My neighbors, just considering the block in which I live, are Filipino, Irish, Cambodian, Dutch, German, English, and Polish immigrants. They are the children and grandchildren of Italian, Irish, Salvadoran, Iraqi, and Swedish immigrants. Some are mutts like me—I’m Swiss, Irish, German, French, Scots-Irish, and Swabian going back four or five generations or more in the United States. They are black, yellow, brown, and white. They are homosexual, heterosexual, married with children, and married without children. They are Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, (and if you expand the area we’re considering by one block) Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews.
I love my neighbors. I love my neighborhood. We help each other. We look out for each other.
I’m not sure where you are going with this. But I do know that when we lived in the city proper one of the things we liked was this diversity. Over the course of time I/we lived in the N Loop, Streeterville, Boys Town, er, New Town, the Gold Coast, Up Town, what is now called River North…….how did we miss Old Town??
It was an article of faith between me and my wife that after our daughter was raised (and successfully matriculated into Northwestern) that we would move back to the city. And Dave, your descriptions of Sauganash have not been un-noticed. But the city and the state are in such a mess……..
Last week I spent 5 days at Sea Island. We’ve added that to AZ and Naples on the retirement map…..
Drew
Where is Sea Island?
Yeah, diversity is always good.
My neighbors are African-American, Haitian, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, various other islanders and even occasionally European-Americans. There are also lots of pit bulls. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any openly gay people, as the gangs would beat the living shit out of them, as in beat them to death. There are married people with children, unmarried people with children, and I imagine there must be unmarried and married people without children too.
We’ve got drug dealers and thieves and home invaders. A Third World dictator even came here to find someone to run one of his domestic terror outfits. And once we had a former head of the Haitian secret police living here. Honest working people too, when they can find work, plus some people that work in ministries. One family living in the old home of some friends I grew up with run a food bank. I haven’t checked in a couple of years, but I’m sure we still have the rapists and child molesters living all around us. This is the kind of place they end up in when they get run out of decent neighborhoods. (Or at least they say they live here.)
We’ve got lots of empty houses. The kind that end up being used for house-parties where people get shot or stabbed. (Recent local stories that I’m not going to bother linking to.)
I hate my neighborhood. This is were people feast on their neighbors. Ain’t diversity grand?
jan –
GA, just north of Jekyll Island (sp?). (75 minutes N of JAX) Our accounting firm sponsors a professional golf tournament there. A wonderful charity event. Great place, as I learned. And a great opportunity to mingle with small business owners and see what’s on their minds.
Don’t know what the vacation interests of you and the hubby are, but you could do worse. If you can, stay at the Cloisters.
Icepick –
I don’t want to get into another of these useless rants with you. But you seem so, so unhappy. And you are young. Even though this is just cyber-space, its hard to watch. Have you ever given consideration to the “grand change” and pulling up stakes and moving to……..I don’t know, N Dakota??
Life is too short for wasting and wallowing in self pity. You need a change of venue, man. Do something.
jan — sea island is sort of the opposite of what Dave just described. 😉
Have you ever given consideration to the “grand change†and pulling up stakes and moving to……..I don’t know, N Dakota??
With what? When I get there I am supposed to do what? Until then I live on what? What-what-what?
And not that young. Not at all.
It’s definitely the opposite of what Icepick was talking about!
What state do you live in. Icepick?
BTW, thanks Drew for the reply. I’ve rarely been to the east coast (left side of the country all my life), and don’t have the patience for golf. My father-in-law, though, was quite good at the game, belonging to a group of men calling themselves “The Greek Army.” Yes, they were all Greek men.
I love the name, though, of ‘Sea Island,’ as it sounds and looks so visually serene.
Icepick –
Stop it. Stop with the negatives. Take control of your life. I can’t tell you what that is. You tell us you have skills and merits. So go use them. Figure it out. No one will do it for you. Get really, really mad in a productive sense, not at me. So shut the f up, and GO DO SOMETHING productive!
Intuitively, something tells me that you have what it takes: the fire. Without the fire you have nothing. Its just intellectual mush. With you, its the attitude that needs fixing, not the skill set or the desire.
What state do you live in. Icepick?
Florida.
Drew, you want me to put on a happy face, but that doesn’t change where I’m living. And what I described above is pretty much spot on. I know because I’m living it. It’s real easy to be cheery about things when you get to decide where and how to live. I lost those options a while back. No platitudes change that.
And for the record, I claim no worth. The free markets have decided that my worth is zero, and that’s all I claim too, now.
And how do the atheists and freethinkers fare? Would any of your neighbors vote for one for public office?
Goodbye, Icepick. Forever. But I do wish you the best and hope with all my head and heart that you successfully find your way.
jan –
I might have missed something. Thought you were Wash DC oriented these days. Sea Island would be a hop skip and a jump.
Would be very interested to undestand any views on W Coast……and I consider Scottsdale AZ West.
Have you lived in the south, Drew? Even on the GA islands it can be hot and humid in the summer. Good for your complexion, but not necessarily breathing. Then there are tropical storms and hurricanes on occasion. Keep a bedroom inland.
I’m living in Tiburon, CA. My neighbors are my landlord, who has a company that makes after-market parts for Porsches. And on the other side people I think may be from the middle east, but I don’t really know. I don’t think they like us. Possibly because they have little kids and my entire family curses like longshoremen.
Tiburon is a mix of white and whiter, with a small number of albinos. It’s about as blond as Sweden. Everyone is thin. Everyone has matched pairs of perfect purebred dogs and equally purebred kids. Our dogs are a senile, one-eyed pug and a mean chihuahua/papillon mix with a funky leg. Our kids are white/Jew/geek and Asian/jock respectively.
People here wear sweaters tied around their shoulders and are so old they’re actually in my demo. Everyone has at least one German car (including me.) Everyone owns a bike. (Not me.) There’s a market with perfect fruit at double normal prices and seven — I counted — types of prune.
There are deer.
Unlike Dave, I never fit in anywhere I live, and I kind of like it that way. 11 states, a couple of foreign countries, something like 50 homes, everything from freeway overpass to piss-reeking dump to trailer on the bayou to garden apartment to villa in Tuscany to Tiburon, Land of Middle-Aged White People.
A note on what my view reveals: I watch the ships going through the Golden Gate, to and from Oakland. It’s not scientific, but the ships are heavy-laden and riding low on their way in, lighter and higher on their way out.
On the matter of Icepick. Drew: it’s not just about fire or ability. It’s also luck. Sometimes life just f–ks with you. Or sometimes it f–ks with you for a while, then lets up. Or the reverse. Life is DNA, environment, free will and random chance, inseparable, interdependent.
A guy I know, a company I’m doing business with, and this guy is the only one who just really has his act together. He goes in for some routine spinal surgery. Off to the hospital, then back to work. Then he has complications and his brain is slipping down. So off to the hospital again, then back to work. Today I find out he’s got spinal meningitis.
I’m not sitting here in Tiburon watching the ships go by because I’m virtuous or harder working than any number of other people. I drew some good cards in the DNA deal, and so far I’ve had some luck. That could change tomorrow.
The other day I was in a 5 car accident on the freeway. 20 miles an hour more and I’d have probably gone to the hospital. 30 miles more and two cars back and and it might be the morgue.
Right now there are cancer cells growing in your body. Most likely your immune system gets them. Then again, maybe not. Or you might become depressed and have a real hard time finding the fire.
If you don’t know that life can rear up all of a sudden and bite you in the ass you’re likely to be very surprised some day.
11I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. 12For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.
Drew
Washington DC would not be my cup of tea.
You must like the heat to be considering Arizona, as it can really register some high numbers. Nevertheless, outside of Flagstaff, there is some pretty country.
CA, though, is such an interesting state (to me). There are so many variations, up and down the coastal areas. Warmer climates and a more cosmopolitan lifestyle is found in the Southern part. I live (part time) in a coastal city next to Los Angeles. LA is an amazing, complex city. Although, I rarely go down to the civic center, when I do it’s like I’m a tourist, and just love walking around the central district, the theaters, museums, hotels.
120 miles North of San Francisco, on the Sonoma coast, is where we spend the other part of our time. I can’t even begin to describe how beautiful the area is. If you are thinking about a retirement place, there is a place called The Sea Ranch, which is an environmentally oriented community right on the coast. It was a planned developement on an old sheep ranch, running for a ten mile stretch. There are homes right on the ocean bluffs, and other ones, on the east side of the highway near the timberline. It’s a prestine area, very natural and rural. And….it even has it’s own golf course and outdoor swimming pools. It would definitely be worth your time to check out, if nothing else than having a memorable vacation.
“I’m Swiss, Irish, German, French, Scots-Irish, and Swabian ”
I’m curious that you counted Swabian decent separately from German ancestry, given that Swabia is part of Germany.
It wasn’t when my ancestors emigrated. At that time there was no Germany. My German ancestors were from Rheinland-Pfalz and they called themselves “German”. My Swabian ancestors said they were from Bohemia and called themselves “Swabians”.
@MR
Ah, but such an insight would require a wholesale rethinking of the libertarian project, certainly as regards its moral categories. If luck and contingency are a large part, if not the largest part, of our life’s story, then the libertarian claims of accountability and desert lose their inevitability. I’d imagine that’s an uncomfortable conceptual space to occupy for some. The Greeks had a firm idea about this, they called it tuche: the fragility of human endeavor in the midst of unconscious power. And the Greeks invented tragedy as an art form. We are very far removed from that sensibility. Very far.
sam:
Just one of the reasons I wish philosophy were taught in schools.
Janis –
I have a place in Naples. Because the in-laws and such are there. No choice so far I HATE humidity. I grew up in Indianapolis. Have always hated the humidity. So………I like the desert, even though its godawful hot June through September. But that’s why god made Northern Michigan…….
“On the matter of Icepick. Drew: it’s not just about fire or ability. It’s also luck. Sometimes life just f–ks with you.”
I know, Michael. I’ve had some breaks. I’ve had some setbacks. Business and personal. You know my cholesterol makes your numbers look like Hercules. But I also know, perhaps from a lifetime of playing competitive sports, that the harder I practice, the harder I work, the more I persevere, the “luckier” I get.
Since the gut-spilling has started……my wife and I built our first custom house years ago. Number one son done good. We invited my parents up to see it. As they left Indianapolis they hit black ice crossed the highway and head on’d a semi, killing my father.
I don’t need reminders that life isn’t fair, predictable or that shit happens.
PS –
Sorry to hear about the accident. Assume you are well.
Drew:
Fair enough. And it sucks about your dad.
The accident was no biggie. 5 cars but I was car number five, way up at the front, just a little fender damage. (You know, just enough for me to eat most of it on my deductible.) Car number 2 was a police officer who was knocked unconscious, but I gather he was okay later. Kind of felt sorry for the kid who smacked the cop and caused the chain reaction. On my personal list of things to avoid doing is rear-ending a cop.
“Fair enough. And it sucks about your dad.”
Yeah. Two trips to Spain with him where alot of childhood baggage was unloaded. And then, tragedy.
But you know me. Give no quarter, beg no quarter. That’s why I think Keith Richards had the best title for his book; one word: “Life”.
‘Cause that’s what it is, baby. It is what it is.
Drew, saw your remark about liking the desert. So, it would seem that Arizona would be potentially a good habitat for you and your wife to consider for retirement.
No matter how a person, though, tries to plan for their ‘life,’ sometimes things are just out of their control. What a shock that must of been for you in how your dad died. When a parent has an illness, and passes because of that, there is more time to absorb them being gone. But, sudden deaths, are another thing, entirely.
In my early twenties my Mom and Dad went on a much anticipated honeymoon, a cruise to Europe, they had never been able to afford when they first got married. Dad had a sudden heart attack and died instantly, off the coast of Brest, France. It was surreal to see him off on that trip, so healthy and vibrant, only to return in a box that rattled with his remains. Anyway, that changed my perspective on any guarantees you might expect from life.
jan –
I guess we can’t turn this into a mutual crying towel society, but I hear you loud and clear. I’ve often mused/chuckled at the notion that somehow I’ve lived a charmed life. This is a favorite meme of the left: you have known no adversity, so you don’t “care.”
Pure crap.