Getting To Know Noho

So here we are back in Northampton, and our focus will shift to this lovely part of the world for the next two months.  Because I’m here, and frankly, HRH is involved in a business thing with a group of people who are not known for their appreciation of the dry, subtle humor of your author, and he’s given me to understand that her take on life in the world’s largest country needs to be back pedaled.  A little.  From the little I know of this crowd (and HRH makes sure it is a very little bit), I think we should be okay: they don’t strike me as people who Tweet, I know they don’t have a FB page, and in general, they are the type who, should Google decide to leave Russia, they’d provide a car and driver to the airport.  We’ll still be looking at the funnier side of Russia (I have a fat file folder of potential material that is very good indeed), but we’ll be looking more at the social/family/cheesy decor side of things.

Very cloak and dagger, isn’t it?

But, let’s firmly train our attention on Northampton, or “Noho” as it is known, where we have not spent much time in this space, but which has been home since July of last year.  For the uninitiated, here are seven salient facts to set the stage:

1.    Noho is the Lesbian capital of the Northeastern seaboard.  I’m not sure how this got started (any Noho bloggers out there?  Helllooooo????  Do you know?), but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with…

2.    Smith College, one of the oldest all-women colleges in the country, located in just left of downtown Noho.   Smith has remained resolutely all female to this day.  Smith students, from what I can tell, are very hip and edgy, artsy, politically active in a good way, and, at the moment they are over the moon because…

3.    Local girl-made-good RACHEL MADDOW of the Rachel Maddow Show is coming to speak at their commencement this year!  Very exciting for the Smithies, and for what one (male) blogger called Lesbiania or Noho.  When she is not in New York, articulately squelching the Birthers and the Tea Partiers, The Divine Rachel lives with her partner not far from Noho in the Hill Towns.  No, I haven’t spotted her yet; I know this because…

4.    The women from Eileen Fisher  told me.   Of course, in addition to about 400 yoga studios, 3 bead stores, and two health food co-ops, Noho has an Eileen Fisher store.   I won’t lie to you, it was a deciding factor in choosing Noho as a residence secondaire, because, apart from some ratty sweatshirts and DANSKO clogs, I get all my clothes from Eileen Fisher – I don’t shop anywhere else.  Those who would like to know more can read this piece I wrote for a friend’s blog on wardrobe issues for the over 40 set.   Sadly, she shut the blog down, which is a shame, but she does have a busy schedule, two kids, and a Fellowship.  Anyway, I thought Eileen Fisher was going to be a good place to make some cool, savvy, intellectual, liberal-thinking new friends but…

5.    Sadly, this hasn’t panned out.   In fact, I haven’t made too many friends here, and this is beginning to worry me.   With 20-20 hindsight, I can see that maybe the tip-offs should have been that a.) In a small New England College town, unless you are working for the small New England College as a tenured professor, you are not going to be invited to anything, you can’t use the gym or the library and so you will never meet anyone; and b.) I’m not a Lesbian, nor do I have any (immediate) plans to become one.  I thought I might join a book club but…

6.    Despite dropping lots of hints to the people I have met, trawling through the Internet, perusing the local freebie papers 

 

and community bulletin boards at the two health food co-ops, since I’m not breastfeeding, nor surviving cancer, nor entering or exiting menopause, dealing with a learning-different kid, or anything like that, there doesn’t seem to be a group for me.  And before you weigh in with your next piece of advice, yes I did try to…

7.    Volunteer, but that hasn’t panned out either somehow: I tried some obvious suspects like Public TV or the Food Bank, but they haven’t really called me back (what what what’s wrong with me, apart from the fact I’m a heterosexual, non-lactating, WASP, right-side-of-premenopausal woman?) so I am still confined to going to things I either have to buy a ticket to, for which there is homework assigned, or to which I have to drive, or all those things rolled into one.   The driving thing, is, of course, bizarre for me, despite being Tsarina of the Road in Moscow, I never drove anywhere in the evening myself: everything was either in walking distance or Tolya, one of HRH’s two drivers, or someone else’s Tolya, drove me.  Here in Noho, it’s just me and my Subaru, and we’ve gotten to be great friends.  I invited some great friends from other parts of the world to come and stay, but everyone seems to either need to prosecute their PAs, or kneel at the feet of cellular life coaches.   And, you know, fair enough…I get it…but I’m feeling like I felt in 7th and 8th grade, and not just because that particular hellhole is only an hour away.

I’m determined to change all of this though!  Onward!  If I could make it in Moscow, believe me, I can make it anywhere and definitely in Maddowland. If Noho won’t come to me – I shall go to Noho, and while I’m at it, and because this is Spring, I’m going to have a systematic self-help, self-improvement, streamlining, weight loss, creative breakthrough orgy.  I’ve been cooking up A Plan…  

Stay Tuned!

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Dear Reader, thanks for reading this post.  If you read it all, you’ll know that I’m feeling a little blue, and kind of lonely, so I’d welcome your feed back, which you can leave as a comment below…how do you make friends in a new place?  Are you a member of a Pioneer Valley Book Club, which needs a new member to host your chardonnay-fueled discussions? If so, could you please come out of hiding? Would you like to have brunch?