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The Nazareth Syndrome I come from a small rural Missouri town, the kind that's so small your neighbors know your business before you do. My little hometown is sleepy and quiet and, according to a few of the most polite New Yorkers, "backward." But it is also simple and friendly and safe. When I came to New York to attend graduate school at RPI, Troy seemed to me imposingly urban and "big city sophisticated," with stereotypical big-city problems. (My mother helped me move; she cried when she left to fly back to Missouri.) Whenever I heard people complain about how "small" Troy was, I laughed out loud. I remained a country girl at heart, lonesome for the long Missouri summers and the smell of hay comin' in the car windows-every day, on my "commute" to work (although nobody "commutes" back home; people just drive). I never thought I would consider Troy my home. Now, though, after less than a year, I'm settled downtown in South Troy, in an old "working class" neighborhood, the kind of place I never in a hundred years would have chosen to live. When I saw it, it reminded me of East St. Louis (and folks, that's sad). I shook my head and thought, "If Mom could see this place I'm movin' to, she'd lay down an' kick it out." But I've never had an apartment where I felt more at home. My apartment has been a home for a long, long time (maybe longer than East St. Louis). My place isn't a sterile box in some "development" of three hundred and eighty-four identical boxes. It's a home. It has a presence, a character, almost an individual "self" that's unique and healthy. Yeah, sure, it's old. I've rented many apartments (too many, now that I mention it) with all the "modern conveniences." But I couldn't live in those places; I was never at home in any of them. And as I "commute" to work these days from downtown, I feel at home in Troy, too. There's something I love about Troy, but like all real love, it's mystical and miraculous; I can't easily find logical reasons to explain it. I just love Troy. Troy is home now. So I'm writing about what I call the "Nazareth Syndrome." One of my favorite Sunday School stories is the one where a couple of the disciples, Andrew and Simon, have just met Jesus. They're impressed, so they hurry off to find their friend Nathaniel and give him the news. Nathaniel is taking the shade, standing under a tree when they see him; it's another boring hot day in Galilee. The guys rush up to him and say something like, "Nathaniel, Nathaniel! We've just met the Messiah! He's from Nazareth," and Nathaniel replies along these lines: "You've got to be kidding! Could anything good ever come out of Nazareth?" Well, now, both my home towns remind me a lot of Nazareth. Martha Marshall, Troy In cooperation with Troy United Ink Corp., a not-for-profit corporation 
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