How do you Rank?

Is it just me, or does it seem like every two days there is someone coming out with "Best Places in America to Live" or "Worst Traffic Commutes in America" list? Add in the occasional "Best Colleges in America", "Best Cities to Work In", yada, yada, yada, and it could really make you feel pretty good or pretty crappy about where you live, work or went to school. My thought to all of this is this: Forget these surveys! Be content with your current community or work commute.

This is kind of running joke between me and my sister-in-law who lives in upstate NY. We have often joked about who lives in the better community and I have even on occasion taken one of these surveys and used it to my advantage! Did you know my community ranks #3 in the U.S. for playground equipment? Take that Fairport, NY! Your kids are never going to amount to anything!(Just kidding...I think they are # 2 in Nuclear Physicist Graduates) The reality is, these are all quite subjective and I would venture to say that when a list comes out with the greatest places we expect our town's to be on it. We look in disbelief to find out we didn't make the "Prettiest Landscaped Towns" list. We also look with fear that we may be on the "Worst Sewer Smelling Cities in the U.S." list.

I wonder if you were able to take the data from all of the "lists" if you would really find Utopia. I actually think that Utopia exists in many areas of the U.S. Most of us care about our communities and are happy to be a part of them. We all have many things to be proud of in our towns. So let's stop reading the "Best of...", "Worst of..." Lists!

This did get me to thinking though, about the "Best Agricultural Publications in America" list and guess who is # 1 on that one?!