Many years ago there was a book by Kirkpatrick Sale called Human Scale that discussed the ideal size for cities. As a city grows, it becomes an economic hub and provides job opportunities. The new wealth is channeled into investment in infrastructure and education. Above a certain size the town may support the arts, maybe a college and professional sports teams.

But beyond that sweet spot you start seeing more crime and homelessness. Schools and highways are overcrowded because the town has outgrown its infrastructure. The more spread out a city is, the more costly to build enough infrastructure. Things enter a negative cycle where taxes go up, quality of life declines, young people move away or lose hope.

His analysis led him to say the maximum size for a healthy city was something like 100-200,000 if I remember correctly. I’ve lived in cities ranging from under 20,000 to a couple of million, and based on my experience, a college town of somewhere between 15,000 to 150,000 is where I found the best overall quality of life. Bonus points if it’s also the county seat and has the regional medical center, as along with the college those create good middle class jobs and a less narrow-minded population.

These towns exist everywhere but they’re not going to have the same entertainment or cultural resources of a city of a million, and the residents of larger cities will call them boring. But we’re talking about where you want to live, not where you want to go for a weekend getaway. Someplace with less crime and cleaner air.

The only risk with these smaller towns is if their major employer goes under. Then they’re going to necessarily need to find new ways to make money and will go through a bad spell until they do.

So if you’re looking at college towns that are regional medical centers and county seats, make sure they’re on the way back up after reinventing themselves and have a lively feel and optimism about them. It’s a lot of online research, but time well spent on the front end.

If your family - or anyone - is warm, respectful, supportive and friendly towards you, you owe them at least common courtesy, and hopefully by responding in kind the bonds of affection will grow.

If they’re manipulative, talking about you behind your back, laying on guilt or making unreasonable demands you do NOT owe it to them - even family, even a spouse - to be a victim.

You deserve to be treated respectfully simply because you’re a human being. As a family member one would hope that you’d be treated with more than the baseline level of compassion. If they’re not capable of that, you have no obligation to do anything more than what you want or are willing to do.