Dear Charlie, Hello from Nampa, ID. I followed you to your substack from your post on the Culture Studies classifieds. My partner and I moved to downtown Nampa in 2013 from the coast in Los Angeles (Hermosa Beach).
I read this article with great interest because I would dearly love to move again but my partner says he's not interested in investing a couple of years to the upheaval and disruption that moving requires. He's 79, and I can see his point. I doubt that we'll be leaving. My children and grandchildren live in Seattle, Vancouver WA, and Portland.
We gradually retreated from community involvement here in Nampa beginning with the Trump years and then abruptly halted with the arrival of the pandemic. I miss the engagement but feel so out of place now.
I think our experience would be so different if we'd moved to Boise instead, but Boise commercial property was out of our budget even back then. We own a sweet storefront near the beautiful Nampa train depot.
We didn't think the politics mattered much when we got here, but things have changed. Not only in Nampa, I know. We hope to come into Boise more often and spend time with more like minded friends--there are more of them in Boise than in Nampa.
Thanks for a place to tell my story 😉. I'm not very political, perhaps because of my immigrant family culture--lots of colonial patriotism that feels way too weird to me. Still thinking about how to sort THAT out, too!
Hi Betty, thanks so much for this thoughtful note! Lovely to see other Idahoans in the Culture Study comments (though I imagine there are many of us).
Your story is interesting, since the stereotype of "Californians moving to the Treasure Valley" is one of quite conservative "political refugees" looking to escape California politics, and that certainly doesn't sound like that's necessarily the case for you. One thing I'll say is that, even in the most conservative of places, there are liberal voters, and vice versa. And when we're talking about "political places", it's all a matter of degrees. Certainly Boise is bluer than its surroundings, and most precincts in Nampa and Meridian voted between 55-65% for Donald Trump. But that also means there's still a substantial minority of voters who might be of a similar persuasion to you in your more immediate area, and often more than we think when we're in a place where we're a political minority.
That said, I know it's hard to feel outnumbered, or at least sick of the politics, and I'm currently short on tips for forming a community out of those like-minded folks nearby. Part of my hope in the years to come is that we can think more together about ways we can be involved in our local communities that don't require everybody to wear their politics on their sleeves, or at least not in a way that others feel excluded—an involvement focused more on community service rather than political organizing.
But then again... political organizing matters, too! It's a tricky issue. Regardless, I wish you luck, and hope to see you around town one of these days.
Dear Charlie, Hello from Nampa, ID. I followed you to your substack from your post on the Culture Studies classifieds. My partner and I moved to downtown Nampa in 2013 from the coast in Los Angeles (Hermosa Beach).
I read this article with great interest because I would dearly love to move again but my partner says he's not interested in investing a couple of years to the upheaval and disruption that moving requires. He's 79, and I can see his point. I doubt that we'll be leaving. My children and grandchildren live in Seattle, Vancouver WA, and Portland.
We gradually retreated from community involvement here in Nampa beginning with the Trump years and then abruptly halted with the arrival of the pandemic. I miss the engagement but feel so out of place now.
I think our experience would be so different if we'd moved to Boise instead, but Boise commercial property was out of our budget even back then. We own a sweet storefront near the beautiful Nampa train depot.
We didn't think the politics mattered much when we got here, but things have changed. Not only in Nampa, I know. We hope to come into Boise more often and spend time with more like minded friends--there are more of them in Boise than in Nampa.
Thanks for a place to tell my story 😉. I'm not very political, perhaps because of my immigrant family culture--lots of colonial patriotism that feels way too weird to me. Still thinking about how to sort THAT out, too!
Betty
Hi Betty, thanks so much for this thoughtful note! Lovely to see other Idahoans in the Culture Study comments (though I imagine there are many of us).
Your story is interesting, since the stereotype of "Californians moving to the Treasure Valley" is one of quite conservative "political refugees" looking to escape California politics, and that certainly doesn't sound like that's necessarily the case for you. One thing I'll say is that, even in the most conservative of places, there are liberal voters, and vice versa. And when we're talking about "political places", it's all a matter of degrees. Certainly Boise is bluer than its surroundings, and most precincts in Nampa and Meridian voted between 55-65% for Donald Trump. But that also means there's still a substantial minority of voters who might be of a similar persuasion to you in your more immediate area, and often more than we think when we're in a place where we're a political minority.
That said, I know it's hard to feel outnumbered, or at least sick of the politics, and I'm currently short on tips for forming a community out of those like-minded folks nearby. Part of my hope in the years to come is that we can think more together about ways we can be involved in our local communities that don't require everybody to wear their politics on their sleeves, or at least not in a way that others feel excluded—an involvement focused more on community service rather than political organizing.
But then again... political organizing matters, too! It's a tricky issue. Regardless, I wish you luck, and hope to see you around town one of these days.