We All Live in a Noho Submarine (part 2)

Here are some pictures of The Submarine for your enjoyment. If anything new happens in here, I'll post an update.

Now, I don't want to give the impression that I'm wholly dissatisfied with The Submarine. Quite the contrary: I could very well have ended up in some godforsaken apartment complex in the "suburbs" of Amherst, going slowly mad in a secluded farmhouse, sauteeing tofu in an anarchist coop, or hosting drum circles at my yurt near Hampshire College (there's no shortage of yurts around here, to say nothing of drum circles). So let me begin by enumerating the nice things about where I live.

1) The location. Right on the edge of downtown Northampton, my house is ideally located for a number of reasons. First, of course, the entirety of Northampton can be traversed in about 10 minutes, meaning that I'm never more than a few minutes from the many wonderful restaurants and bars and coffee shops and markets in town. And there are many. Second, although I'm downtown, I'm set off from the street enough that I don't get much street noise. Third, I live next door to Noho's public library, the Forbes, which is not only a lovely old building (I'll take pictures soon) with some fabulous amenities, but also the home of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum. For some reason I got very giddy when I learned of this. Oh, and fourth, downtown Noho is not West Philly - this means I can go out at night without carrying a precautionary can of mace, I don't have to put that silly steering wheel lock on my car anymore, and I can sleep with the door unlocked. It's kinda like living in Canada!

2) My very own designated parking space.

3) The fauna. Okay, so it's just squirrels and chipmunks and the occasional bunny, but man oh man do they LOVE my house. Especially right now: they're always outside my windows nibbling on acorns, burying things, or running around on some urgent errand. I'm especially charmed by the chipmunks, a type of rodent we didn't have where I grew up (I was in my teens, and in Colorado, before I saw my first live 'munk) and which I largely came to know through Disney cartoons, animated TV Christmas specials, and a certain cassette type I acquired in the mid-80s called "Chipmunk Punk", which was memorable primarily for Alvin, Simon, and Theodore's stirring renditions of The Cars' "Let's Go" and Tom Petty's "Refugee" (it was a very long time before I realized these were not, in fact, punk songs). But these little guys out here, while bearing a slight resemblance to their animated cousins, seem to speak primarily in clicks, run around with their tails perpendicular to the ground, and live in holes. Fascinating!

4) Free heat. That's right, I get to weather a New England winter without worrying about - to adopt the standard media phrase - the Spiraling Cost of Home Heating Oil. This is perhaps bad for the planet, but great for me.

5) I have a back yard. I don't go out there much, and it won't be much use here in a few months, but I do have it. And at night it comes alive with all sorts of chirping and whirring things that I can only infer are insects. Or maybe chipmunks.

So that's the good. Next time: the not-so-good.