Omnivore - An open letter to Kim Severson
A welcome to the South, of sorts.
Dear Kim,
I detect in your recent demeanor, which I admit I only have access to through your Twitter feed, a certain melancholy. Not a downright sadness, but a mixture of homesickness and confusion, a kind of bewilderment about ending up here in Atlanta and what you ought to do with your newfound life. In fact, your oft-used hashtag, #mynewlife, is employed most frequently alongside tweets that exhibit ambivalence about this town, this region. On Saturday morning, an almost woeful tweet showed up in your feed: “Gotta get back to NYC soon for a food romp. Dyin’ down here! #dontknowwhatyouvegottilitsgone”
To many Atlantans and Southerners, that tweet seemed a little harsh — not the longing for NYC, but the “Dyin’ down here!” line, which sounded a whole lot like you were saying that there’s nothing worth eating “down here.” I know it might not be how you meant it. But that’s how it sounded.
I’ll get to that part a little later, but first I wanted to share a bit. To commiserate. Because I, too, am an ex-New Yorker who left to come to the South. And I had very hard time with the change. In fact, for years I vowed to go back to New York at my first chance.
But not anymore.