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As Others See Us: A Little Bit Like Home

by Courtney George

NSL_Celebrate Carson McCullers. Illustration by ©2015 Bill BatsonThe first time I visited Nyack, I felt a little like I was going home. I can understand why Carson McCullers who loved her Georgia home, even if she took issue with its social policies would want to live in this little gem outside of New York City. Visiting again, it was confirmed for me: Nyack feels like my home region, which is comforting. Let me tell you why.

People are friendlier up there. I chatted with a shop owner; I petted a frisky dog; I enjoyed a homemade donut on a quiet street. The pace is slower. There was no rush to jump on the subway or push through a crowd; in fact, the bus was late, and the streets were uncrowded (although we did have to run to catch the train back to the city). It’s quieter. While I noticed the occasional booming car stereo, that was just it: it was so quiet that I noticed the music. The landscape is like home. That is, my childhood home of Greenville, SC, in the piedmont on a tiny river. While, in Nyack, the hills are more mountains and the tiny river is the Hudson, I was still reminded of Greenville and the surrounding western North Carolina mountains. True, the cityscape of Manhattan is beautiful in its way, but it was refreshing to look out and see green and blue.

I’m arguing that the South is friendly, slow, quiet, and green, while New York City is disaffected, fast-paced, noisy, and concrete. But Nyack stands out as special to me maybe because Carson chose to spend most of her life there but also because it lets me see that ‘the North’ and New York City cannot be collapsed; the North is as diverse as any other region as NYC itself. Spending time in Nyack also made me realize that I uphold some of the stereotypes about my home region as positive and as true.

Then this street sign reminded me that not all of the South has always been friendly, slow, quiet, and green. We have a violent and uncomfortable legacy of which to make sense and we must continue to address our regional history and its consequences as much as possible. But, maybe in that moment especially, standing on a street corner in Nyack, NY, I was suddenly not homesick. Not a bit.

Courtney George is the former director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University in Columbus, GA. This article was previously published in June, 2012.

The center offers an annual NY Comparative Arts summer study program to provide students with “an intense, varied, and extended arts experience in the arts capital of the world, New York City.” Because Columbus-born author Carson McCullers traveled to New York City and then settled in Nyack, students traditionally visit Nyack as part of the program.

As Others See Us is an occasional feature that publishes what writers outside of Nyack say about the people and places in the Lower Hudson Valley.

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Illustration by Bill Batson, ©2015


Nyack People & Places, a weekly series that features photos and profiles of citizens and scenes near Nyack, NY, is sponsored by Sun River Health.


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