New Leaf

Hi, It's been a pretty long time since I have put up anything of any consequence, but starting with tonight, I am making a new commitment to the blog. I have been more flakier than usual because of an increase in work stress, and also feeling leerier of spending big chunks of time in the office on personal work. Also the computer wasn't really set up in the new home, until just a couple weeks ago, and even when it was, there was usually a bicycle propped up against the desk. Now that the bike can be propped up against the bed or the closet door, instead of the desk or the refrigerator, my access to the computer is literally inimpeded. The other big factor is that over the Labor Day weekend, I gritted my teeth and installed the cable modem that the nice girl at the Time Warner gave me. And it works! And its really quite amazing.

This weekend I spent in Pittsburgh, doing the generous and improbable. I attended my father's 50th high school reunion with him in a prosperous suburb of the city, as well as one of the old, venerable business clubs established by the city's business establishment. All in all, it was a very nice weekend, a good opportunity to get out of the city, a nice chance to see where my Dad grew up, and a good way to make him happy. A great part of what he wanted to do on the trip was to drive by the houses in which he grew up and spent time in and to see Pittsburgh again for the first time after many years. What surprised me is that while he was showing me around, not only was I seeing things that he remembered, but I was seeing the backdrop of the stories from my childhood. Where my father got hit by a car, the church tower that he climbed surrepticiously, the hill he climbed with groceries in his little wagon during the war, because his parents were saving their gas rations. One aspect of the suburb it its relentless homogeneity ("The only Catholics we knew lived in that house there") and with some notable exceptions, the people at the dinner were exceptionally conservative. I had lots of exchanges with people at the fancy dinner about how lovely the suburb was, which were followed by lots of curious comments about how it hadn't changed at all, after all these year it is still the same, which I took to be a coded way of saying that it is so nice it is still white. In fact the neighborhood, and the football field and the municipal park, and the little downtown area were a bit heavy on the all american high school nostalgia for my taste and I found myself reflecting on my own attraction and repulsion to school spirit, high school and the pursuit of popularity, when, as I got a little older, I found so much in the world that was more important and worthwhile than high school.