Apparently, life is hard in the big cities on the East Coast. It's snowing all the time, nobody owns a unicycle and they don't even get to eat free range chicken.

Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal published a story/op-ed about seasonal affective disorder in goats called, "Oh, No, It's Snowing! What's Poor Portland to Do?" and joined in the time-tested pastime of mocking Portland in East Coast papers.

We get it. We have great food and available parking and people are nice to each other and care about the environment. It's horrifying.

The article, which hits all the points, from the unipiper to "a food truck providing paleo-centric, organic and locally sourced dishes," is mainly just a series of Portland jokes that "Portlandia" already did better, mixed in with the tiniest bit of science.

As you probably know if you live here, from Dec. 8 to last week, it was cold in Portland. Colder than usual. And we got a lot of snow. We had the biggest snowstorm Portland had seen in 20 years. And then the whole thing iced over and nobody could get anywhere for a week.

Yep, the city could have done a better job preparing for that snow and then dealing with it when it got here. But do we really need The Wall Street Journal gloating about our response? Don't they have something better to do?

Look, we who live in Portland and Oregon know it isn't the perfect utopia we sometimes like to pretend it is. We've got issues. Issues bigger than a week of icy roads (see: racism).

But this article really points to a bigger issue: envy and homesickness. A quick look at the authors' biographies reveals a dark truth: one of them is an Oregonian.

UPDATE: we've received reader correspondence describing us as "uptight Yankees." For the record, I'm the Yank, @Ryan_Knutson is an Oregonian — Sara Germano (@germanotes) January 23, 2017

Let me direct the rest of this article to one Ryan Knutson, "Oregon native covering telecom for The Wall Street Journal in New York. Pronounced ka-newt-son," co-author of "Oh, No, It's Snowing! What's Poor Portland to Do?"

Ryan, buddy, come home. I get it. It is "so cool" to live in New York and you're "living your dreams." I've been there. We've all been there. But you're tired. You're tired of rats eating pigeons eating pizza in the subway and circling the block for hours looking for a parking spot and having to stay up super late to prove how hip you are. You want to wear colors again. You want to see mountains again. You want to gain a few pounds without worrying you'll lose your job. Somewhere, in your heart, you kinda want to try goat yoga.

Ryan, you can come home at any time. Just, maybe wait until spring, if you're planning on bringing a moving van. We've been having some road issues this winter.

-- Lizzy Acker

503-221-8052

lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker