Happy New Year!

I am back in New Haven after an almost two-week sojourn back in Pennsylvania, our hometown of York. I am glad that I do not live there anymore. I feel it is so backward looking and parochial which I have always said about the place, but it seems so much more pronounced when I visit. That should not be a bad thing. I am really hung up on all the baggage that accompanies a place. I really miss the old homestead, not so much physically as emotionally. It is just a house, but holds countless memories. We lived there 25 years and that is a long time in the scheme of things. We raised two children, two dogs, had lots of parties, the highlight being the annual Memorial Day pancake breakfast including cookouts, games of badminton and ping pong on the driveway. The people who bought the house have not changed anything outside. I am sure the inside is different - it has to be since it reflected our taste and not there taste. I miss the garden, vegetable, herb and flower. How fun it was to walk out through the yard and pick some tomatoes, warm from the sun, or fresh herbs to include in a recipe. I miss our dark purple butterfly bush, which really does attract butterflies and our 24-year old Christmas tree. Our first Christmas in the house ('83) we bought a live tree, but did not get to plant it until a February thaw. I was convinced I had killed it - but low and behold, that spring it sprouted new shoots and is now taller than the house. So... I miss the house, but I miss more what it represents, wonderful memories that are clouded by growing old, unmet expectations and feelings of betrayal.

I connected with an old college friend who lives in DC. For several years now, we have been meeting at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore for an annual visit. The art is incredible and it does, I think, what art is supposed to do when you see it hanging on a wall or otherwise appropriately displayed. I feel very happy when I leave. It is a great space, but the art is so inspiring in that it represents what people who I think are generally disaffected and disenfranchised from a society and culture are truly capable of accomplishing. There thoughts and emotions are expressed through the art and they are truly saying fuck you to whomever looks at those emotions. And it dwarfs all of those things that Americans, with our consumeristic obsessions, think is the honest and true measure of a person. This is what is important to me and hence is the only thing that matters.

I am not sure what the new year holds for me and the people who are most important to me. It certainly bodes well that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is above 9000, or that in exactly 15 days we will have a new president who seems to understand the gravity of the situation, but then maybe not. It might be business as usual which indeed is a sad thing. I am sure we will see spiking gasoline prices and more calamitous weather events and continuing financial and economic meltdowns and I just read something yesterday on the Truthout website that the US Army War College is predicting increasing amounts of civil unrest in America and that the resources to maintain peace and order are strained because most of the National Guard soldiers are deployed in Afganistan and Iraq. Is not that a fine situation to find ourselves in as the first decade of the 21st century draws to a close. And this all on the backdrop of most of my son's Yale friends galavanting around the world during the semester break - as though it is a birthright. I just don't get it.