Daniel Nester is Wicked Inappropriate

While I despise the self-congratulatoriness of those who've left NY or SF or other Big Towns for this here Valley (and those who've never moved to cities in the first place) because everything and everyone is just so awesome here, I also am one of those who've dearly loved and left two cities and am not headed back to urbanity, at least not that I can see right now. Daniel Nester's essay "Goodbye to All Them" reminded me of some of the reasons I've made the journey from Albany to New York to San Francisco to Turners Falls, why, to have any hope of being a writer and not a bitter wannabe, I had to leave SF, and why Turners may indeed end up the last stop for the Jamie train. It's from Nester's new book How To Be Inappropriate, which I now gotta go git me one of pronto. (An odd bit of coincidence also occurs to me just now: Dan, with whom I am acquainted, has ended up in Albany, just a few blocks from where I grew up. How 'bout them apples?)