I.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite season. In the old days, we would come up from Houston to the woods of East Texas to visit our kin. We would bypass those dying little towns, stopping where we always stopped – to eat and to shit – continuing on to our little small one that was just a tad larger than the rest. This time of year, the lampposts and streetlights hang Christmas decorations that glitter like silver, shaped in bells and reindeer and snowmen and snowflakes. Its like that in little towns.  We would eat until sleep, watch football, sleep more, wake and go watch a film.  The theatre was always crowded.  The following day, we visit more kin, eat the same stuff we ate the day before, only colder, and talk about ailments and Christmas. I would mainly listen; listen to those Texas small towns, perpetually behind the ages, where they always want to be I think.

In the past, they were okay, being American, but it cannot said anymore.

Being American is no longer safe.

Watching the past as it is happening is a fascinating thing, and for a boy maybe the most fascinating thing of all. I would watch time going backward over Thanksgiving and, even as a young kid, marvel.

II.

Now, we no longer go to the woods of East Texas and those small Texas towns. Kin we used to see have all moved to the suburbs of Dallas,near my mother. My grandmother is in a nursing home and some others are dead. Now the day is split between two families and we stay in the suburbs, and I like it almost as much. I say almost as much, because things are always more Romantic in the look back.

III.

I am relatively quiet around family, outside the nucleus that is. It was like this as a child too. When we do not live life consistently together, there isn’t much to say after the love-work-life gaps have been filled. So much happens on a weekly basis, I wouldn’t even know where to start if I were asked to outline a year. So, I usually don’t. I do a lot of listening though. This is my favorite season, because here I keep a finger on the heartbeat of everyone else, and my flimsy nation, flimsy on stilts of ice.

They say the planet is getting warmer.

IV.

The coming age, I’m convinced, will crush all of this and all the other things that I know and love. It will crush this season and the land and everyone in it. The old ways of doing things, the ways of our parents, and their parents before, that which will still hang our hope, that which we are trying to still envision, covers us now in sticky tar and we dry in the afternoon sun. After the Invisible Age has crushed us, it will light us on fire. I’m convinced of this.  It will be as in the Coliseum.  There, thieves, Christians and derelicts were set on fire to light the games.  Entertainment for the masses.  We call them all mad now and close our ears as Rome calls out to us.

The Indians of the plains and their ancient ways were never supposed to last.  They are calling out to us too.

One cannot live around the oasis without fear of the desert people forever.

When humans have no reason to change, they will not; this is nothing new.

Instead they allow themselves to be eaten by the matty rats, then are helpless as they’re slaughtered by the desert people.  Then the rats return.

The Invisible Age has been aging slowly, like good whiskey,

as it has since the beginning of evil men.

Its a strong drink now, a strong man too, having eaten all his children:

wheat, boats, iron, computers.

Like Kronos, there is nothing left to consume.

When the Invisible Age is fully revealed, it is already too late.

V.

Flying back to California, light wispy clouds move under us and we are unaffected. I can’t see the ground, though, its there. Most of the people are sleeping since its a night flight.  Even after all the flying I do, I still don’t trust the pilots or the plane.  Soon, we will be going through those clouds and everyone who was asleep will wake and many will pretend to still be asleep. There is a beauty about the ground, about the city there, glittering in the dark.  Its as if the moon shattered and fell fast and what’s left are these smouldering little shards, looking peaceful. If you are prepared for it, fear is a powerfully capable force.  Capable to change entire lives quickly.  Souls too, but that is for another day.  The captain says there’s thick clouds in Orange County, and that its raining. This is always an odd thing. I’d like very much to see my beach on a rainy and terrible day, to see Oak Street that way, knowing that I am missing nothing with the absence of sun. When that happens, I will write for hours unhindered and all night too.  Then I will cook something hardy, and maybe go over to her house to watch a shitty movie later. No one will be on the roads, for here they’re scared of rain. I will have the whole highway to myself, and the wet beach, and the night. I will wave to a brave soul if they pass and they will wave back. I may fall asleep on her couch. I may not. I may watch the rain stream down the window as she falls asleep in my arms. I may not.

They say the world is getting warmer.

Though,

not as they say.

Small country towns!  Gotta love them for all their quaintness, idyllicness (I’m not even sure that is a real word) and…charm.  Some are absolutely gorgeous, just ooze that rustic rural charm and quite literally take your breathe away, leaving you spellbound and never wanting the moment or the visit to end.  And then there is the opposite kind.  The one’s that exude all the charm of irrigated manure being spread over a farmers land.  All you want to do is drive like the Devil himself is behind you in the opposite direction looking for an alternate route around said town rather than brave going through it.

But, thank God, I don’t live in such a town.  My town has its own kind of allure, its own kind of country charm and its fair share of rural ambience, which really works in its favor or we would have moved by now, actually we have tried several times and failed miserably.  BUT on the surface where everything looks and feels like you’re the luckiest city folk expat to do yourself a favor, I can tell you right now that that is where the buck stops.  My little town on the hill suffers from a most hideous disorder. A disorder that many towns across the globe suffer from, and that is ’small town syndrome’ or more commonly known as ‘people who have no lives with vicious mouths who like to flap their jaws just a little to vigorously’.  Okay, so that’s not exactly what it’s known as but you get the picture.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about then be thankful, stay ignorant but pray you never become the victim of idle small town gossip.  For those people who are jaw flappers “Shame on you!“  Didn’t your mothers ever teach you that starting rumours about people only makes you look like a dick and DOES NOT score you any kudos points on the friend scale.  If anything it has the opposite effect and you will spend the rest of your life a sad, lonely and pathetic spinster.  Not a very glamorous picture is it.  But then again gossip has never been about glamour it’s always been about how much damage a person or persons can inflict on a singular or more than one intended target, while completely IGNORING the fact that person A & B might have families.

I have lived in a couple of small towns and it never ceases to amaze me how much negativity people dish out onto each other and how quickly that negativity can escalate into an onslaught of who can get one up on the toad down the road.  Do people have such low self-esteem about themselves, their lives and relationships?  Are they jealous because their neighbour aross the way has a HSV Clubsport while the only thing they are sporting in their driveway is a Toyota Corolla?  What is it that drives a person to make up malicious rumours that have the very power to make or break a situation or even a family.

I have found this seems to be a permanent fixture in small towns and you kinda have to wonder if it ever gets boring for those who are compelled to start drama’s just so they can sit back and watch it unfold like they were watching Day Of Our Lives.  Now your probably wondering why I’m writing about this.  Well that’s easy, you can only write about something you have had experience with and BS gossip is something I am well versed in…unfortunately not by choice and I stand alongside millions of other people.  Small town gossip is by far the most vindictive in my eyes and regardless of the truth behind whatever rumours are stirring it is the one thing about small towns I hate the most.  You move from the city to get away from that crap only to move to a place that takes it to another level.  Small town gossip makes city gossip look like a pansy in comparison.

All the charm of a country town…?  For those that just pass through, you are lucky.  For those who have to put up with the daily circulation of hearsay…spare a thought.

Recently I added a series of products to my zazzle store featuring my watercolor painting Oakridge Reservoir #2. The original is on Fabriano Uno 140lb hot press 100% cotton paper, 7 1/2″ x 11″, 2001. This is one in a series of four paintings based on some photos I took early in the morning while camping with my family in Oakridge, Oregon.  Done in an almost photo-realistic style, this painting draws the eye beyond the upended tree roots protruding from the shore of Oakridge Reservoir toward the mountain ranges and pale blue morning sky in the distance. A lone twig sticks up from the water, while algae and tree stumps seem to float  tranquilly and as the water deepens. Green and gold, the colors of the forest shimmer in the water as the cool blue Oregon mountains beckon as they glistening white shore in the distance. Many guests visiting my home have stared in amazement and asked, “is that a photograph?” because of how realistic it is.They are even more astounded when I tell them it’s a painting.

Oakridge Reservoir #2 by dlmtleArt
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I do not know how you feel about this, but I am sick and tired of all this Black Friday sales nonsense.  Every store tries to outdo the other by offering a bigger deal or by opening an hour earlier or by boasting a bigger claim.  Some stores do not even close on Thanksgiving day.  What these stores do is to publish maps showing the locations of the Black Friday deals, and then allow their customers to line up at those spots in the hopes of getting in on these “deals.”

But what exactly are these deals, and why are they forcing people to get out of a warm bed in the middle of the night and brave sub freezing temperatures in order to purchase these trinkets?  Most of the time, no one knows.  I browsed through all the post Thanksgiving day fliers looking at the these great buys.  Most are incredible.  Laptops for under $200.  Big screen TVs under $500.  Free video games with a purchase of $20.  All seem like pretty good deals, until you read the fine print.  With all these great bargains come this one warning-”Quantities in Limited Supply,” which boils down to mean “Attention you thousands of people who want this $100 laptop…we only have 1 to sell. Good luck getting it.“  You have a better chance of winning the Lottery!

My family and I took a trip over this Thanksgiving holiday, just to get away from everything for a while.  We ended up in a larger city that has many of these stores who were offering these deals.  As we were driving around on Thanksgiving evening, we drove past a Best Buy.  I am not sure what they were offering for sale the next morning, but there were about 20 people already camped out in front of the store.  It was 12 hours before the store opened, and the temperature was about 25 degrees, but there they were in their tents, sleeping bags, and blankets.  At first, my family and I thought that this was funny and interesting, but then I realized that it was just ridiculous.  There is nothing that a store is offering that is worth putting my health at risk to purchase.

My wife is not immune to this mania.  Old Navy was offering a free Lego Rock Band video game and all you had to do was to purchase $20 of merchandise to get it.  The store opened at 3:00 AM, so my wife decided to get up at 2:00 AM and go get in line to get a game.  The deal was that the store employees would go through the line and hand out wristbands for the game.  If you got a wrist band, then you could get a game.  My wife told me that the store employee did not start through the line until just before 3:00 AM, and then only handed out 4 wristbands!  This means that the store only had 4 games to “give away.”  Are you kidding me?  My wife told me that as soon as the writst bands were handed out, that most of the people in line left.  How much business did Old Navy get by doing this promotion?  Not near as much as they lost from those people who left mad.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I do like to get a good bargain.  I enjoy ploughing through ads and online stores looking for just the right price on the right product.  But once I find that price and product, I fully expect to be able to purchase it whenever I want to.

In my opinion, this is just a legal form of the old bait and switch tactic.  The store lures you in with the promise of a great deal, only to tell you that they are sold out, but they would love to sell you a similar product for only a few hundred dollars more.   It is perfectly legal, since the store did have the advertised product, it is just that they only had a few of them.  How much longer will we put up with this sleazy salesmanship?  When will the American consumer step up and tell big business, enough is enough?

I guess as long as we continue to demand the best price on the best products, then stores will continue to ply their Black Friday sales pitch.  Personally, I am done with the chase.  I would much rather leisurely shop at my own pace and buy what I want, when I want it.

Now, if you will excuse me, I must get ready for the “After Christmas Sales.”  I hear there are going to be some fantastic deals!

Thanks for reading.

Being a Canadian living in the States I often get asked what the biggest difference is between Canada and the US. Rather than answering such a complex question I gear the conversation to the culture shock of moving from a large city of two million plus to a town of 5114.

In Montreal I lived in a small building which had 12 units. I didn’t know anybody in the building. In Vancouver I lived in a building which had 8 units. I knew three of the other tenants well enough that we could sit on the front stoop and order a pizza. As for the rest, I would consider myself lucky if I’d recognize them when I saw them on the street.

In Port Matilda, or Port as the locals call it, there is no such thing as ordering in. My wife and I live on the side of a mountain just outside of Port proper, while we love our 11 acres of wooded land away from all the hustle and bustle, sometimes it would be nice to be able to pick up the phone and have food brought to us.

I knew moving from a city the size of Vancouver to a community like Port Matilda was going to be interesting. What I didn’t realize was in a small town my anonymity was going to be a thing of the past. Until one Christmas Denyce sent me a Pfaltzgraf catalogue with all the items she would like nicely circled (sometimes life is easy). Now keep in mind that Pfaltzgraf is a very well known, well established 200 year old flatware company located in York PA.

I am sitting in my apartment 3000 miles away from York and I have the companies 1-800 operator on the phone and I’m completing my order when out of the blue the nice lady on the other end of the line says, “So you are the fiancée over in Canada.”! Now anybody who knows me knows I’m not good at small talk. I’ve told this lady the items I want and where I want them sent, thats it! There is no way she can know this about me. I am stunned, I look around the room for the hidden camera, I look at the phone, I find my voice.

“Excuse me?”

“The fiancée, over in Canada, in Vancouver?” she says

“Um, yeah”

“Oh you are just going to love central Pa and Penn State campus is one of the nicest in the country. I certainly hope you like football because it really is big out that way. I know you are not moving to State College but it is the biggest city in that area and chances are that is where you will find work, unless you stay in the magic business, and what a fascinating business to be in, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a magician before…”.

And on she went for a good 5 minutes, I sat on my couch with my jaw on the floor. I tried to figure out what number I dialed, could this be the psychic hot line?

“Excuse me” I interjected, “How do you know all of this?”

“Oh I live a few mountain ranges away over in Lancaster county” as though this explained everything.

“by some coincidence do you know my fiancée?”

“No, not at all, although I’ve been to a Penn State football game once.”

I’m not sure how this explained things. The Penn State stadium is the largest of the college stadiums it is used 6 times a year holds just over 100,000 people and probably a good 200,000 show up for each game and if its supposed to be a good game add another 50,000 people. Yet somehow this 1-800 operator knows all about me because she lives a ‘few’ mountain ranges away and has been to a Penn State football game. I know Denyce had never been to a football game so at this point I’m a little confused, and a lot scared.

“okay, is there anything else you need from me?”

“Well Brian, hold on one second I just wanted to che…oh yes here is the order I was looking for, Denyce’s mother called in a week ago and also placed an order, let me make sure you didn’t order the same products. Nope no duplicates however she did order the gravy boat but not the matching ladle, would you like to add that to your order it would nicely complete the set.”

“Um, yeah sure.”

A few months ago I wrote a post about netbooks (“THE CURRENT BUZZWORD-NETBOOKS “). At that time, my district was considering purchasing these miniscule notebook computers for our Elementary students.  The reasoning behind this was that the small design fits with their small hands, that are purchasing power is increased, and that this would increase the computer usage of our younger grades.  Well, we bought the machines-64 of them to be exact.  And I must say, they do look nice.  But, the problem from a tech standpoint, is getting these machines ready to roll out to the Elementary.

Unlike a home machine, when I get a new computer system in my district, I sit down and start removing the junk that OEM’s put on the computer.  I then go about installing programs that the user will need, as well as installing our anti-virus and other security features.  Once this is done, I then pull an image of this machine so that if anything happens to it, or if I need to configure more than one computer, I can do it relatively easy.  This is exactly what I needed to do with our netbooks…all 64!

I began this process by wiping the first netbook’s hard drive, and installing a new OS (basically, I went from WinXP Home to WinXP Pro) and then reinstalling the drivers for all of this machines hardware.  Once I had that done, I went to use a system called FOG, however it would not work.  Even after emailing back and forth with the systems developer, we could not get this to image.  It appears that it is something to do with the hardware and drivers on the netbook.  I then wanted to use Ghost (which we own).  I attempted to use a Network Boot Disk I had, but the driver for the network card was not on there.  I then had to scour the web looking for a driver.  Fortunately, a member of an email list I belong to had a copy of the dos drivers, and gave them to me.  I slipped them into the NetBootDisk files, and created a new network boot disk, and have successfully Ghosted an image of the netbook, and am now trying to copy that image to another netbook.

What this all boils down to is that I have had 64 netbooks for about 3 weeks now, and no one has been able to use them simply because they could not be quickly and easily be configured for use in my network.  I am hopefull that now that I have a workable image, I can now move through the remaining netbooks quickly and get them into the hands of our Elementary staff and students.  Once I have this project completed, I will have to write a simply step by step so that anyone else who is thinking of buying some netbooks for their school can read my experience and plan accordingy.

Thanks for reading.

I just returned from the Friday session of the Illinois Education and Technology Conference. I love this conference. As the tech leader (and teacher) at my school, I try not to be gone from the district too often. I do not attend every “Tech Conference” that comes down the pike. But this is one that I do attend. It is the one time of the year that I get to hear what other educators are doing in their classrooms with technology, and what other tech folks are implementing in their districts. What always impresses me the most is that schools that are successful with technology are using it to enhance their classrooms and districts, instead of adding items just to add them. I always come away from this conference with some great ideas or a justification of something that we are already doing at our school.

I cannot wait until Monday so that I can tell others about these ideas, and see if we can do them.

Thanks for reading.

I took another walk Monday, but this time it wasn’t through frosted, wet fields. =) Before a costuming meeting that day, I took a walk down our little streets. The garlands have already been wrapped around the lamps lining the street, and the wreaths adorn the lights in the “Gaslight District.” Downtown is quiet this time of year, the summer “fudgies” (tourists) are gone, the Fall Color buses have driven off, and the there is no snow to attract the skiers to the nearby resorts. The small boutiques are void of customers, and the small cafes await the winter ski rush.

Enjoy this little peek into my town =)

I’ve always stood behind public schools. Maybe because I worked in one for so many years. Maybe because I’ve had pretty good luck with them and my boys were happy there “for the most part.” I’m not really sure. It was hard getting Toby through elementary school but that wasn’t the schools fault. I blame the people who “evaluated” him and put him in special ed without my permission and then wouldn’t let him out. That’s another post!!

We live in one of the poorest school districts in the state. It’s sad really. We recently voted to pass a referendum that the school desperately needed. The last time we voted for one, it got blasted down with a big fat NO and the school has been operating on the same amount of money since 2006. Since then here are just a few things that have been cut.

*Reduced office staff and /or frozen salaries* I have been a secretary in a building and I was one of 4. There is only ONE of them at the elementary school. ONE!! This ONE person has to answer phones, take lunch count, do all the principal’s work and many, many more things and she’s all by herself. To everyone, whether you believe this or not, the secretary runs the building and to me, ONE??? Can’t imagine.

*Cut the equivalent of 10 and one half teachers* This has left the younger grades of having 25-30 students per class. I feel that’s way to high for those young grades. It’s not so bad in higher grades but the younger the kids, the smaller the class size should be in my opinion.

*Started to charge for all day/every day kindergarten* This is the one that kills me the most. How can you charge people for this? I know someone who can’t afford this and her child can only go every other day. How does this make them equal to their peers when they enter 1st grade? How does this make the child feel? Most kids love school when they start and I’m sure they ask “do I go to school tomorrow?” I know Christopher does. He loves school days. Do these parents say they just can’t afford it? It sure doesn’t seem like a good thing to cut to me. How much does it affect the other kids who have to play “catch up” for them when they do go to 1st grade?

*Cut four paraprofessionals* I know a Para there and have talked to her and I’m not even getting into this one. The extreme special ed kids get the Para’s now and it’s the average students who’re going to suffer and maybe just get over looked. A child who may just need a little help with this or that is going to be ignored and hopefully they have parents who will take over this and help their children.

*Reduced supply budget* I’m going to let Sue tell you what she has to send with the kids each year/month.

*Increased student activities fees by 50% and increased ticket prices*

These are just some of the small things that have been cut in this school district since we moved here in 95. Well, the vote got a NO again. The vote was 49% yes and 51% no. I heard people say “I don’t want my taxes to go up.” “My kids aren’t in school anymore” and “I don’t have kids in public school.”

Don’t you feel we are all responsible for our young kids? Why is it people only seem to care when they have a child in a school? Paul and I went out on a cold and rainy night to vote YES. We didn’t have to. Yes we have grandchildren in this district but we would have done it anyway. How can we possibly make this world a better place if we don’t rank education right up there on top and want the best for the kids we are rearing? I don’t understand why people don’t seem to care about this. Whether you home school or go the private school route, what about the kids who don’t have the choice of that advantage? I feel we all need to help those that have no choice.

When we walked in and saw the people in line, we knew it was going to get a NO. The people were all seniors. We knew! Being the vote was so close; there may be another vote in a few months. I pray it will pass for the kids. Every other day Kindergarten for people who can’t afford to pay appalls me.

It wasn’t even like they’re talking a huge amount of money. Even if it was, if we don’t make our schools a better place, what will happen in the future? This district will close and the town will die off and everyone will wonder what happened.

Stop passing the buck and give these kids a break I say.

Preston Castle, Ione CA

You can see it suddenly appear from behind the hills and trees as you near… It can be a little unsettling.

Preston Castle, which is located outside the small Gold Country town of Ione in the foothills just above Sacramento, was built in 1894 and was once the Preston School of Industry for troubled boys. But time has a way of scarring the space that surrounds us….

In 2009 the television show ‘Ghost Adventures’ spent a night in the castle…. Only to find some troubling memories, and perhaps spirits, still lingering within the decaying walls ~ possibly seeking escape, justice or redemption?

Just a 40 minute drive from the heart of Sacramento, the castle is worth a look (and second glance over your shoulder). With roofs, walls and floors caving in on some accounts, the castle still stands like a determined soldier protecting its inhabitants. Only, no one human has resided in the castle since 1994. (Although it appears to have been dilapidating since the day it was built).

The exterior of the structure is misleading, as some rooms within are actually “rooms” no more. While others, curiously, seem somehow preserved. And although the school sought to help troubled youths by teaching them skills and giving them structure and purpose, there were those somehow beyond reach. Just ask the ghosts of murdered workers who are believed to still be lingering.

The Preston Castle Foundation holds fundraisers, wine tasting events and craft fairs, as well as offers special photographer tours and overnight stays. General public tours are availalable spring through fall, and proceeds go toward preserving the outwardly majestic castle… perhaps as a way to honor those who’ve come (and died) before us.

www.PrestonCastle.com

Busy Bee beer tavern, Peoria, Illinois, May, 1938. Arthur Rothstein, photographer.

“Sign of service station, U.S. 99. Hop pickers are wanted for four big growers of the area three weeks before opening season. They also advertise in newspapers including San Francisco newspapers, 450 miles away. Josephine County, Oregon.”

August, 1939. Dorothea Lange, photographer.

Until now, I’ve lived all my life in cities. Nothing huge mind you, but cities of considerable size enough to have a gas station on every corner with a strip shopping mall sandwiched in between. Places where you often didn’t know who your neighbors were and where small kindnesses from people you didn’t know were few and far between. Where people often didn’t recognize your face even though you’d seen them a million times, much less know your name. And where the air was palpable with a buzz of “busyness” in all the people and the traffic.

When Joker and I decided to “live the dream” a little earlier than retirement and pull our stakes out of the city, we landed here at Carlyle Lake in the country. The town of Carlyle is 5 miles away. There is a real downtown with real stores that you really go to buy things at. There is a postmaster who knows who you are before you hit the door because he saw your truck pull up. There’s a butcher who offers to cut you a piece of meat specially if you don’t see a cut you like. There are no Great Clips or other hair chains, but there IS a true barber shop on Main Street complete with barber pole. The clerks in the stores know you by name. If you don’t find what you need in Carlyle, you go to another little town (most of which are only 20 minutes away at the most) where it’s the same thing all over again. When you go to Rural King, the clerk asks if you still love your bomber hat and hate the coveralls. Fast food is limited… “mom and pop” restaurants abound where they know you by name and ask you if you want the usual. Want an old-fashioned variety store? Just half hour down the road as the crow flies. No matter where you go there is always a smile, always a wave, always a hello.

The only buzz you might feel is the whisper of a bee against your ear.

As usual on a Tuesday morning, I loaded the truck up with the laundry and headed to Breese about 15 miles away to the laundromat. As I was folding towels, the owner stuck his head in the door and said one of my tires was flatter than a pancake and offered to call the town service station if I’d like so that they could fix it while I was finishing up my laundry. Not 5 minutes later they were there… airing the tire enough to get it to the station, telling me they’d have it fixed and back before I was done folding sheets. True to their word for in a half hour I was loaded and heading back for home. My thanks for going above and beyond what I supposed to be the norm was waved off. “That’s just how we do things around here Miss.”

Small town values… that’s what I was raised up with even in a bigger city. That’s what I’m living in the here and now.

It’s so nice to know they’re not dead.

He called, wanted a meeting immediately, then bulldozed his way into our office.  He insisted something needed to be done and right away. He was losing money.  No, he wasn’t the final decision maker, but  he was a damned important strategic partner and they would listen to him. He liked a spot we did for the sister company. He hated the current marketing director of the company.  She was slow, unresponsive to his requests and should be be put back into the secretarial pool or fired. He’ll put his own money in to straighten things up, by God. He’d get us a meeting with the powers that be. And on the way out he said, you might “wear a low cut top” next time we meet.

We were certainly intrigued by this prospect. What if “this” and what if “that” began to float around. It could be a nice piece of business, but I resisted the urge to do any spec work-it didn’t feel right. (It wasn’t the low cut top comment, trust me.)

Anyway, good thing we didn’t spend a lot of time prepping a pitch. After raising every kind of hell, this important “strategic partner” was told flat out by the real decision makers this was none of his concern. Yes, they loved what adchicks team did for their sister company, but they are quite satisfied with their current mediocrity.

The moral of this story:  Never count your chickens before they’re hatched.

That’s one…

After living in the Atlanta metro area for over 20 years, there are a lot of reasons why I was more than happy to move out of the sprawl into a small town some 60 miles away a few years ago. (As I saw the news stories yesterday for the giant cruise ship “Oasis of the Seas,” I thought, my goodness, my whole town will fit aboard that ship at one time.)

In contrast to the lines in Atlanta, there are seldom any election-day lines here. This morning I was in an out of the polling place in five minutes, and that counted the time I took chatting to the people I knew. I never saw anyone I knew at an Atlanta polling place.

Here, I know the mayor and the members of the city council. A friend is running for the city council, but even in a small town there are wards, and his seat doesn’t extend to this part of town. I know the city clerk and the city manager. I’ve worked with them, seen them at weddings and funerals, had them over for parties.

Of course, the close-knit nature of things here can lead to a strange apathy. A friend who ran for council two elections ago lost by six votes because a lot of people in her neighborhood didn’t vote. Each had an excuse–at kid was sick, car trouble, the boss made them stay late at work. But oddly, none of them worried about the vote because everyone assumed they were the only ones that were playing hooky from the election.

One way or the other, here you know you’re making a difference. You can see the fact that your vote counts; and you can see the consequences of not voting. I like that because none of us feel like we’re getting lost in the shuffle.

–Malcolm

A buddy of mine moved out to the country a few years ago.  It’s not country like Mayberry, RFD country, but it’s definitely a less urban setting than where he’d live most of his life prior.  After he had to sell his house earlier this year, he moved into an even more rural area, a little sleepy burg of less than 10,000 people.  In this area, houses which are about a third the cost of the median home where I live are considered big, expensive estates.

Since his move, he’s been trying to get me to relocate.  Tonight I started to think about the proposition for the first time in any seriousness.  He’s doing pretty well for himself now, and his fiancée – who makes less money than I do when I’m working, or when I last worked, at least – makes a very handsome living in this sort of setting.

The lights and noise around here are becoming a bother to me.  I don’t necessarily want to have to live on (and work!) a farm, but farm living has its appeal in many ways.  I’ve begun to think seriously about moving to an area where the cost of living is a bit easier, the incomes required lower, and the housing costs still reasonable.  In this area, there’s enough affluence and professional athletes to make the housing costs ridiculous, the taxation of this county is pretty high for property, and while things aren’t as expensive here as in The Big City and its enshrouding county, they’re high enough.  It’s more reasonable to live here than where I have in the past, but the appeal of that easy, small-town countrified life holds a lot of draw for me, especially as I get older.

I don’t see a ranch or farm anywhere in my near future, and I still think it’d be nice to have neighbors and friends within reaching distance for some reason, but the idea of a tiny little town and being in a place where noise and traffic haven’t yet reached is … well, really frickin’ cool.

I thought I was a city boy once, but I’ve changed my view on that over time.  The older I get the fewer people I want around me.  Most times I’m content with my wife and children.  And when I’m not content with that, I want to be all by my lonesome.  So right now, I’ve got all the comp’ny I need.  But I’d love to go to sleep at night without the constant drag of sound on my ears, the whine of the interstate, or the roar of the too-near thoroughfare.  I’d love to hear the breeze rustle through the grass, or listen to the crackle of a fire in a fireplace without the heavier drone of the dishwasher, the furnace blower, the refrigerator compressor, the water heater blasting … I want to be able to have all of that be somewhere else, muted and toned down, gagged.  I want these comfortable autumn nights to be affairs where I can open the windows without fear, and without the dread of the din of the outside crashing in an audible tsunami around me.

For now, I’m stuck, and this isn’t the worst area in which I could live.  But sometimes, I ache for the simplicity and quiet of the rural setting.  More than the urban sprawl of single family dwellings which passes for “suburbia” now, and less than a remote farm where isolation can be a hazard.  But something where I can’t hear my neighbors or have to deal with the sounds of cars, voices, planes, trains, buzzing electric wires, cascading sounds of life in the 21st century.

How about you?  Are you a city or suburb dweller?  A ruralite at heart?  What’s your preference, and why?

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

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I noticed during my growing years that people who lived outside of smalltown seemed to grow up quicker than they did where I lived. I don’t know for sure, but I think there was something in the local drinking water that caused this problem. There were people in smalltown who were in their fifties and still hadn’t grown beyond their teenage years. Of course, everyone in smalltown had an opinion as to why this was, but I always suspected there was something in the drinking water. My thought was that some of that old greenish blue copperous water from the local coal mine had gotten into the ground water, and from there it had seeped into their wells. I don’t know what that copperous water would do to a person’s insides if they drank it, but it sure worked wonders on my cuts and open sores.

You outsiders might be wondering what’s copperous water? Well, copperous water came from the water the local coal mine used to wash their coal and after a good rain their holding pits would overflow into a small ditch nearby and that water eventually made its way into a small river a couple of miles away. The water had a beautiful greenish blue tint like the waters off the coast of the Bahama’s and when you looked down into it from up above you could see the bottom of the river some thirty feet down, but that copperous water was deadly to the fish habitat. I didn’t miss the fishing part too much when it was gone because all I had ever caught out of it were big ole Carp and some Buffalo.

One day I received a rather large wound in my side from toting a large fellow on the handle bars of my bicycle. His weight caused the handle bars to break off from the front forks and the sharp metal of the broken fork punctured my right side just above my belt leaving a large round hole about the size of a quarter. It festered up something terrible and pus began to ooze from it a couple of days later. I hadn’t been swimming down at the creek for a few days cause mom thought swimming in the creek would cause it to get infected worse. But on this particular day it was hot, hotter than normal, and I decided I was going swimming to cool off inspite of mom’s warning. If my sore got more infected than it already was, it would just have to get more infected. I went swimming in that copperous water for a couple of hours and by the next morning the wound had stopped oozing pus and the skin around the edges had turned a light pink and the healing process had begun. That was when I learned copperous water had healing power. In my fourteen year old mind it surely was a miracle sent from God just like those old Testament miracles I heard Oral Roberts preach about on tv every Sunday afternoon. Hot Springs, Arkansas had their hot springs, but smalltown had its copperous water. After that incident, every time I got a cut or an abrasion anywhere on my body I went swimming in the creek, and in a day or two I would be as good as new.

Some years later I got the bad news from home; some people who didn’t know about the healing power of the copperous water had gotten the EPA involved and the mine was closed putting several smalltown people out of work just because a few fish couldn’t live in copperous water. Don’t you know anytime the government gets involved in something, they ruin things for the poor folks? Now that the copperous water is gone and those bait stealing Carp and Buffalo have returned, when I hurt, I have to find a doctor to care for me and don’t you know they most always want to cut something out of me and then charge me an arm and a leg in return for their services.  Things were a lot cheaper back in the old days when the copperous water seeped into our wells and ran off into the creek. We had the best of both worlds. Everlasting youth came with every downward push of the handle of our pitcher mouth pump and the power to heal our broken bodies flowed just two miles out of town. Who could ask for anything more? DThrash

We had just unloaded the last truck load of furniture into our first home in smalltown when I heard a knock at the front door. It didn’t take me long to realize it wasn’t the Welcome Wagon representative coming to welcome us to smalltown. I immediately recognized the person when I saw sunlight reflecting off of the new gold tooth Doc the Dentist had put in Uncca Bubba’s mouth a while back. And I remember thinking so clearly, “Oh, God, how in the world did Auntie and Uncca Bubba find us so soon. We haven’t even began to unpack the boxes and here they are standing at our front door.”

I know there will be some people who will read this story and would argue they have relatives more notorious than mine. I don’t think so, but if you do, may God have mercy on you. Folks back in smalltown said, “My Auntie was trouble spelled with a capital T, and Uncca Bubba should of spelled his name B-a-d N-e-w-s” because Trouble and Bad News just seemed to follow them wherever they went. I know most of us have learned to handle trouble in whatever form it comes, but is anyone ever really ready for Bad News when it comes knocking?

As I relive this trying episode in my young life and how we finally dealt with Auntie and Uncca Bubba; a story as told by Cooch the Barber comes to mind. He would tell his version of the story of the ‘Three Little Pigs’ this way. All of the three little pigs knew a Big Bad Wolf lived in their neighborhood, but unlike his two unwise little brothers, the smart little pig understood a wolf is a wolf and no matter how he talks, or how he dresses, or what he drives, he will always be a wolf, and sooner or later his actions will prove it. The smart little pig built a brick home because he knew it would take more than wood or hay to keep the wolf out of his house should he ever decide to come calling. And sure enough just as the smart little pig expected, one day the wolf came knocking on his door with evil intentions in his mind, but the smart little pig was prepared. He had a pot of hot boiling water ready for just such an occasion. Cooch would conclude his story with this statement, “We all know how the story ends. The smart little pig cooked the Big Bad Wolf’s goose and rid their neighborhood of a menace.” Cooch would say the moral of the story is this. “If you want to eliminate a foreseeable future problem that could threaten your well being, the time to do something about that potential future problem is now. If you wait until the wolf is at your door threatening to huff and puff and blow your straw house down, you’re probably going to end up like the two unwise little pigs. Lunch for the Big Bad Wolf.” DThrash

Once upon a time we lived in a small town.

Not my town.  My husband’s town.  It was an OK sort of place, not without its quirks.  Like the way nearly all the town’s businesses were shut on Mondays.  Or the way they printed obituaries on the front page of the newspaper.  Or the large horse ankle bone by the highway:

(which, really, deserves its own post, another time).

Suffice it to say, there were adjustments to be made.

The first year we lived there together, I came home one day, a week before Halloween, to find a note inside my door.  I scanned it, picked my jaw up off the floor, then waited for Owen to get home.

“What kind of Nazi regime are we living under!?!”  is how I greeted him at the door.

He looks at the note, casually puts it aside.  “Oh yeah, that’s just how we do it here.”

 What is in this little missive that shocks me so very much?

“This note is to inform you that you will be visited by 12 trick or treaters, sometime between 3:30 and 5:00 pm on October 30.  Please have your treats ready at that time.  Thanks for your cooperation.  Signed, The Town’s School.”

That’s right.  The school RAN Halloween.  They organized the kids into groups, Grade 6 and under.  They decided exactly which houses those groups would visit (approximately 20 houses per group).  And if Halloween had the audacity to fall on a non-school day? 

 They just moved it.

“But…but…how can they just…TAKE OVER?”  Halloween, as I understood it, was all about chaos.  How had no one protested this?  What about kids older than Grade 6, younger than school age that wanted to Trick or Treat?  Didn’t anyone have a problem being told which houses they were “allowed” to hit?

“Well, yeah.  It just sort of works.”  He tried to reassure me.  I was sure this system was just set up for failure.  Never mind that they’d been doing it this way for years, clearly, my outsider’s perspective would show them the grievous error of their ways.

So I waited, that Friday afternoon.  At exactly 4:00, 12 little kids came to my door.  Every one of them excited and happy to be there.  I had exactly enough candy, because I knew beforehand how many kids to expect.   The town’s little kids joined in, welcomed by the school to be part of the organized fun.  And the kids who were above Grade 6?  Were too damn old to Trick or Treat anyway.  So they didn’t.  And even with all those uber-polite little kids saying thank you, and showing off their costumes, the whole shebang took less than 15 minutes.  At which time I was free to enjoy my Halloween weekend in whatever non-kid way I chose.

Now that we live in the city, I will spend my Saturday night freezing my arse off, repeatedly opening my door to kids who will traipse through my neighborhood starting at I-haven’t-even-finished-supper-yet until man-I-wish-this-was-over-I’m-going-to-turn-off-the-lights-and-pretend-we’re-not-here.   I may run out of candy, because there’s no way of knowing how many kids there will be.  Kids who are way too old to be trick or treating will get candy from me, because I don’t want them to throw things at my house.  And even if I wanted to do something grown up on a Saturday night, I’ll be too tired by the time it’s all over.

Oh, those small-town rubes and their quaint customs…

One of my favorite people of all time is Miss Wilma. Miss Wilma was my teacher in the little three room elementary school I attended back in smalltown. She walked with a cane because she had been born with a birth defect that caused her to be bent forward at the waist. Despite her physical frailness, Miss Wilma had a passion for children and took great delight in helping them prepare for a brighter future. I heard her say many times, “It’s not where you come from in life, but it’s what you choose to do in preparation for the future ahead of you that’s important.”  Though I had teachers before her, I credit Miss Wilma for giving me an insatiable desire to learn. She taught me how to do longhand math,  how to read and write and to understand that it is what people do, it’s not what they say, that determines whether a person is trustworthy or not. That last lesson was a difficult lesson for me to learn because I was a little rascal of a boy so to speak, but Miss Wilma understood me perhaps better than any other person I have known. Despite my shortcomings, she never gave up on me and treated me as if I was a perfect child. I had an opportunity a few years later to tell her face to face how much I appreciated the love and patience she showed  me during my learning years.  A few short years after our face to face meeting she went home to be with her Lord.

Since leaving smalltown behind, I have traveled across America from one coast to the other and have made a couple of observations concerning changes in education that I am not altogether convinced were good ones. Call me old fashion if you like, but one such change I observed was the invention and later subsequent use of mechanical devices for the advancement of scholastic skills in our modern day classrooms. I’ll bet some of you older people have noticed too, that many young people who seek solutions to math problems using a mechanical device that does the thinking for them have a difficult time making correct change.

The subtracting of a lower number from a higher number without the aid of a mechanical device with a digital readout seems to confuse them. It is my belief, “the skill of mental calculation was lost during the transition period between doing math by longhand and learning to use mechanical devices that does the thinking for us.”

I think most of you will agree the mechanical method of solving math problems is quicker than the longhand method because mental calculations require thought, and thinking requires time, and since a lot of people today say, “they don’t have time,” leads me to believe, that a lot of people have pretty much quick thinking for themselves. DThrash

Shortly after my family moved from next door to Mr. and Mrs. Rolley to another small town in southern Illinois; I met a person who would be my best friend for many years. His name was “Zeke.” Zeke wasn’t his real name of course. He didn’t like his real name because he and his dad shared the same name and Zeke and his dad were like hot grease and water. One day out of the blue someone called him ‘Zeke’. He liked the name so much it stuck. Zeke and I hit it off right away and were like two peas in a pod. We liked the same things, chased the same women when we got older and even fought with each other over the least little thing, but we never stayed angry with each other for very long and it wouldn’t be long before we would be best buddies again. We were wild and carefree kids by nature and didn’t care who knew it or liked it. It seemed like most of the young people liked us well enough because we were never without company for very long. I can’t say the same for the older generation because they never knew what we would do next. My parents generation called us “rebels” and said we were “hell on wheels” an “accident just waiting to happen”. All or none of what they said was true. You can be the judge of that.

When things became mundane in our little town which was most of the time, Zeke would go to great pains to create some excitement. This often resulted in his dad receiving a late night phone call telling him, “Zeke did this”, or “Zeke did that”, “you better come down here and get him before he gets into real trouble.” His dad would crawl out of bed and go get Zeke, take him home, whip his butt, and tell him not to do again whatever it was that Zeke had did that time. The only problem Zeke had that the older generations couldn’t see was he believed life was his own personal castle, and he lived every waking moment filling every room with laughter and joy. This sometimes irritated the older generation because they had forgotten they had once been young and had did the same kinds of things. Now that they were older and past the fun stage of their life they became critics of his antics instead of enjoying the pranks he would do.

Zeke may have been funny to our generation, a headache to my parents generation, but to me he was a great teacher. He may not have known he was teaching those of us who were observers of people and studied why people do the things they do. But I learned from Zeke that you don’t have to settle for the better off forgotten mundane things life throws your way. With a little creativity on your part you can grab the bull by the horns so to speak and change any situation into a meaningful experience that will be long remembered by your family and friends.

I got the bad news one snowy January 1st some years ago that Zeke had met his maker. He died of a heart attack on his way to the hospital. He was forty-seven years old and had not changed one iota from the days of his youth. I was deeply sadden at his passing, but his body could no longer stand up to the abuse like it could when he was younger. He had refused to grow up and in the end he paid the price for the joy and laughter he brought into everyone’s life. Even though he died at such a young age, I somehow think he had tired of his old life and was ready for a new challenge in a new place with new surroundings. DThrash

Finnish Consulting Group International … [et al.] (2009). NEP : Preparing the Improved Water Quality, Sanitation, and Service Delivery in Emerging Towns Sector Development Program : technical assistance consultant’s report : final report.  Manila, Philippines, Asian Development Bank. 6 vol.

Download reports [12 PDFs]

This Final Report is the fourth and final main output from the ADB PPTA 4972-NEP for the preparation of a sector development project to attract loan and grant funding from the Asian Development Bank for reform of the urban water supply and sanitation sector in Nepal, with a focus on small towns, and a project for the provision of water supply and sanitation infrastructure and service delivery in emerging towns throughout Nepal. The Sector Development Program (SDP) will include investment in capacity building and institutional strengthening of various organisations involved in management and service delivery at national and local level, and the project will include investment in infrastructure and operational capacity at town level.

Contents:

• VOLUME 1: Final Report: Sector Development Program (SDP) Rationale and Strategy
• VOLUME 2: Appendices: COMPONENT 1 – Sector Development Program Design
• VOLUME 3: Appendices – Finance and Economics
• VOLUME 4: Appendices COMPONENT 2 – Small Towns Services Project
• VOLUME 5: Sub-Project Feasibility Studies
• VOLUME 6: Initial Environmental Examinations (IEE) of Khandbari, Duhabi and Sukhad and Summary Initial Environmental Examination