discovering community

NEW BLOG

2006-04-04T21:24:00.000-05:00

I will not be updating this blog anymore. Please find my new blog at jeremyfloyd.com

The best thing about being a pessimist...

2006-01-04T20:23:00.000-05:00

...is that you can always think of a worse situation.

Aut-Six

2006-01-01T11:30:00.000-05:00

WHOA! What a year this is going to be? We have milestone years in our life, but this one will perhaps be the most significant for me. Things to do this year:

1. Turn Thirty.
2. Graduate from Law School.
3. Take (and pass) the bar.
4. Have another baby (not me personally, of course).
5. Begin my professional career.

Here I sit January 1 at a Starbucks thinking about all of this--kind of surreal.

Happy New Year.

Black Friday and Bed-head

2005-11-26T20:02:00.000-05:00

While the world gently rested, a chaotic storm was brewing. The commercial captains were still tallying their less-than-Wall-Street's predicted sales, and in that crimson balance the goal of profitability loomed large. Black Friday came and the soldiers camped out all night for a crack at the best deal. Armed with pulp advertisement, the troubadours of trade waged war against the marketing moguls capitalizing on every early bird and doorbuster special.

Fat on turkey and Ms. Shuman's dinner rolls, I sat back in a recliner with an eight pound lap full of advertisements and vowed to form my own merry militia. I twice made my list and checked it as many times. With googlemaps as my navigator, I too was going to save a buck or two. Shortly after 5:00 am my wife and I fought off sleep and the cold brisk wind to join the ranks of retail rangers. K-mart had a line 150 deep waiting for the doors to open.

We ventured to Wal-Mart. Armed with our “key-item” lists, and we tried to make our mark. Line by line we crossed items off our list like pro’s. Then Target. Then Kohl’s. Six, seven, eight, nine o’clock passed and finally we made it to the mall, but despite our best intentions we were just no match for the true treasure troopers. With checkout lines criss-crossing shopping aisles and buggies bumper to bumper, we had enough.

With a jeep full of the best discounts in town, we made our way home and crashed from exhaustion. The Christmas spirit, I now know, smells like sweat, hot cocoa, and bed-head.

Halloween

2005-11-01T09:23:00.000-05:00

Here they were before trampling through the neighborhood extorting the neighbors. How cute...

Pedestrians Beware!

2005-10-30T22:21:00.000-05:00

On the way home tonight we hit a pedestrian, and it got me to thinking—we have constructed the most pedestrian unfriendly cities. We design cities without one thought of pedestrian traffic. In the most distant places, hours away from civilization, we construct subdivisions, so that we can walk 12 feet from front door to automobile and then 12 feet from automobile to the office.

I have never known how to be a pedestrian. The world that I have always known includes hours of commuting on roads where pedestrians are aliens. I am lost in a sea of automobiles. If I were forced to travel my normal routes without the assistance of my vehicle, I would be forced to travel on routes where I am not welcome (i.e. the federal highway system). The nearest public transportation could be in another state for all that I know.

What would our world look like without all these roads?

Eat, Drink, and be Merry

2005-09-30T08:13:00.000-05:00

Pat Robertson doesn't have to tell you that the world is a seemingly scary place to live right now. Natural disasters, Wars, and Terrorism are all around. Now, the threat of a pandemic is evolving into a perfect storm with the spread of the bird flu through the East. To all of this doom and gloom I say, "Eat, Drink, and be Merry!"

This saying connotes, strong middle ages usage. In that time there was little predictability to health and mortality. But somehow in our modern world we feel that we can predict our lives. We plan our lives out for 5, 10, 25, 50 years into the future, but we have no guarantees. The one guarantee that we do have is that you are reading this right now. Talk about carpe diem. You may finish reading this post and be wiped off the face of the earth, which figures poorly in to your life's plan. So, my advice is: make sure you have a good life insurance policy, a well drafted will, take seriously the serious things in life (family, friends, and beer), and Eat, Drink, and be Merry!

Would you like a ride...

2005-09-24T10:35:00.000-05:00

We took our daughter to Pellissippi State Community College for the annual hot air balloon ride. Good times were had by all--except the daughter.

De ja vu

2005-09-22T20:03:00.000-05:00

August 29, 2005

September 22, 2005

Before/After

2005-09-13T10:33:00.000-05:00

There are some great before and after images of Katrina. If you have a few minutes check it out...

NOAA

USGS

Google EARTH

Google Maps

I told you so.

2005-09-12T15:00:00.000-05:00

After calling for Mike Brown's resignation 10 days ago, Mike Brown finally got the message. Another service brought to you by e-community.

Epidemic?

2005-09-07T07:57:00.000-05:00

I don't want to strike fear in anyone. MSNBC, CNN, and FoxNews are such experts at distributing desperation that I would not want to diminish their impact. I just have one question: What usually happens when we travel?

When I travel I usually get the sniffles--at a minimum and sometimes I get far sicker. As far as I understand this phenomenon, our immune systems build up antibodies to local environmental viruses and bacteria. When we are exposed to foreign strains of disease, we are ill-prepared to deal with those strains.

New Orleans is forcing every citizen to evacuate the city. As we have seen, the city is one of the poorest cities in the nation. Obviously, survival and not healthcare has been a priority among many of the citizens. So, when half of a million people are distributed across the United States, they seem to be simultaneously planting their disease all across the country and invading territories of foreign disease with poor defenses. Could this be a recipe for a far greater disaster?

As stated, I am not a doctor or scientist, so maybe someone more equipped could better address this issue.

Hobbies Investments

2005-09-05T13:33:00.000-05:00

As I have ~~watched~~ obsessed over Katrina's devastation this last week, through my media center computer, I have really thought about the hobbies that I have in my life. The winds and the water came into these people's lives and wiped away all investments that they had. Months and years of acquiring "things" was wiped away in the matter of hours, in turn, the victims will get a piece of paper--at best.

While watching the finely tuned news channels, I realize that countless days and hours went into creating my truly all-in-one media center. I watch all my movies, listen to all my MP3s, watch and record live TV, download dynamic content, and even read blogs on this media masterpiece, but it did not come cheap. I paid 2 hours of reading to my daughter, 1 hour of teaching her how to ride her bike, 30 minutes of watching her gently drift into sleep, 4 hours of dinner conversations with my wife, 8 hours of pool time with the family etc.

My innocent hobbies look like a real waste. Of course, today I can point to the media center and say, "yeah but come on this thing really rocks (which it really does)." But that is so hard to quantify when filing a claim with the insurance company. Even worse, the insurance companies don't offer riders for "time lost with family" or loss of consortium.

Don't get me wrong, I am a material man from way back, and I am not formally renouncing my materialism or my hobbies. I am, however, noting that there may be some calculus that I should apply to my hobbies. For example, brewing beer should override updating the caller id function of the media center. Why? Because beer brings people together, and because it is evidence that God truly loves us.

Hobbies are pastimes when time is surplus, but when time becomes a commodity, hobbies become investments. The idle time that we once were able to spend frying ants with magnifying glasses transforms into invaluable seconds. Later in life, people would stake fortunes to recreate those misspent and forever vanished seconds.

"America's Poorest"

2005-09-02T13:01:00.000-05:00

As you know from my other post, the Tsunami does not bode well as a comparison to Katrina. While the 9/11 comparisons fail on a number of levels (namely that 9/11 was an act of war), numbers of casualties and media scrambling do compare.

High above sea level, from two towers that reached into the clouds of New York City, power brokers of commerce had their lives taken away from them. The nation mourned the tragedy, and people took vigil in front of memorial walls. Reporters dug into people’s lives and tried to help heal a nation in mourning.

Four years later, from ghettos below sea level and the poverty line, “America’s poorest” were hit hard by “nature’s fury” in New Orleans. (trademarks of MSNBC). The nation observed the tragedy, and people looted Wal-Mart’s televisions. Reporters hovered over the lowest socioeconomic strata and cast judgment on the “poorest” members of our society.

Unquestionably, the people with all of the air time in New Orleans are from a different social strata than those of New York’s 911 victims. I know this because the reporter tells me so. The similarities of comparable numbers of loss of life stop there. The wall-to-wall news coverage of 911 has now been interrupted by an increase in commercial breaks. The president’s heroic call from the rubble has been replaced with an admonishment to the federal agencies. The pleadings from families searching for lost loved ones have been dubbed with the same 30 second looting loop.

New York City fire fighters stared death in the face as they entered those buildings over and over again. When the structures began to fail, the firemen continued to go into those buildings. 24 hours a day emergency workers fought to save human life. From all around the country people drove into the war zone fighting to help save lives.

Some New Orleans precincts report 60% truancy of their own police officers, and the remaining 40% were only visible during the daylight--not to mention the lack of aid from volunteer personnel. People that were never afforded the privilege of private swim lessons were left to drown in the abandoned buildings while half of New Orleans’s finest had found refuge.

I just wonder if this whole thing would be different if the power brokers of New York’s high rise were in the buildings in New Orleans. Would they classify stealing as ingenuity? Would the coverage of a tattered-suit-executive carrying a firearm be portrayed as heroic survival strategy? Would they be made to pile into a 15,000 person sarcophagus?

Wanted: FEMA Director

2005-09-02T07:48:00.000-05:00

Mike Brown? How about Tommy Lee Jones? Is someone available to manage this operation that is able to multitask and prioritize?

Just wondering.

America's Tsunami?

2005-08-30T21:04:00.000-05:00

I have taken in the news through all my senses (as usual) over the past few days. Katrina unbelievably continues to shock and amaze me. Tragically, New Orleans continues to flood, the death count in the coastal area is rising, and the damage estimates exceed global GDPs. Catastrophe has come, and we are now hearing the stories of tragedy. My heart goes out to all of the people whose lives have been effected by Katrina.

Sunday night at 11:00 a professor at a Louisiana University predicted that Katrina may be the American Tsunami. After landfall, we thought we had dodged the bullet, but as the hours passed the damage assessments came in. Then more and more talking heads mentioned the words America’s Tsunami.

Are you serious? 226,000+ people died in the 2004 Tsunami ranking it as one of the worst tragedies in history, and someone can shallowly compare Katrina to the Tsunami? Katrina has killed a number of people. This is a tragedy of its own right, but surely Katrina can’t compare this loss of life to the massive wipeout of the Tsunami.

WTF?

El Sazon Haiku

2005-08-16T19:50:00.000-05:00

Backlit, black on white
"Gran Opening Tomorrow"
Praise God, "!Finally!"

VMBs

2005-08-08T10:22:00.000-05:00

10:18 – Cell phone rings (on the work phone let caller #1 go to voicemail)
10:19 – You have new voicemail
10:31 – Dial voicemail
10:32 – Voicemail: “Hey Jeremy, I was just calling.”
10:33 – erase message and hang up.
11:07 – Cell phone rings (returning call to caller #1, let caller #2 go to voicemail)
11:08 – You have new voicemail
11:14 – Dial voicemail
11:15 – Voicemail: “Hey Jeremy, I was just calling.”
11:16 – erase message and hang up.

By definition, “I was just calling,” “what’s up,” “how are you,” are all voicemail bombs (VMBs). These time wasting messages mean nothing. They are like sending emails with a subject line that says “Whaddup” and no body to the message. Only the VMBs are worse. I cannot just click “move to trash” as casually as my Gmail interface. Instead I have to stop what I’m doing, call my voicemail, enter password, press 1, listen to message, press 7 to delete, and then hang up the call. All of that for absolutely no more information than the incoming call log. Forget the search for the WMDs, people, we need to stop the VMBs.

Grogger Grammar

2005-08-05T10:05:00.000-05:00

Every now and then I get on a grammar kick.

Several years ago I fought a gentleman's fight to remove "X" from the alphabet. I mean the X doesn't do anything that the hard K and S or the Z can't do, and wouldn't the alphabet seem so much more concise at 25 letters as opposed to 26. Of course, that pesky X-ray just looked weird spelled EKS-ray. Needless to say I lost that battle, as you all know (although I still lobby).

Then there was the Eksclamation Ekscitement of the mid 90s. The long, slender dripping Eksclamation point is so mysterious. Ah! He is such an interesting punctuation mark simply in his appearance, and man, the way it can bring to life a statement. Just think about a note I got on my desk last week: “YOU'RE FIRED!!!” Now that had pizzazz. On the other hand the first draft didn't have the same kick, "while we generally find your work abysmal, you are always late, you leave early, and when you are here we are not sure what you do, we simply do not have the funds to pay your poorly negotiated wage nor the coffee and cheese nip bills that you continue to accrue. We are asking you to please never return to this office." Here the obvious was belabored only to end the ranting with the Eksclamation Point’s bastard child—the Period (the story of which cannot be covered here because of the strong emotions that the affair still evokes with the Question Mark). Unfortunately, the Eksclamation Point Ekscitement faired only modest results, but at least Yahoo! bought into it!

My latest grammar kick is the Parentheses promotion. The twins (that begins and ends). The friends with bends. The brother and sister that are real sentence twisters. Oh how I love these guys! I invite them into my sentences to give (the real smart ass) meaning to my sentences, and if you skip over the little secret shared between the brother and sister then you still get the gist of the sentence. Teachers (who never understood my use of the parentheses) have told me to use the Parentheses to store the “beside the point” messages. I thought about that. That would mean that I should tattoo one Parenthesis to my head and the other to my foot. I totally disagree. The Parentheses shout out to the reader, “this little message is cute but if it’s too offensive for you, then it is Parenthetical.” What is even better about the Parentheses is that instead of subtlety including additional information in the sentence, the message has attention drawn to it by the grand introduction and salutation by Mr. & Mrs. Parenthesis.

Even more recently I have sought to incorporate the “air Parans.” Years ago my father started the air quotes, which we all of come to know and love. The air Parans have not been as widely accepted. It seems that just as on the written page, Parans will continue to be the jealous cousins of the quotation marks, but what would you ekspect from that colon family.

I implore you to use more parenthesis (whether you want to or not). They are having a difficult time providing for their families (the brackets), and as of late they have had to turn to prostitution. Mrs. Parenthesis has been working night jobs on the IM circuit :) (look familiar?) Mr. Parenthesis has not fared as well there because seemingly everyone is happy on the IM circuit—probably because they are chatting and not working :(

Please stay tuned as we ramp up for the Em--Dash mania slated for winter 05-06.

Laisser-faire Information Age

2005-08-04T21:43:00.000-05:00

If anyone has strolled through Floydville lately, you may have seen this post about information. While a number of issues arise out of his post, specifically I have been thinking about the gatekeeper crisis in an information flood.

America is a rich culture: we are rich with cars, rich with spacious houses, rich with good healthcare, and we are rich with food. This subtle observation I made while carefully cleaning my seventh plate at Ryan’s Steak House. Then it hit me--the gatekeeper crisis is me.

Super-sized, all-you-can-eat buffets filled with flavored matter in all shapes and sizes epitomize the gluttony of our food rich culture. A family of four can pick up 27 pounds of food for less than two six packs of “good” beer, yet there are still other restaurants in business. Primarily the reason that fine cuisine competes with the “value added” food, is the reason that good information survives in a culture that is information rich.

All day I can super-size and efficienize. I can keep Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Old Navy in business, but that is not sustainable. At some point (around about the fifth plate stretch), I suffer from the lack of quality from this gluttonous lifestyle. I may be able to have all I want all the time, but as Doug noted “57 Channels and There’s Nothing On” becomes a theme song to this excesstasy. The beauty of the free market is that I don’t have to go to Wal-Mart, Ryan’s, or pay for 936 digital channels.

Nor do I have to buy all of the information. Instead, the Internet, which is certainly information rich, is filled with many close relationships in forums, newsgroups, and the blogosphere. People form relationships through the digital divide and provide meaning in a meaningless swath of 1s and 0s. The gatekeeper, as it has always been, is ultimately me. As the free market and a little social Darwinism suggests, the good information will stay around, and the excess may not be around—ever heard of Quincy’s?

Tai Chi

2005-07-26T08:06:00.000-05:00

In yet another attempt to establish that our church is not mainstream, last night we had our first Tai Chi instruction. We brought an instructor into our church building. After some slight rearranging of our ~~pews~~ couches, the sensei led us through centuries of chinese history (in about 7 minutes and 33 seconds). Then all the men of our ~~congregation~~ group touched each other for about two hours. While at one point, I did start to see the interest in greek mentoring, I ended up just wanting to kick everyone's ass.

Bloggers, Cloggers, and Groggers

2005-07-14T15:28:00.000-05:00

I have read blogs everyday for several years, and I have come to realize that there are three types of Bloggers (actually there are a number of other categories that rhyme with -ogger but as will be explained below I have to keep this short). There are the bloggers, the Cloggers, and the Groggers.

The Blogger for the most part comes in 2 varieties. There is the newbie and the tried and true blogger. The Blogger is dedicated to the blog and produces quality content. The Blogger records reflections and diaries their human experience for the world to see. The tried and true blogger has been writing blogs for a number of years and remains dedicated to their publication regardless of their audience. The newbie Blogger differs in that they have only had their blog for less than one month. They produce quality content at regular intervals, but the odds are against them becoming tried and true bloggers.

Cloggers are another species in the blogosphere. The sheer quantity of information that is posted on their site is neither reflective nor spell checked. Cloggers post links and random thoughts about the minutae of their lives. Thus, they clog the blogoshpere with elaborate nothingness.

Then there are the Groggers. I am a Grogger. My brother is a Grogger. In fact, most people that I (physically) know are Groggers. Groggers at one time were likely newbie Bloggers, hog wild about posting the contents of their lives. They used to visit their blog on a regular basis adorning the navigation with links to their friends blogs. Now, however, the grogger has long periods between posts. Weeks and months go by between posts--the Blogger has fallen asleep and wakes up only now and then to post in a groggy state.

To all my fellow Bloggers, Cloggers, and Groggers, Cheers!

Happy Birthday

2005-07-08T11:22:00.000-05:00

I saw her, yea I saw her
With a black tongue tied round the roses
A fist pounding on a vending machine
Toy diamond ring stuck on her finger
With a noose she could hang from the sun
And point it out with the dark sunglasses
Walking crooked down the beach
She spits in the sand
Where their bones are bleaching

And I know I'm gonna steal her life
She doesn't even know it's wrong
And you know I'm gonna make it die
Take her where her soul belongs
Know I'm gonna steal her life
Nothing that I wouldn't try
My sun-eyed girl
Hey my sun-eyed girl
My sun-eyed girl
Hey my sun-eyed girl

I saw her, yea I saw her
With her hands tied back
Her rags are burnin'
Calling out from a landfilled life
Scrawling her name up on the ceiling
Throw a coin in the fountain of dust
White noise, her ears are ringing
Got a ticket for my midnight hanging
Throw a bullet from a freight train leaving

And I know I'm gonna steal her life
She doesn't even know it's wrong
And you know I'm gonna make it die
Take her where her soul belongs
Know I'm gonna steal her life
Nothing that I wouldn't try
My sun-eyed girl
Hey my sun-eyed girl
My sun-eyed girl
Hey my sun-eyed girl

Hey my sun-eyed girl
Hey my sun-eyed girl
My sun-eyed girl
Hey my sun-eyed girl
Hey my sun-eyed girl
Hey my sun-eyed girl
My sun-eyed girl
Hey my sun-eyed girl

Gmail came and my friends went away...

2005-06-23T14:27:00.000-05:00

Where have all my friends gone? I used to get 376 emails a day. peeter@ho2mail.com and refi@yourhouse.com were a few of my regulars. I would come back from a 2-day email vacation and tell my brother how difficult it was to trudge through my swath of 1,143 emails. Not any more. I was smart (so I thought). I carefully forwarded each of my seven email accounts to Gmail. At first it was great! I had an inbox that reflected the real email that I was getting everyday. When I checked my email every fifteen minutes, the inbox had not changed. Then fifteen minutes later, ding, 1 email. This cycle continued all day, so that at the end of a typical day I had only received 37 emails. My inbox bandwidth is 10% of its former self. It had gone on a spam diet and lost 90% of its weight. I was no longer troubled/amused with all of the strange email, but in a way became lonely. Let's face it, there is something about saying I just received 476 emails. Of course, we all know that a very large percentage of 476 (maybe 470) is sometimes spam, but there is the chance that all these people really want to talk to me. Gmail came and my friends went away. My cyberlife is more lonely than ever.
:-(

LIZ PHAIR DAY

2005-06-17T08:36:00.000-05:00

today i woke up with tunes racing through my head. liz phair's melodies were echoed in my mind as consciousness slowly wore off. i indulged myself and cranked the ipod to my modest liz phair collection. what a good feeling.

satisfying music cravings like satisfying food cravings like scratching an itch--FEEL SO GOOD!

Major Setback for Our Church

2005-06-06T12:57:00.000-05:00

In a major setback to my church community idea, the Supreme Court made a ruling today.

Returning currents in the sea of community

2005-05-05T10:08:00.000-05:00

Last summer I had the summer intern experience from hell. It was one of those jobs where you spend half of your day dreaming up creative ways to insult all of your boss's sensibilities when you quit. By the end of the summer, my elaborate schemes of insulting were booby trapped conditions of his communication. "Boy, if he says this then I will explode into this tirade," I thought. Of course I never said anything. I casually accepted my station in life and complained constantly to Dorry.

Slowly as the fall semester drifted on, I casually disappeared from the day-to-day exercise in sadism. Finally, by the end of the semester, I no longer worked there. I had no harsh feelings--just an empty desk and an empty chair.

Everything was good. Several months passed, and then one Friday night HE CALLED. Out of the blue, I was out having some drinks, and my cell phone rang, I didn't recognize the number, and all of a sudden I was on the phone with him. I felt like a dog that was always beaten at the sound of a bell (or fed whatever pavlov did--beaten is better for my story). Shocked, I wondered what the hell he wanted. "Sure, tomorrow is good. One o'clock, no problem," I agreed to meet him at his house to work on his computer without a second thought. I just wanted to get off the phone. I would have promised him my first born son. This man had very strange effects on me.

I worked on his computer, and he arranged for me to start doing some work for him at consulting rates, which are 5 times what he paid me over the summer. Over the course of the next few months, I would work for him every few weeks, and he referred me to work for others. Most importantly in that period, I developed a friendship him that I never would have imagined possible.

As I looked for a summer internship this summer. I listed this boss as a reference. He told me later that he had given me one of the best references he had given anyone. Now, here is a guy that I envisioned breaking into little pieces and insulting his mother in four languages, but I waited. Somehow in the sea of relationships the currents took us out to sea and we were able to meet at a different place. Amazing.

LAME-O

2005-05-05T10:06:00.000-05:00

Okay, so now people have linked to the remnants of the blog that I used to update and in parantheses they have to indicate that I am still alive. There may be a problem. As part of my New May resolution I have decided that I will post at least once a week.

Ding! Dong! Finals Done!

2004-12-15T16:57:00.000-05:00

Thank God! After another grueling semester of law school bliss I can finally say that finals are done. The joy of studying 10-14 hours a day has finally come to an end. While I am a little joyous, I am mostly sad that this wonderful test of my santity and marriage is drawing to a close.

Dirty, dirty people

2004-12-10T16:45:00.000-05:00

If you ever need a reminder of how dirty we are. Pick up your mouse. In fact, right now I encourage you to pick up your mouse and look at the bottom of it. If you are not fortunate enough to have an optical mouse and still have a rollerball, then it is even better. Take the ball out and look at the rollers inside the mouse. I am fortunate enough to have an optical mouse, yet I still discover the depths of my funk were unknown--until now. I heard a creaking as I surfed the web. I picked up my mouse, which rode atop the surface of a particularly clean desktop (as far as I am going to reveal anyway). Low and behold the bottom of my mouse had encrudations all along the smooth plastic rails. I mean what on earth is all of this junk? I think I am a clean person. Generally my office is a rather neat place, but I am really funky--even with an optical mouse!

IPOD v. GHETTO BLASTER

2004-11-25T11:29:00.000-05:00

The other day I was sitting in my car trying to get in a last minute read before class. All of the sudden, I heard this irritating sound that distracted me from my intense devotion to the understanding of account. (btw law students who were philosophy/English majors were not meant to study accounting principles; hence my dire need for concentration) Pulled from the T-chart and journal entries, I began wondering what on earth was wafting through the air like the falling leaves. Soon I realized it was rhythmic distractions of someone’s radio blaring through the streets. My first reaction was “um, where’s your ipod? I don’t want to hear your music.”

Fifty years ago there was no such thing as a personal music device. The JUKE BOX and the PHONGRAPH blasted music waves through the air. People shared their space with the same tunes and experienced the music together.

Even twenty years ago the idea of personal entertainment was just being realized. A person would have only had a walkman that could carry a single album. Twenty years ago the GHETTO BLASTER was the hit. People would gather around a single source of music and would dance in the streets (in theory and in Hollywood anyway).

Now the world is different. We can all have our own personal soundtracks to our life. As we glide through our days, arrangements by U2, Radiohead, Cold Play, Tom Petty, and Bob Dylan accent our experiences. And if suddenly bad things happen the best solution is to hit the “Blue” playlist.

I’m a technophile from way back. I love these gadgets, but when I was suddenly offended by this music the other day it made me wonder how technology sometimes allows us to become seclude into our own pods. This phenomena seems to pervade much of our personal entertainment: home entertainment centers, personal computing, game consoles, stereos, ipods. Sometimes I have to balance my fascination (my wife would say obsession) with technology with my love and devotion to community.

I don't really have any great conclusions to draw. I still want an ipod (for christmas if anyone wants to send me one). I don't want to be offended when I hear someone else's music. In fact, I may want to share in that moment, which means that i have to roll down my window and listen even when that means losing focus on my ever important task at hand.

I quit smoking

2004-10-25T19:14:00.000-05:00

I quit smoking cigarettes about four years ago. Slowly and by many intermediate steps I finally quit tobacco altogether and any other flavor of nicotine product. Today I can say something like "free at last" or "I kicked the habit" or myriad other cliches. The fact remains: I quit a habit that the CDC names as the number one killer in the United States.

Instead I choose everyday to expose myself to the CDC's #3 killer. If not dying was my chief concern with smoking, I wonder what the reaction would be if I said to my wife, "Honey, I have decided I am going to kick the habit--I am walking everywhere I go." I am sure after the glowing images of me losing 50 pounds cleared her mind she would say, "you're crazy." Indeed, I would be crazy. The town where I live is so remote from my daily functions that I burn through the equivalent of the carton of cigarettes in about the same time. Not to mention the fact that my main thoroughfare is fondly referred to as the "DIEWAY." I am still not sure if that is because people drive 75 MPH on a highway that has turning lanes, or if the level of daily commuters crafts soldiers of road rage where even the grannies are "packing heat." Anyway, the problem is that I cannot walk.

I made this observation tonight when I saw a T-Bone in the middle of the DIEWAY. I said to my wife, I believe that one day we can live in a community where 90% of our daily necessities are within walking distance. Now that sounds a bit corny, a bit idealistic, and a little too warm and fuzzy. Just like quitting smoking I think that realizing community is the art of intent. Choice driven living that sometimes opts for a lower paying job, or sometimes means that we pay more for our groceries. The totality of living in community means for one thing making it through the tough part of relationship and learning to live with each other and near each other. But perhaps the hardest part is giving up that drive after a good meal or a cup of coffee.

REdiscovering community

2004-08-22T07:14:00.000-05:00

I was thinking about the title to my blog this morning, and I am certain that it has been mistitled. Notions of development are often driven by profit and success. The impetus for the developer should fulfill some intrinsic good. The developer should stand in the gap between the reclusiveness of individuals and provide a link for people in community. Lately, however, the developer has created price-bracketed retreats. People leave work, get in their cars, and retreat to their homes that are up to 100 miles away. On a side note, the fascination that we have with our success and control in our lives is most like an addict's addiction to heroin. We are absolutely in awe of our own success and we are willing to keep it at any price. So we are willing to buy big cars with big gas tanks so that we can make the long hauls everyday. We are making huge sacrifices to live this type of life, but when someone talks about living in community they say, "but that takes too much sacrifice."

2004-07-26T08:33:00.000-05:00

Treading lightly upon the grounds of sociology and psychology, I am reminded of the need for community. Man is not created for isolation. Some of life's greatest successes and life's greatest disappointments are experienced in the relationship of others, but in solitude, humans experience the darkest depths of desparation. Community crosses the bounds of temporal and spatial boundaries to get at something spiritual. In that way, psychology, in many cases, fills a gap created by an insufficient community. So while my greatest concern of community is a spatial understanding, the foundation of community must be understood as relational.
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First Post

2004-07-24T11:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, so here goes. I am going to try and start this blog and stay somewhat steadfast in posting. Specifically, I am going to try and work out some of my thoughts on community with this post. As a rising second year law student, I am focusing my energy and scholarship on community development, so as I work these ideas out I will try to post my ideas here.
Please feel free to share your thoughts as well...