My wife and I are relocating to Salem this fall and we’ve been trying to figure out where to live.  We plan to rent when we arrive but will look to buy…if all the stars align.  What’s your recommendation on areas for us to look.  We keep hearing about south Salem but it sounds like the NE is our type of neighborhood.  Every place we’ve lived we chosen to be walking distance to restaurants, coffee houses, etc and enjoyed our eclectic neighbors.

Love the blog, can’t wait to try…everything!

Cheers,

Carlos

Dear Carlos,

Congratulations on your move to Salem!

Now, before I launch into a very opinionated rant about the North Salem/South Salem divide, I would like to offer what is possible the first-ever disclaimer on this blog. If you have been following my adventures here then you know I am living in Northeast Salem and have a particular affinity for this part of the city. However, having moved three times now, in as many years, I know that looking for a place to live, anywhere is fraught with many emotional and social nightmares. Many people believe that where you live is who you are, so I am quite reticent to offer too much real estate advice other than my personal experience. If you’re looking for a realtor, may I recommend Melina Tomson? So with that caveat out of the way…

We moved to the Northeast for a couple of reasons aligned with our values systems. For one, we wanted to be near my husband’s work (2 miles) and refused to be the kind of people who fritter their lives away on the morning commute. We also wanted good access to I-5. West Salem is out, and some very nice parts of South Salem come with cumbersome access. Beyond that, I insist on living as close to downtown as possible because I believe in being part of a centralized community as well as a church/school /work/writerly community. The Northeast has some great neighborhoods with very reasonably priced, smaller historic homes — I’m talking everything from century-old farmhouses to 1920s cottages to Craftsmans to mid-century modern homes. This aesthetic variety is much of what attracted me to the Northeast. If you, like me, were happy living in gentrified parts of other cities, you may like living on the fringe here as well.

Now, the bad news. If you are a professional person who could afford to live in South Salem, you may encounter some very alarming judgments about your decision to live in the North. The idea is, of course, if you have the money, why wouldn’t you live where it is nice? Nice is the operative word, and South Salem is, yes, very nice. If I lived in South Salem, I would live in the neighborhoods closest to downtown, such as Bush Park, Fairmount and, perhaps even Candalaria (for the schools and the views). I wouldn’t feel comfortable going too much farther into the suburbs, but that’s just me. By the way, parts of South Salem are just achingly gorgeous.

And yes, there are more insidious forces at work in Northeast Salem. Just drive around and, from a real estate perspective, you will discover there are some streets that look, on the outside, to be great (and are), as well as streets you might not feel comfortable walking down at night. These neighborhoods intersect in ways I didn’t expect when I moved here. I lived in a great micro-neighborhood for two years and moved to a larger place after expanding the family, but even my beloved micro-hood had a drug outpatient treatment facility just outside its borders. Before my landlord called the cops (I believe), you could sometimes hear the sounds of what was unmistakably a puppy mill. That neighborhood was on the edge of some multi-unit housing. We never had a problem with anybody, though.

We moved to the irresistibly cute Englewood neighborhood in December and had an $800 camera, as well as a guitar given to me by my father (only gift I ever got from him) stolen right out of our house. Now, Englewood is, ostensibly, a “nicer neighborhood,” whatever that means, but what I didn’t know was there is, yes, another outpatient drug treatment facility a couple of streets over. In turn, there are sometimes people walking through the back alleys behind our house as they head for a Big Gulp at the 7-11. I’m guessing they are going to eschew the figs when they start ripening.

Now, some more bad news. We are still renters here after 2.5 years and are not sure we’re going to buy anytime soon. If you don’t have any emotional attachments to home ownership, that might be a good way to go. To buttress your resolve in a community where many people expect home ownership, I will tell you one the condensed version of one very complicated house purchase. Last fall, we got involved in a short sale of an awesome property over in the Court-Chemeketa Historic District, which is absolutely where I would buy a home if I were to pick and choose. It was a short sale, and I was very attached to the idea of living there.We were getting it for a steal (roughly $40,000 off the 2006 price). After three months, I basically wigged out because my Spidey senses were going crazy and something didn’t seem right. Within a week, we were in another larger rental in the northeast and had pulled out of the house sale.

Was I right? Did the alarms going off in every nerve in my body prove prophetic?

Yes, indeed, they did. The price of that house has dropped roughly $25,000 since we cancelled our bid. That’s a pretty hairy investment, no?

I really feel for people in this community who are under water on their mortgages. I hope home values rise again and my neighbors and friends struggling with this issue can breathe deep at night knowing their dream of a little piece of earth and a place to call home, of their own, has not been quashed, as TIME and other publications have said. The breakdown, or, we can hope, restructuring, of all of the great signifiers of life — real estate and education included — is easily one of the most pressing issue of my generation. And man, does it hit close to home!

But, if you feel comfortable as a renter, you might do well to choose that option here in Salem. Just look around in the northeast and you’ll find countless options. The market right now for rentals is insane! Then again, I’m an optimist, and things have to improve, right? The same advice holds true for home-buying now as it did before the crash — plan on living in your home for a decent amount of time (7 years) if you want to recoup your investment. That doesn’t take into account the emotional rewards of home-owning, but in uncertain times, you have to make the right financial decision for your family (can you see I’m projecting a bit here?).

I belong in the northeast because most of my good friends live here. When I considered renting in south Salem, it was my friends who convinced me to stay in the north. Actually, I didn’t talk to any of them about it, just thinking about their part in my life kept me here. That’s something hard to judge when you’re new in town, so your plan to rent for a while sounds like a good one.

Now, to the most contentious issue of all: South Salem Flight. This is a disease some new Salemites catch when they come to Salem. It takes about three years, or one baby, to manifest and involves a quick turn against the diversity and charm of the Northeast in favor of the good schools and manicured lawns of the south. I have seen many an awesome northeasterner succumb to the disease. Just a warning.

I’ll close this with a final footnote on the problem of life choices. This blog post is meant exclusively as one recent newcomer’s opinion, and I hope people with similar and different experiences will chime in here, since you’re not alone in wondering where you might belong. No one deserves to have their life choices steered, or condemned, on one person’s little blog. I have put this out there in the name of your information-gathering and hope you find what you need in your search!

Best regards,

Emily

P.S. If you want to, let us know where you end up!

It is the Remington Reel, and for lovers of 1980s detective dramas, this might be the closest I ever get to Pierce Brosnan.

I’m not a huge fan of lawns. If this were our own house, Adam would probably fill the front yard with alien-looking succulents and I’d fill the back with my sad attempts at vegetable gardening. But we’re still renting, and according to our new contract, we are in charge of maintaining the yard. We needed a lawn mower.

I am easily the most suggestible person I know. If I see a Kit-Kat commercial I will want a Kit-Kat for at least a month. A few weeks ago, I watched a documentary about Sears and got all nostalgic for mail-order catalogs you could use as a booster seat and Cheryl Tiegs. Not to mention that I’m not even old enough to have seen a Sears catalog and the Softer Side of Sears was little more than a catchy90s tag line to me.

So a lot of stars must align to find me, on a Friday afternoon, in the Craftsman tools departments of Sears looking at reel mowers. My salesman says he sells about 20 a week from that store, mostly to people who live at the Oregon Coast and have postage stamp yards.

Ours is a deck-of-cards yard, but I thought I would give it a try.

The front yard went like a breeze. I was bolstered by the thrill of a new purchase, the sun glinting off the blades as they twirled in unison over the grass. The wind whipped through my hair. I felt a surge of camaraderie with my lawn-owning neighbors, many of whom were doing the same. Gradually, I began to feel new muscles in my, um, stomach? Back? Neck? Arms?

I thought back to that great New Yorker piece on the history of the American lawn, how it gets into our psyche and pulls up a chair. And then I looked back on my work. Rows or green and greener, moss peeping through, finished.

To the back twenty. Bumps. Twigs. Break-back pace. Some grass half a foot high that needs about twenty swipes to mow it down. I did half of it before I wimped out and called out the big guns — Adam with the baby strapped to his stomach.

It took two days for my body to recover.

Now, I am dreaming of what we might do when given the opportunity to dig up the lawn. Koi pond. Patio.

Rock garden. Sounds perfect.

We’re moving. I know. It blows.

It sucks so hard all of the air has left the building. It bites the big one. The torture overwhelms. The tedium ends, well, never. The burden of possessions weighs heavily.

And we don’t even have the excitement of moving to a  new city, or better, country, because this move is taking us roughly ten blocks west and four blocks up. It’s pretty much a right triangle of in-town moves. It’s a little bit of an upgrade, but with every new box that comes my way and every moment of my life that I spend packing I keep wondering what it’s all worth.

What are we getting? More space. Better set-up. A guest room for visiting mothers and others. And those most glorious of modern amenities, a soaking bathtub.

These last few weeks have pretty much sent me over the edge. I cried when I wrote the letter to our current landlord, who has become something of a mentor and whose family has really embraced us. I cried when we pulled out of a house sale we were pursuing. I cried when we gnashed our teeth over what to do. And I am crying still as I let every single object I own pass through my hands as I put it in a box and send it on its way.

You see, I’m not one of those people who can just pack and run. I’ve gotta reflect on every damn piece of property in my life, remembering where it was that we acquired it, when we have used it, what purpose it might hold in the future. I’m the worst packer ever. There must be a Precious Moments collectible ornament devoted to my packing style. And surprise! It takes up a space the size of a shrunken head, and no I’m not getting rid of it, and no I’m probably never going to hang it again but maybe it will be useful someday.

This isn’t the first time we’ve moved at Christmas. But I truly hope it will be the last. The holidays are glum enough without completely uprooting yourself and transplanting to a new setting.

The only joy I am taking in this process is that my husband actually saved boxes from our last move. Pulling them out of our Whatever Room is like playing a backwards Tetris game that he won two years ago (he’s that good).

What’s better than opening a box and finding another box?

Opening a box and finding two boxes.

I have spent the past few days doing  everything and nothing at all with my mom, who is visiting us from the East Coast.

Mom has made three trips to Salem since we had the Goober-Doo last December, and this time, she took three flights to get here.

Three flights!

Her luggage, strangely, took only two flights and arrived about five hours earlier than she did.

Lucky Luggage.

It was waiting there in the Horizon Air baggage terminal, stamping its little wheel and saying: What took you so long.

She arrived to find some oddities in my house — for one, I had scrubbed the kitchen floor  ceremoniously for her arrival. But I also made her some moussaka and some mummy cupcakes (above), though admittedly, these items don’t go together in any coherent way.

It has been a luxurious few days for me.  I have spent the past few days going out with friends who haven’t really seen me socially for months, shopping for clothes, eating slowly and mindfully, sleeping in just a bit, and sharing the quiet and lovely moments of life at home with a 10-month-old baby.

In short, this mama has been getting mommed.

What was I thinking to move so far away from my family? Was I wrong to think that the life that you create for yourself, hand-picked and curated to fit with your values and lifestyle habits and work choices was a bit misguided? Is it wrong to move across the country because you have a fascination with mushroom hunting and you have always wanted to live between the forest and the ocean?  (Yes). What’s the point if you’re stuck at home with a baby all day anyway and your own mama is miles away enjoying the high life as a retiree? Do you launch a winning hearts and minds campaign to entice her to move closer? (Also, yes).

We’ve got a great itinerary for this week, one that is delightfully freewheeling and mundane. Lots of shopping, cooking, talking. I had more fun yesterday than I have had in months, and all we did was got to Kelly’s and test out those Nespresso coffee machines.

Today, we went through the baby’s wardrobe, which has ballooned to become more varied and interesting than mine (thanks to my mom).

We might go to the Kroc Center for a swim, we might go to Woodburn, we might visit Mt. Angel, we might head to A.C. Gilbert, we might just stay home. Whatever we do, it is mighty wonderful to have the option of doing it together.

Go hug your mummies.

Jackson had been helping my husband, Adam, pursue his interest in miniaturizing trees. Of the boxwood above, which Jackson had been trying to interest other buyers in for years (it is 20 years old), he said: “It deserves a nice pot.”

Jackson had an almost prophetic ability to understand what kind of tree Adam might be drawn to. Most recently, he had loaned Adam a book, in Mandarin, of bonsai art. Adam has learned as much in a few short weeks from this book than from any other. Of the seedum above he said: “This is really the hero of the succulents.”

Adam had spoken with him about this three-year-old dwarf river willow’s interesting trunk structure underground. Jackson: “If you’re willing to dig it out, it’s something someone with your interest could appreciate.”

This dwarf tea was something of a gateway tree. Jackson: “It’s painfully small; you have to plant it somewhere where it won’t get stepped on.”

On this sephora: “Bonsai artists like this one because they don’t have to feel guilty about trimming. When you give it the rest it needs over the winter it just drops its leaves anyway.”

There will be a Celebration of Life Potluck Sunday, September 26 at 3:00 p.m. at his nursery, 16065 SW Oldsville Road, McMinnville, OR 97128. Donations can be made to Salem Friends of Felines or the Cat Adoption Team.

Okay, I’m a liar.

My best friend was visiting from New Hampshire with her adorable 4-year-old daughter and she was running down 21st Street. Had I ever been down 21st Street?

Of course. I’ve been down all of the streets. Yes, naturally. This is my town. You can’t teach me anything about my own town. Duh.

Well guess what? I live right here and I had never beheld the excruciating cuteness that is 21st Street NE, with it’s quaint cottages, looming fir trees and one massively inviting gingerbread house that looks like it was plucked from a Grimm’s Fairy tale.

It became an obsession. I would drive down the street on my way home from town. I would take the baby running in no direction that included a playground stop for him. It lodged in my mind like one of those Stonehenge monoliths.

And then I saw it:

For sale.

Reduced.

I will not walk you through the range of emotions that happens to a house found a little too late, but it goes something like this, you fill in the space between periods.

For sale. Return. Obsess. Insomnia. Call. Already sold. Heart drop.

This is a small tragedy among tragedies, but it precipitated what might become one of the biggest decisions in our lives.

Do we do it? Do we commit? Do we buy a house here in Salem? Is the market so good that we take the plunge? Are we ready? Who will mow the grass? Whose fruit trees will we pilfer in the new neighborhood? Is home ownership really all it’s cracked up to be? What if that offer of employment in New Zealand finally rears its head?

Up to now I have to say that we’ve been perfectly happy in our cozy rented cottage. I might have told you already, but we have pretty much the Best Landlords in the World. When people from the Netherlands have written to me asking for advice on their house move to Salem and can I recommend a realtor, I’ve said sheesh, what do I know?

But seeing that house, wanting it badly, and going through all of the emotions of the would-be home-buyer has really put a bee in my bonnet.

And so, after many discussions, it’s on. We’ve let our landlords know (it was harder on me than them, they are used to these things; I am not used to liking my landlord).

We have a realtor. I’m playing around with those interactive real estate maps.

As you can imagine, I’ve got a hole in my stomach the size of a small house.

There he is on the counter searching for food, lifting one hundred times his own body weight in – what?

Cupcake crumbs? Dried juice? Spilled honey? Maybe I left a few granules of sugar on the counter after serving guests coffee one evening and forgot to wipe down the surface.

But there he is.

Surely, we all can identify with a tiny ant going about his business, one working, walking stiff just trying to find his way.

I don’t always know what it is that I’ve neglected in the kitchen the night before, but I can tell you there is nothing heroic about waking up to an army of ants moving in a silent mirage like a Salvador Dali painting come alive. In fact, the word that springs to mind is always “teeming.”

And that’s when my skin begins to itch and I become an angel of the ant apocalypse, raining vengeance on them with a spray bottle of Clorox Green Clean. I leave them in a mass grave, crumpled, wet and destroyed.

My brother-in-law Jeff says the ants that share our kitchen here in Salem are similar to the “hormigas locas,” or “crazy ants,” that live in Panama. Crazy ants are travelers foraging far from their nests – our guess is that ours actually live under our herb garden about seven feet from the outside wall of our kitchen.  These crazies are highly adaptable and prefer moist environments. The more I learn about them, the more I have started to consider them just part of the fabric of living here in Salem.

But the word on the street (okay, on NPR) is that these swarms are becoming increasingly more common across the United States.

The other, infinitely more troubling characteristic of these buggers is that they move in what entomologists would call a highly erratic fashion. At the moment you discover them, they scramble, exploding like fireworks in every direction.

In Panama, Jeff found, the way to cure the crazy was to accept a life lived in balance with the ants, which is the only real solution when your house is basically an unsealed wooden shack and your Peace Corps stints lasts only two years. But we live in a 1910s cottage in Northeast Salem, near the State Hospital, and we didn’t sign up to live in a group home.

So naturally we’ve done what everyone else has done – buying plastic white ant hotels, dribbling boric acid at the baseline of all the cabinets and at the all of the edges of our house.  These are temporary solutions that fail when these tiny travelers revisit, or as I often imagine, get smart.

Pesticides can only offer a short-term relief –real peace of mind comes from scrubbing down your surfaces and evolving into your own Mini-maid. This is no small task for someone like me, who once thought that doing the dishes after dinner spoiled the meal.

These ants have brought out the best in me.  Ant season may only come for part of the year, but now, I’m like a woman on fire who has her settings set to “hospital-grade clean.” It’s so sparkling in here that no one is eating off of our floor.

I still come across the occasional ant scouting for food. But he’d be crazy to stop here.

I had to giggle a bit a while back when I got lumped into Salem’s new creative class, but that got me thinking. An influx of new creative folks into Salem’s affordable, sometimes charming, often grubby Northeast city section? Is there any legitimacy to that?

There is!

I’ve always held that stuff happens in Salem — it’s just laughlingly under-the-radar. Well… something is definitely afoot in the Northeast Salem neighborhoods.

All it took was one party at my friend the poet’s house (also in NE Salem) to determine that there are a lot of us small-housers out here milking the city for its historic properties and living large on a tiny footprint. In addition to me, my sculptor of a husband and my baby Dash, a.k.a. The Next Alexander Calder, we have:

Michael Chasar, a Poet with an Penchant for Pop

Stephanie Lenox, editor of Blood Orange Review, a well-received online literary mag

William Bragg, photographer - or you might know him as a champion for the underpriveleged

Jonathan Bucci, multimedia artist, and his writer wife, Rachel Bucci

Any more you can think of? Whom have I forgotten? Whom haven’t I met yet?

As far as I know, all of the people listed here have been in Salem for five years or less. Yay for new blood — and for E.B. White quotes that can lend themselves to cities other than New York.

I’ve often wished that everyone I know in Salem could meet my neighbors, Keith and Sarah Chilcote. They have introduced us to some of the secret sides of the city (he’s my pick-your-own pinot hookup) and have overwhelmed us with their generosity and good natures.

Well, now you can! Salem Monthly just did a little story on them and their business, American Antique Hardware.

Keith is one of the most loquacious people I have ever known. I am consistently amazed that he can manage a dozen properties, run a business and be father to three darling children when he can barely remove himself from a good conversation. Adam and I both have dad crushes on him.

Sarah is a fabulous mom who has found a way to work from home and raise her kids there — a goal I’m striving for myself. All new parents need role models, and we seem to be surrounded by them.

They have built this mini-Eden in the middle of Northeast Salem, a secret city alcove the is all but overflowing with pears and apples and blueberries and plums in the summer.

Oh, and they sell awesome antique hardware at decent prices. Eat it, Hippo Hardware!

By the way, if you are one of the 2.3 people out there who are wondering why there is no Desperately Seeking Salem column in the January issue of Salem Monthly, I’ll enlighten you.

I totally dropped the ball!

Well, kind of. I’m generally gestating these pieces until about the 23rd of the month, when I write them out in a spontaneous burst of literary activity that lasts about an hour. I was working on such a piece when I went into labor.

Thankfully my editor gave me a reprieve for January. Thanks, Eric!

So sorry to my readers: grandma, Jan and my cat De Kooning. I’ll be back in business next month.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Now it’s the New Year, with a new family member, new aches and pains, and I’ve got new ideas of what counts as “getting sleep.”

I will spare you all the really gory details of the birth of our first son, a whopping 9 lbs. 3 oz., 21 inches, who arrived December 26 at 5:30 p.m. at Silverton Hospital after I was in labor for three days (I blame that Dungeness crab dish at La Capitale, which I ate over lunch on the 23rd…).

By the way, if it’s not “progressing” apace,  it’s not true labor.

Uh huh. Well, I was sure in crabwalk labor for a long time — it never let up.

So yeah. I’m exhausted.

But let me tell you something. As he was flying in the air from my doctor’s hands to my belly, the only thing in my head was that I could do it again.

And I probably will.

Just not this week. Or this month. Or this year.

Say hi to the world, James Dashiell Diesburg!