Looking to move near a tribe

[Mike M]

My family and I are beginning the process of choosing where to move next. We're currently in Oswego, NY and my wife is an CPA. Our boys are 5 and 2. We can move pretty much anywhere in N. America as her job skills will translate into any market. We're thinking right now that we'd look to move in the next year or two.

We're looking at cost of living, taxes, weather, local resources - all the usual stuff - and are also going to include the availability of a local unschooling tribe in our decision.

So, please tell us about your tribe. Where are you, what's cool about your area, how big is the local unschooling tribe, anything else you think would be good for us to know.

We'd like to find an area with a healthy and active unschooling community so your help is very much appreciated.

I've read the threads here about WhiteHawk near us, tell me about your tribe - go ahead, brag a bit....

[laura bowman]

east tennessee (specifically the tri-cities area of johnson city, bristol and kingsport and all the great little places in between) is the best for all the reasons you've mentioned. weather is moderate, we get cold winters but not like up north, we get hot summers but not like down south. i would say it's the most perfect climate anywhere...enough changes each seasons to actually notice and enjoy the seasons. it's the perfect climate to grow food if you're interested in that. there are farmer's markets all over the area as well as several u-pick type places. we're not too far from asheville which is a really cool and funky area. johnson city just got an earthfare! but there are also a couple of small and locally owned natural food stores as well. the downtown area is starting to come back alive after years and years of a slow death. there are festivals and events every month, even in the winter.

as far as an active unschooling community. well, it doesn't get much better than this. we have a homeschooling group that is made up mostly of unschoolers. we get together at least once a week. check out the east tennesse group here and then check out each member's blogs and you'll see. here is the link to our homeschooling group blog: http://sofhers.blogspot.com. there is a link there for our yahoo group as well, so check that out too.

i hope this is some of what you're looking for. oh and i forgot to mention this one very important thing: it is drop dead gorgeous here! the mountains, the trees, the rivers and streams. all the green in the summer. all the color in the fall. and sometimes some amazing snow in the winter (at least once or twice). and don't even get me started on spring...oh my gosh, beautiful!!!

[Jon Gold]

Corvallis, OR is the unschooling center of the universe. We host the Life is Good unschooling conference, there is a large unschooling population here and in Portland, we are a BLUE state with some of the most progressive politics in the country, 8 month growing season, farmers markets galore, mountain, parks, rivers, the Oregon Country Fair every July (started by Ken Kesey and kinda like Burning Man but without the searing desert heat), art fairs, huge artist population, proximity to the Zenmomma herself (hostess of the Life is Good Conference) who is almost as colorful as - though not as famous as - The Ren Allen.

We have no sales tax, which might or might not make an accountant's life a little easier. The weather is incredibly moderate throughout the year. Folks will warn you about the winter rain, but we never go more than 2 days without seeing the sun and average winter temps are in the 40s. Snow is rare, summer sun is abundant averaging 75 to 85 degrees. Housing prices are moderate. As former Long Islanders, we could not be happier with our move here 5 years ago. Corvallis is on Money Magazine's Best Places To Live List. Oh yeah, Corvallis is also home to the world famous Sunnyside Up cafe which is operated by yours truly.

Let us know if you have any questions. Good luck.

[Carla Tucker]

Hi Jon

What are the realities of being an unschooler in Oregon as far as the state laws go? We are spoiled living here in Arizona as they have a very liberal homeschooling law.

Not so much what the rules are as how you meet them as unschoolers.
Carla

[Ren]

I am a huge fan of Eastern TN or Western NC. Asheville is a very cool and funky town with lots of everything, yet not huge. It's about an hour from here. We have a very active unschooling tribe here, to the point of looking at building an intentional community. I post about our activities frequently at my blog:
http://radicalunschooling.blogspot.com

I'm in Jonesborough which is the oldest town in TN. It's very small, so not a lot of job opportunities but we're close to Johnson City. Jonesborough is the home of the National Storytelling Festival. It's very small and quaint. One of my recent blogposts has several photos of downtown ("last of the warmth" or some title like that).

We love the mountains and the rolling farmland. Our goal is to lead a more self-sufficient lifestyle and we feel this is the best area in the country for doing just that. As a bonus, I got a whole slew of very cool unschoolers to share my life with!:)

We are hosting the ARGH gathering here twice per year, so you could always come meet the locals and hang out with us in the spring or fall: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AutodidacticRadicalGatheringofHomesch...

There is also an ARGH group and an Eastern TN group at this site. Oh, and this is one of the most inexpensive places in the entire country to live. Home prices are great (please contact me if you want an unschooling Dad to email you some listings...my dh is a realtor) the car registration is cheap, there is NO income tax, property tax is very low , so all we have is the sales tax. You can avoid a lot of the sales tax by buying used.

Everything Laura said too.:)

[Ren]

Be careful though, there are some vampires here.;)
If you go to my profile right here at RUN, you can see some of the latest pics of my town. It IS drop-dead gorgeous here. I plan to never move again.

[Ren]

It depends on the year, as to how bad the mosquitoes are. I have very few problems with bugs of any kid here though. 'Course I've lived in FL and AK, where the bugs (especially mosquitoes in AK) can be really awful.
I feel like we can just BE outside almost all year without getting eaten up. Depends on where you live in Eastern TN though...if you're surrounded by woods anywhere, you're going to have more bugs.

[Jon Gold]

Hi Carla,

Oregon is fairly liberal as far as unschooling laws go. You do have to register and they do testing at a couple of different levels (I not sure which years the want it for), but the tests are administered by the parents and you don't have to report the results to anyone, so it is kind of a moot point.

We decided to go underground when we moved here 5 years ago and did not bother registering (we are libertarians at heart). We figure it would be easier to deny knowledge of the law and apologize later on. Oops, there went my plausible deniability....

Tell Kevin I said hi,

~j

[Jon Gold]

Yes, Jonesborough is lovely and Asheville is an awesome town, however Jonesborough is, as Ren admits, overrun with vampires. I suggest renting The Lost Boys to get an idea of how bad it is. And vampires are not even the worst part of it--crappy 80s music, god awful fashions, Reagan as president...

[Ren]

80's music Jon??? HA! We go back Waaayyyy further than that. This is BLUEGRASS territory baby! This is where it all started man. Bluegrass/folk HEAVEN. And it's AppalAHcha not AppalAYcha if you're from 'round these parts.;)

If you like storytelling and bluegrass, you'll love it here. Heck, we had Papa Roach, Staind and Seether here last week. We're not exactly a hot bed of current music though. Folks travel down to Asheville or Knoxville for that.

But the Vampires are problematic. No doubt.

[Steve Russell]

Mike, sadly while Boise is a great place to live (mild climate generally but great access to all things outdoors, all seasons), we don't have a tribe per se. Love to have you move here and help engender one with us!! 8^)

Seems like the Corvallis group is the strongest one I'm aware of in the PacNW, although certainly Portland OR, greater Vancouver BC, and Seattle all have strong communities. Have met many of them at Life is Good, as Jon Gold pointed out. It's a beautiful part of the country with beaches, mountains, cities, farmland all in easy access.

We've enjoyed friendships with the San Diego tribe - most of them seem to be from the North SD County area, and that group is hosting its first conference next September (Good Vibrations) plus I've met many of them at Life is Good and at Live and Learn (where probably you did too). San Diego is very kid- and family-friendly.

I've heard positive things about Gainesville GA though I've not been there; seems like a good tribe there by all accounts (maybe someone from there can speak up, or if not perhaps you can scan through the membership and ring one of them up to ask a question if you feel comfortable doing so).

Boston MA - several folks there and as they've had a conference there recently, clearly there's a supportive community. Great town too, like the Portland area a nice mix of urban/rural/beaches/mountains, plus lots of history.

Albuquerque - also several folks there active in national unschooling activities, and also a nice town with a good mix of activities.

I like Asheville NC too but it's a little close to my in-laws ;-) The community there and in nearby eastern TN is clearly a first-rate group as we saw at Live and Learn.

I like Ithaca NY just fine - lived there for 6 years in fact - but I was a poor starving student who would have been fairly skeptical of the unschooling idea. Less snow than you're used to in Oswego.

Best of luck with everything - I know times are pretty crazy right now and imagine that there are tons of factors in your ultimate decision. And take heart, you never know where you might uncover like-minded people.

Steve

[Mike M]

Ithaca is a nice area, very pretty, two colleges, progressive community, active green-building community, active local unschoolers - it's actually about an hour south of where we are now and we go down and plug in periodically.

My wife and I are both from this area, and our families are all less than two hours away. We're both life-long New Yorkers. Getting further from family as we integrate more fully into whole-life unschooling would be helpful. They all love us very much, and they've all thought we were a bit weird in how we function as a family for years, now we've just gone around the bend ;-)


Where we are now is a beautiful four-season area. We're in the country, there's lots of lakes, rivers, farmers markets, great children's and science museums, zoos, the arts, college scenes, cool funky small touristy towns, a large and growing wine region, good skiiing, wonderful outdoor activities, great coffee, etc... Syracuse (half an hour) has a good sized homeschooling community, decent amount of unschoolers. Rochester (hour and half) has very active homeschooling community and large group of unschoolers as well. Their both within two hours of Ithaca as well.

Within a couple of hours of here are significant sites from revolutionary times, the first women's rights conferences, the underground railroad, the erie canal that opened the rest of the country to the coastal cities, the birth of mormonism, the Iroquois confederacy from which many of the ideas the founders built into our form of democracy were copied, gorgeous terrain formed by the last ice age, a variety of spiritual groups originated from here, and scads of other history for those into that kind of stuff.

I'd actually recommend this area and like it here (in part because it's all I know). Reading my own description I'm wondering a bit why I'd consider leaving. Here's some reasons.

Taxes are high and probably going up - New York is very dependent on the financial markets for tax dollars with NY city financial firms providing billions in taxes. Our projected deficit with the current financial mess is as high as 60+ billion dollars next year alone. Property, sales, gas and other taxes are high as well. State government has been dysfunctional for decades, it's known locally as the 'three men in a room' government as that's who actually makes most of the decisions. Local governments are many, overlapping, expensive and very territorial.

Homeschooling paperwork includes annual plans of study, quarterly reports to the local school district and bi-annual mandatory testing after 4th grade. Not really onerous or homeschooling-unfriendly (depending on the cooperation at the local district level), but not doing that much paperwork would be a plus.

So, we're considering moving for work/career reasons and want to consider the larger picture. We are lucky to have the freedom to consider other areas and are looking at what's the best fit for all our needs, financial, social, cultural, unschooling-wise, climate, etc. It may be that we stay in NY, but we don't want to rule other places out this early in the process.

Thanks for all your replies, it feels very supportive.

[jill]

we are in a similar situation right now. we can pretty much live where ever we want, but its alot harder than it sounds! we just moved from boulder colorado to northern new hampshire because we knew we wanted to be in the northeast. mostly bc of climate and also family here. so we're renting and trying to figure out where to move permantly (hopefully).

we want to be pretty rural (we want to be able to afford a few acres) but be close to a larger city. and of course we want to be near other unschoolers.

southern nh has an active unschooling group, im not sure how spread out people are. theres lots of small cities around and then theres boston not far too. i love the idea of portland me (ocean) too but there doesnt seem to be many radical unschoolers. maybe we should just move to corvalis! :)

i would LOVE to get an intentional community together. not really like cohousing just like a regular neighborhood but full of unschoolers.
i have no clue where to start though. wouldnt it be awsome to just walk out your front door to hang out with others living this life?!
this is a great thread, id love to hear from more people in the neast.
jill