Where am I? Does it matter?

I was transferred by my company at the beginning of 2008 and had to sell my house and move from the shoreline in western CT to upstate NY.... Needless to say, it took forever to "sell" my house. I put the word sell in quotation marks because I actually ended up having to give the buyers $5000 to take my house (and all the equity I had in it) from me. So strictly speaking, I bought a buyer of my house.

Add that to the apartment I had to rent in Syracuse for the 8 months while I was trying to sell my house; the weekly commute back and forth from Syracuse during the summer of 08 when, as you will recall, the price of gas spiked to $4.30 a gallon. It was like the Gods got together and agreed I should not have any money - just debt. Consider their mission accomplished.

But I digress.

So here I am in Syracuse NY. It's a small city that has it's charms to recommend it - but it is not necessarily where I would like to be. It's flat - no mountains and no seashore. It is a city unto itself. An island between farms and lakes. If you want to go to a different city, you have to drive nearly 2 hours to get to another decent size town.

I don't hate it or anything, but given a choice, I would not necessarily pick Syracuse out of the many metropolises this country has to offer.

That said - does it matter any more where one lives?

We have the internet now. I have been able to gather many of my friends and acquaintances from my past scattered all over the world and put them together on facebook. I can read their blogs and find out what they are twittering about. This is huge people!!

I can shop online and buy whatever I want from Japan, China, France, Turkey, you name it. And I can view, read and learn about whatever I want to - almost as good as going to libraries and museums, and certainly much cheaper.

I'm not saying the internet has absolved us from the need to travel and see things firsthand, or visit our friends. But boy, it definitely brings the world and friends a lot closer. I honestly don't think I could have stayed where I am for this long without the internet. The question is, how much longer can I last here???

出る釘は打たれる (The Nail that Sticks Out Gets Hammered)

The election of Scott Brown initially had my head spinning - what the heck was MA thinking? I mean, they made Teddy Kennedy a life time Senator - and his life time wish was to have comprehensive healthcare reform... how could they do this to his legacy?

He was not able to live long enough to see his wish carried out or buried, and perhaps that was for the best - it got pretty messy towards the end of the Senate round of initial voting with Dems selling their mothers to ensure they could get the 60 requisite votes in the Senate (and why did they need 60 votes when a simple majority wins?)

But still, here it is that his home state - the one he did so much for during his tenure as their senator - is the one that has now apparently set back the whole healthcare reform movement that was so close to being passed.

No matter your politically affiliations - right minded people will recognize there are many good things in that bill. Is it perfect no, but it is a start. No doubt, much work still needs to be done on both sides once this first step is hopefully taken.

Could it have included more Republican ideals, I think certainly yes. Tort reform for one is badly needed and has clearly been shown to increase costs for doctors which is passed on to patients.

But the dems, in order to appease their radical-left associates, could not consider such measures because they had to pull the universal coverage they wanted (which radical-right republicans falsely called Gov't takeover of the healthcare industry...). If the Dems could not have what they wanted, they didn't want the republicans to have what they wanted either.

Tit for tat - and so it goes in Washington.

But there are moderate republican senators like Olympia Snowe of Maine who could and should be leaders in the Congress. If Scott Brown follows in her footsteps as a serious Senator who wants to work with both sides to get a comprehensive bill passed - then I think we will all be better off for it. Especially if it starts to pull the suicidal drive of the Republican Party leadership away from the radical right and more toward the center.

If we let both far wings of each side of our Gov't control the process, we will be lost. It is up the the centrists, the moderates, to wrestle control from the radicals.

Which brings me to the title of todays entry - "The Nail That Sticks Out Gets Hammered Down."

Today, the voice of reason has so little 'bite' compared to the radical intonations of the media savvy far right or left. Especially in this era of cable news and online media organizations who can't wait to get their paws on a juicy controversy of any kind.

It'd be nice if the rabble rousing radicals on both sides would get hammered down in favor of centrist views in Congress. They often do get hammered through scandals, etc., but not for their radical views which get way more 'exposure' than deserved in today's 24 hour media frenzy. And always a new radical pops up to take the ousted radicals place in the spotlight - where's the 'voice-of-reason' hammer? Shouldn't that be the media? It's not.

This is a huge advantage for the radicals over the moderate center and a dilemma for our society that we either must resolve, or go the way of other failed democracies.

Opening Volley

Words often do not adequately match or describe what it is I am feeling or thinking or find interesting at any given moment - so this blog (at least as I see it now) may be comprised of photos, poems, musings, or maybe links to things I find interesting.

My hope is that this blog does not come off as too sentimental or self-absorbed. I do tend to rant and rave about things politic, but will try to keep that to a dull roar if I do.

So much for my wishes though - things rarely end up as we envision them. And life goes on - it's all good. And that basically sums up what I'll call my philosophy on life. I try to keep it simple.

Here is something I came up with nearly 30 years ago that puts this philosophy into poem form:

A wave rolls forth

Over rough sands

Lingers

And slides

slowly

away.

Then, another.

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