>> Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima...

OMG. Does he play that when you are in the shower?

LOL. Welcome to upstate NY. I try to look on the bright (no pun intended) side. My skin is in great shape because it gets so little sun. Just don't forget to take some vitamin D today.

I grew up in Pittsburgh. The entire month of Feburary would go by without seeing the sun once. That's the literal truth, no hyperbole. I think they call it Steel City because during the month of feburary everything is shades of iron or steel grey and rust. Even the cars were covered with salt.

It's a little less gloomy here on the shores of the Long Island Sound today. But I think that's motly because we dodged that bullet of a snowstorm that hit up most of the Northeast today, thank the gods! They're prediciting sun for tomorrow, and for the past week, I've been seeing robins all over the place.

Amy,

The city and the area may seem bleak, but NYS has plenty of natural wonders!

The Adirondacks are a skiing / hiking / vacationing paradise.

You're not far from Ithaca, home to Cornell and Taughannock Falls.

Further West, southeast of Rochester, are the Finger Lakes (small wineries there) and Letchworth State Park, the Grand Canyon of the East.

Yeah, these would all be more fun in June or July, but thought you should know.

Any chance you'll meet David Sloan Wilson?

Ithaca is gorges.

NY is a very beautiful state but it's not famous for sunlight.

The area surrounding Binghamton is beautiful, but it's the wrong season.

kishke,

I wasn't trying to hate on Binghamton. NYS has more than its share of smallish cities that are "well broken in" but charming, depending on what floats your boat. But I think you'll agree that it's in a highly rural area.

I'll stop before I swallow my whole foot.

Amy,

Does Gregg like classic cars? There's a great museum in Norwich, about an hour away from where you are. And Cooperstown too.

I live in such a town. The Rust Belt is full of them. When I was a youngster they were important manufacturing and regional commerce centers. They have - or had before "urban removal" - distinctive and historic architecture. They had well-developed "personalities" as communities. They provided easy access to the countryside and natural attractions, yet offered a reasonable range of civilized amenities. Many were set beautifully in topographical features like river valleys. Good pre-Interstate roads and the superb passenger train network of the private railroad companies made it easy to get around. That's what we once had. Now, except for the occasional historic preservation town, those old communities have been "hollowed out" economically, socially, culturally, and politically. They've become social service and crime magnets, surrounded by faceless suburban sprawl. And the inhabitants who once gave them vitality, cleanliness, and good order? Walk through the local graveyards....

Hahaha, Elle, I'm Pittsburgh born-n-bred too! We had winter, almost-spring, sorta-summer, fall, and winter. If it wasn't raining, snowing or "Partly cloudy and mild", I figured we had done something majorly wrong and it was time to go sacrifice a goat to the weather gods. (sunshine baaaad!) I think they prefered the little black and white ones from the petting zoo......

The Adirondacks are a skiing / hiking / vacationing paradise.

My husband, a Colorado native, was missing the Rocky Mountains, so I took him to the Adirondacks. He commented on what nice hills they are.

Monica,
Ya gotta work with what you have. I've been in the Rockies and the Alps in summertime, but Whiteface is the biggest mountain I've ever skied on. He'd probably laugh at that too.

If you want to visit a very weird city, drive south to Scranton PA. Scranton is like visiting the Twilight Zone. It's been significantly depopulated and the local culture is like a time capsule from the early sixties. The architecture there is amazing, ranging from gothic to modern w/ one of the major concentrations of art nouveau in the US. It feels like you're walking around a movie set down town.

I've always wanted to visit Scranton to see where the truck with 30,000 pounds of bananas crashed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZZqnVYB4UA

If you need a break from the rundown-ness of Binghamton, only 4-5 miles NNE is Chenango Valley State Park - where you can experience a NE forest and lake. And all around that area, with the snow melting, it's prime waterfall season in the various gorges. It's likely to be messy out there, but with spring starting to peak through, the natural world around there is neat. And, then, there's always Ithaca not that far to the NNW.

Is Gregg a fan of the Smiths, by any chance. They are just the right touch for the gloomy lowlights in my life.

I'd take that over 107 hot with sun that's drilling into your brain, any day of the year. Every summer I say will be my last here, and every summer here I am. The 70 degree january's are nice, but can't make up for the 6 month torture that is summer.

Re: "The city and the area may seem bleak, but NYS has plenty of natural wonders!" (DaveG)

I grew up about 8 miles west of Binghamton, in Endwell, although that was a long time back. While it's true that part of NY State, and much of NY is often overcast and gloomy, DaveG is correct regarding the state's natural beauty.

Like the posters from Pittsburgh said, it's a lot the same there, too. Gloomy weather is common most places anywhere 100 miles from any of the Great Lakes. (I've also lived in Northeast Ohio and it's much the same as Bingo there.) From early-to-mid fall through early spring, the Great Lakes are great at generating clouds. But the advantages of living there are not so well-known, including cheap real estate. People who love to hunt and fish might find N.Y. State agreeable. It's a good state for hardy, rugged, outdoorsy people. And at the time I lived there, it has one of the best education systems in the U.S.

My little hometown near Elmira, the next "major" town west of Binghamton, was a great place to grow up in the late 1960's. But once we grew up and had to work, most kids in my high school class moved away.

I settled in Los Angeles, and meet a lot of people here from upstate NY. Just about everyone agrees upstate NY can be great if you don't need a job. Our joke is we got as far from New York as we could without needing a passport.

The two leading afternoon radio talk show hosts in Los Angeles once worked in Elmira and often rip on that area as the ultimate in bush league small towns.

It's been significantly depopulated and the local culture is like a time capsule from the early sixties.

That's because the whole region is lousy with werewolves. I shit you not.

Having grown up in Buffalo, and also having spent a few of my adult years there, I can testify that your picture above could be of any town or city in Upstate NYS.

Buffalo has a lot of beautiful architecture (two Frank Lloyd Wright homes, a Frederick Law Olmsted park, and a City Hall that is an excellent example of Art Deco) and has lots of cultural amenities for a city of its size. However, the overall effect resembles Miss Havisham's wedding cake - it was beautiful once, but has since rotted away from neglect.

However, given the option, I'd rather live there than where I currently live (Northern VA/Greater DC area.) Less traffic, friendlier people, better food, and bars open until 4 AM.

The sun is shining today, at least in Syracuse, so I assume the same for Binghamton. If you don't know what bad is, how can you appreciate good?

The other great thing about the area is the traffic jams - they don't exist. It takes me an extra 5 minutes to get home if I leave work at the busiest time of day.

Re: "I settled in Los Angeles, and meet a lot of people here from upstate NY. Just about everyone agrees upstate NY can be great if you don't need a job."

I haven't lived in upstate NY since the '70s, but over the years have also met plenty of people who moved away mostly because of the lack of opportunity. A lot of industry that was once there has closed up. As best I can tell from national news, state gov't there has been run pretty badly, going back to when Rockefeller was governor. As far as I know NYC is the only part of NY State that attracts people.

Sometime I might go back to visit.

There is an overlook for Jim Thorpe, PA that just has an incredible view. The thing is that Jim Thorpe is moribund if not dead.