From my head

Civilian casualities in Iraq down 36%!!!!

That was an actual yahoo news headline. I guess that we are supposed to feel good about this. Now we are killing fewer innocent people than at this time last year!!

So… for the last week I have been visiting my family in Wyoming. I grew up in Laramie and my parents, my brother and his family still live here. It is a beautiful place and I feel a lot of attachment to it even though I have not lived here for seven years. This homecoming has gotten me thinking about Community and how so few of us Americans have a real sense of it. We are maybe in the third generation (at most) of children who commonly move away from their parents and away from the land where they grew up. I know many people my age who cannot definitively say where they grew up because they lived so many different places when they were young. Probably many people would say that they don’t see a problem with this or that it is a good and modern thing to have the freedom to choose where you live. I feel that this is an example of our modern lives convincing us that we have gained when we have lost. Would you rather have the “freedom to choose where you llve,” or would you rather have the comfort and confidence of living near extended family who will help you when you need it? I know that many people may have no desire to live near their family because their relationships are severely damaged and I consider myself lucky that this is not the case for me.

We are only 50 years into this process if you think that prior to the 1950’s very few people moved out of the area they grew up in. Now we see a third generation of humans whose parent and grandparents lived in different or multiple different places and who have no sense of connection to any particular place. I don’t think that is healthy for most people. I have lived many places since leaving Laramie but I still feel like I am returning home when I return and I am very grateful for that feeling. Many times in my life I have felt very lost and I do not want to imagine how much more lost I would have felt without Laramie.

Here it goes..

I’ve realized lately that I haven’t done any writing in a long time and I miss the therapeutic aspect of it. I thought for a long time there was no reason to write a blog if nobody was going to read it but now I realize that there is value in writing it for myself.