While I'm sure there are lots of politically progressive places that are problems, I can't imagine having a community similar to ours without it. We're an island of progressive surrounded by numerous similar sized towns that are decidedly conservative and have more community problems and are less attractive academically. But they're less expensive to live in, too.
> While I'm sure there are lots of politically progressive places that are problems, I can't imagine having a community similar to ours without it.
There are a number of traditionalist conservative intentional communities doing much the same things. It's kinda like with homeschoolers: the left-wing & right-wing homeschoolers end up doing many similar things, and are different from the mainstream public-schoolers in similar ways.
I was homeschooled and my parents gave me a lot of freedom in learning and play. They definitely weren't helicopter parents. We had the cops called on us many times by people who wondered why we were roaming the streets during school hours. (We had already completed our work for the day. That was the deal.)
I spent hours playing in creeks or racing bikes in neighborhood woods.
But there were other homeschooling families we knew who kept their children cloistered and firmly under parental supervision. Those kids grew up with a very different experience.
Thank you. We took an exploratory road trip to check out Corvallis and Eugene two years ago, and we stopped in Ashland and did have a very nice time at a park there. We hadn't actually considered the town, I'd assumed it was very conservative for some reason.
