Saying how long they have lived in Oregon

In the local newspaper, alongside the usual crazed letters, people are often given extra space to weigh in with their unsolicited opinions -- you know, like me with this blog. Often, below their signature, there is a tagline explaining their background, expertise, reason for caring. 19 out of 23 times it goes something like this:

Timmy Johnson has lived in Bend 11 years.

My assumption is that the guest author is allowed to give whatever info he or she thinks most important. I'd assume you would want to put something that would give you that little extra oomph of gravitas, maybe "So and so graduated with honors from Yale" or "This douchewit worked in lame-ass Salem for 30 years."

But what's considered paramount in importance in this area is how long you have lived here. In the real world, located back on earth, people would have laughed at you for this biographical tidbit of meaningless geography. But in this cliquish, stand-offish, niche-heavy community, the thinking -- that's a loose use of "thinking" -- is that the longer you've lived here, the more worth you have as a human.

Of course, the exact opposite is true, but let's give these geo-biography lessons some merit for two nanoseconds before we casually dismiss them. Extrapolating from their inclusion, we can see that this senseless, childish logic is somehow supposed to give whatever dumb thing they're opining in about -- how great or stupid the war is, how much you like/love/hate roundabout art, how awesome/great Bend is or used to be, whatever -- more sagacious backing. Supposedly. But guess what? They don't mean anything.

Let's say we're the first settlers, only I've been here 11 days to your measly 7. Does that give my arguments more weight? Hell to the no, if your brain works.

Unfortunately, we're surrounded by people whose brains do not work because they have not been sufficiently oxygenated nor supplied with the challenges and grit of urban life. They think that if you've lived here only, say, 3 years, you'd better keep your trap shut, interloper.

I love that when the New York Times wrote about Bend in 2002, the reporter thought to include this gem:

Robert Woodward, 63, artist, writer, outdoorsman and mayor of Bend in the late 1990's, grimaces at the city's growth and the loss of mountain biking trails. A migrant from California more than two decades ago, he calls the Californians rushing here lately 'the locusts of our time' ...

This "outdoorsman" --one of those hilarious labels that don't mean anything; I'm a naturalist myself! -- moved here and now hates people who behave exactly like himself? I guess I have a different perception of time than some people do, because even if it had been 30, 40 years since his move, he'd still be a self-hating Californian. Welcome to Hypocriteville, mayor Woodward.

It's the same everywhere. People move to a place they think is nice, then want to pull the door shut behind them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the natives I've met are far less hostile or xenophobic, although many stand to profit from the growth.

All I know is that I hope I don't become like these people. Folks, if your long-time status as an Oregonian means so much to you, you should, I don't know, get something more going on in your life. Maybe volunteer? Or, I got it, keep quiet.

But you know where you can go if you're so miserable because the Oregon of right now is not the Oregon of whenever you got here? There's a whole vast desert to the east, clear through to Boise, and there are few if any Californians to hear your complaining. Go there and romanticize the hell out of that shit.