Colorado at Boulder. The rest is history.

DENVER, the mile high city has been his home for the past 21 years, with lots of world travel as well as domestic travel as part of his career.

He has the best of all worlds to pursue his active outdoor lifestyle, by choosing CO. as his "home"............where he & his wife are raising their family.

I believe "Lonely Planet" is very popular with his peers & age group.

Our daughter moved to Boston Mass. after graduating college; enjoying the city life for quite a few years.......however, when they chose to begin their family, they knew they wanted to return to rural northern Vermont.
But, they've also seen quite a bit of the world.

Thanks for sharing.............always interesting.

P.S. Many of my son's high school/college buddies all went west to Colorado.......as did the sons of our neighbors up here on the hill.

I think we all played way too much "John DENVER" back in the day.
All are now raising their families out there...............

DENVER is a nice modern city, while Boston is a historic quaint city.
Tons of museums, etc. in both.........

[senior citizen]

Originally Posted by bkcunningham1

Who knows? Maybe that sense of adventure, questioning, wonder, exploration and wanderlust was taught to them by the small town parents who raised them. Maybe the spirit of their ancestors-who were just like them and adventured away from home and who settled their small towns-are alive inside these young adults.

Good answer; I think you are right.........

[Taltarzac725]

Originally Posted by senior citizen

Very interesting history !! Our son went west to Boulder Colorado at age 22, after graduating from the University of Vermont........he later got his M.B.A. at Univ. of Colorado at Boulder. The rest is history.

DENVER, the mile high city has been his home for the past 21 years, with lots of world travel as well as domestic travel as part of his career.

He has the best of all worlds to pursue his active outdoor lifestyle, by choosing CO. as his "home"............where he & his wife are raising their family.

I believe "Lonely Planet" is very popular with his peers & age group.

Our daughter moved to Boston Mass. after graduating college; enjoying the city life for quite a few years.......however, when they chose to begin their family, they knew they wanted to return to rural northern Vermont.
But, they've also seen quite a bit of the world.

Thanks for sharing.............always interesting.

P.S. Many of my son's high school/college buddies all went west to Colorado.......as did the sons of our neighbors up here on the hill.

I think we all played way too much "John DENVER" back in the day.
All are now raising their families out there...............

DENVER is a nice modern city, while Boston is a historic quaint city.
Tons of museums, etc. in both.........

I worked three jobs while at the University of Denver. One at Penrose Library as a Reference Assistant, a work/study (Field Internship) at Englewood Public Library and as an Abstractor/Indexer for an Information Broker out of Boulder.

I really enjoyed the mountains and other stuff around Denver. I was too much in a hurry to start using my Masters Degree and took the first position offered even though I probably would have been better off waiting and looking for something I really wanted.

I moved close to my older brother and his then wife near Pleasanton, CA and made a long commute into Belmont, CA (near Palo Alto, CA) where I started as an Indexer for National Newspaper Index, Magazine Index, Business Index and other products of Information Access Company. I then switched to doing abstracting with Area Business Databank because I thought it would be easier to sell to future employers. I had moved to Belmont to prevent the long commute after making it for a short time.

I was looking for a Reference position job much of the time I was at IAC as reference has always been a real love of mine.

You should be able to tell this from all the time I spent linking stuff on TOTV.

My old LSAT score was still good from when I went to BYU so I applied to about 12 law schools and got into all but Marquette and Stanford. My cousin Tom had married a nice woman --Kate-- from the Twin Cities area and they had helped me make up my mind to go with the U of Minnesota Law School.

I worked three jobs while at the U of Minnesota Law School too but two of these were related to librarianship because I had never really wanted to be a lawyer. The other was as A Student Clinical Director at Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners. I did take the MN Bar (1990, 1991) a few times but only a year or more after I graduated because I was very busy cataloging all the computer files on the WESTLAW database when I graduated in 1989. The U of MN Law Library staff at the American Association of Law Libraries annual convention in Reno, Nevada in 1989 had introduced me to a lot of fellow law librarians as the cataloger of the WESTLAW computer files. This return to Reno a few weeks after graduating from Law School in 1989 also brought back all of my memories about the 2-24-1976 murder of Michelle Mitchell and the investigation, trial, appeals, etc. I did talk to some of my fellow U of MN Law School Library colleagues about this as would be expected given the circumstances. Then my girlfriend Jennifer V., and I were targeted by a U of MN stalker for about nine months basically until Jennifer graduated from Law School in 1990 and moved to become a Law Clerk for an Iowan judge. The stalker Gail P., needed that competition so she -- Gail P., seemed to just go to whomever was her next obsession. Gail P., held most of the rights --to use the library in the law school-- so the U of MN could not do much of anything about stopping the stalking. She had chained herself to the desk of her former obsession a U of MN Professor so the U of MN certainly knew about her.

The experience of Gail P., did make me more interested in looking at the library from the eyes of a survivor/victim even if Gail P., never did anything more than follow people home. Which was really creepy.

Office politics made me lose my employment contract with the U of MN Law Library. It was after I lost the contract that I had the problem of how I wanted to market myself to employers other than the University of Minnesota. What I thought was outrageous was putting my mental health at issue when I talked about various failings (like the stalker Gail P.,) or my feelings about this when approaching things from the point-of-view of a survivor/victim about holdings at the U of MN Law School Library. These were about PRACTICAL and not theoretical materials for survivors/victims of crimes. I really did not know what was out there for survivors/victims until I started writing snail mail letters to many people in the victim assistance field in 1992 to see how I could help survivors/victims from outside the law librarianship profession which I basically got laughed out of at the summer annual New Orleans and San Francisco American Association of Law Libraries conventions in 1991 and 1992, respectively.

I had been looking at library holdings from the point-of-view of the survivor victim of crime since February of 1976 and looked at libraries from Denver, Tempe, Pasadena, Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Houston, Mesa, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Provo, St. Paul, Minneapolis to some other areas. Quite a bit more after 1992.

[Patty55]

Maybe they are just trying to escape the limited gene pool.

[Taltarzac725]

Originally Posted by Patty55

Maybe they are just trying to escape the limited gene pool.

True. But have you ever noticed how many lawyers beget lawyers, doctors beget doctors, plumbers beget plumbers, etc.

http://youtu.be/dmbQM1W_WDA