BaltimOregon to Maine

The Benton County Courthouse in downtown Corvallis: the oldest still-active one in Oregon.

Crazy. For the second year in a row, Corvallis has been ranked the safest place to live by Farmers Insurance Group. “Corvallis isn’t the real world,” my Bostonian friend Dorothea likes to say.

Now you see why we’re having such culture shock coming here from Baltimore, one of the deadliest American cities. And yet I still ache for the place.