Yesterday, Suze and I drove down to Montclair to visit an old friend. It was the first time that I really had a chance to check out Montclair, which turned out to be just as funky as everybody has said. Rachel opened the door to her house laughing that she didn't hear us knock the first time. She said that she was listening a talk on NPR on the Coontz article.
I haven't talked to Rachel in four years. We had been very close when Suze, Rachel and I lived in Washington Heights, but then I moved out here and Ian had his problems and I started working and we just lost touch. We hung out for a couple of hours, caught up on each other's lives, and talked about the excellence of bacon.
References to articles or books that we've read were sprinkled into the chat. We had all read and had been similarly impressed by the same things, even though we hadn't been in touch for years. In addition to the Coontz article, we also had been amused by the rich guy article, something that I was going to post on today.
I do miss my old neighborhood in the city where we all read the same stuff, dressed the same, had the same definitions of fun. I suppose it is a good thing to not be surrounded with people exactly like yourself. It's not good to think that everybody feels strongly about locally grown vegetables and movie reviews in the New Yorker. But it was certainly nice to not have to explain myself.