I headed west to grow up with the country

The national professional association for my profession recently met in our fair city. During one lunch I sat between one gentleman from Missoula, MT and another easterner who had ventured west in the '70s after his stint in the Army. They traded stories about the old and current days, skiing, places long ago, etc.

And then strangely I, a skinny little boy from Cleveland, OH, was able to swap some stories as well. I realized that starting with age 15 I spent some or all of my summers out west. In '81 I went hiking with the Boy Scouts in NM; the next year was a time in Utah working on a restoration project; and in '83 I found myself as a "ranchhand" at a camp in Steamboat Springs. During these trips I discovered Jack Kerouac, "Siddhartha", and that some women sprout hair from their areolae.

Dark side of the moon

Lately I've stricken in an area of my body that is the source of 90% of the jokes of boys age 3 to 15 and South Park fans of any age. While I've relished the ability, with my special credentials, to add to that voluminous body of scatological humor, I've resisted adding my special stamp to the genre.

'Cause it really does hurt. I've hurt off-and-on since mid April, with minor surgery planned in a few days. So in one sense I'm dealing with my mortality and it shows most acutely when I go for appointments at my special doctor. I pull into the parking ramp and the parking ticket is spit out of the machine. I wait for the lumbering elevator impatiently in the quiet hallway with dingy carpet. I enter the hushed waiting room and hand my parking ticket to the receptionist to be validated.

I feel like Jack Lemmon in one of those Florida retiree movies. Except I don't have a big space egg growing in my indoor pool. Instead, it's growing in my... oh never mind.

Big three killed my baby

One thing that's been revealed in this Bush recession is how the auto and housing industries are economically intertwined as the bleeding edge of the Sprawl Industry. Their products are both required to create a successful suburban ecological niche that is the predominant form of new residential and commercial development.

And there has been scarce talk in the national media of how the long term sustainability of the society is not served by the ad infinitum production of these human environments (though I hear there's a new brand of Cheetos that will do well there. But watch out for this bag.) , and it simply does not make sense for federal public policy to support these environmentally damaging industries as the twin pillars of our economy. But you already knew that.

I really like the idea that similar to having banks prove their worth, land uses should be subject to that type of review.