On friday, I spoke with a coworker on suburbs and their effects on cities. I think this is the first time he's been exposed seriously to the idea, and it led to an interesting conversation. I remembered this as I walked back from Coffee Tree today -- it was a nice walk, and there were a lot of people out in Squirrel Hill. CTree was packed, and people were walking the streets, getting ice cream, talking, .. people of every age, with families, dating teenagers, groups of friends hanging out, etc. I didn't feel quite so alone, and felt almost happy as I walked back.
From a conversation that feels like ages ago.."What if I run out of ideas someday?""Pat, I don't think you'll ever run out of new ideas"
Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting an elderly guy and talking with him on politics and life in general for about half an hour. It was fun. Reflecting on it now, it reminds me of another conversation I had about 8 months ago that illustrated how divergent the political (and hence class) interests of the petit bourgeois and the bourgeois proper are, and how the first have a difficult time deciding how to vote in elections, because the bourgeois and fundamentalist proletarians largely compose the Republican party, and the Democrats are largely composed of the rest of the proletariat and academes.
I'm making another try at getting rid of the books I've mentally marked as junk, re-listing all of them on Amazon and inviting people I know in town to take them.
