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Opinion

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Opinion | Jennifer Graham

The anchored American townie

By Jennifer Graham

 |   

  May 07, 2012

Like “wicked,” “townie” is New England slang, our way of describing someone who never leaves the ’hood, who thinks you’re just passing through if your family hasn’t lived here for five generations, preferably on the same tract of land. We are all townies now. No distant land need worry about how to keep illegal Americans out; the Census Bureau reports we’re not even motivated to leave our own counties. It’s a curious and vaguely troubling bit of atrophy in a nation built by bold immigrants.

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