6,455

I'm originally from Menahga, MN, a sleepy hamlet in west central Minnesota boasting over 1,300 residents.  Well, six over.  There you (hopefully) graduate high school with the 47 same kids who were in your kindergarden class - under the same roof. If you are familiar with Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon or Rose Nylund's St. Olaf, you are familiar with Menahga.

Menahga's wikipedia page lists a few "notable" Menagha-ites, including Kaiser Permanente's CEO George Halvorson.  I just learned this today, though I vaguely recall my grandma telling me that one of the Halversons got a fancy new job.  Do you know how big of a deal that is?  They're a $42 billion healthcare organization.  How there isn't some building named after him in town is beyond me.  Can someone please ask him for some money to fund enrichment programs in the high school? Will I ever be deemed a notable once-resident?

Menahga is home to a glorious statue of St. Urho (pictured, below), the patron saint of Finish vineyard workers.  

There will be a whole 'nother blog post about Saint Paul, where I have lived for over 10 years, but for now let's just skip to NYC.

I remember thinking about how big the world must be but getting the sense that I was only seeing such a small part of it.  Much of this came from pouring over my Hammond Atlas copyright MCMXCII - a red sticker proudly proclaiming "With Unified Germany."  I remember looking at New York (whose state bird is the Bluebird and agricultural economy was primarily dairy-based) and knowing that there were a lot of people but not really able to understand just how many and how jam packed they were into that tiny space vaguely shaded "urban area."  Revisiting these well worn pages (NY may have the only torn page in the book) takes me back to that sense of wonder I had, something my pending move has rekindled.  I am excited about life.  I had always wanted to live in America's largest city, and now I'm doing it.

New York is, well, different than Menahga.  It's bigger (8,391,881 residents).  There's a few more Thai restaurants to chose from.  There are actual Thai people living there.  My new city is 6,455 more populous than my hometown.  Is it really possible to discern that magnitude?  Can someone really compare two things and say, "Yep, that's comfortably 6,000 times bigger" with confidence? 

New York also has an important statue that I look forward to seeing in person soon.