A Blogger I’ve Read for Years: Jessamyn West
Khaju Bridge, Isfahan by Hamed Saber
Abada Abada is the blog of Jessamyn West. I started reading her nine years ago. I loved how she had arranged her life to live on each US coast for six months each. And, if I remember correctly, she did it on about $25,000.00 per year. In Vermont, she owned the place and I think she rented in Seattle.
Her current post is “planes, trains, subways, buses and automobiles” recounts her adventures over the last few weeks. As she writes:
“The next trip was more of a fun one. Went down to MA to see Jim over the weekend and spent a night at my sister’s place because I was still feeling sort of oogy and I didn’t want Jim’s whole household to get sick [turns out they were already sick, yay seasonal allergies!] and then I met friends in Newton and we went to Western MA to go to The Big E. This all worked out by means of a nutty combination of getting rides, regional busses, trains, subways, city busses, more rides and the culminating experience, getting on Amtrak a few miles from the Big E, sitting around typing for a few hours and then getting off the train and walking just a few blocks to my house.”
“I’ve known that Amtrak stopped in Randolph — twice a day, once up and once back — but I’ve rarely had a reason to want to take it. There was really something neat about having the big train stop right in the center of town at about nine pm, let me, and only me, off, and then go chugging off into the distance as I walked up the hill to go home with my backpack.”
Q. Do you have a job?
A. “I work at the Randolph Technical Career Center as a community technology lady in Central Vermont and I also moderate the website MetaFilter.com.”
You own that house & barn outright, how does that work?
A. “Well, a friend of mine was selling it because he had met and married a Norwegian woman who was now pregnant and wanted to go home to Norway to have her baby. I got a bit of a deal on the house. I also got a loan from my dad, who chipped in about 40% of the purchase price. The rest was money I’d saved including some from my Grandmother intended for just this type of purchase. I started investing the money I made back in 1992 or so, which was a pretty good time to get into the mutual fund market.”
So what’s the answer to the world’s problems?
A. “I have no idea. For my personal life, I’ve started small. I try to tell the truth, to lead an ethical life and live low on the food chain, buying very little and trying to shop responsibly when I have to shop. I try to entertain myself easily, visit as many of my friends as possible, travel frequently and never ever say I’m bored. Talking about politics, particularly interpersonal politics and dynamics is very interesting to me. I think the more we are prepared to back up our beliefs, the more we reflect on them and inspect them for flaws.”
Included on her site is an interview of her done by Alex Hanson entitled “Everybody’s Interesting”.
