Isn't Anything

Millions rethinking life every day

2008-06-24T18:36:00.000-07:00

I came across this in the NYTimes today, and found it rather telling. Current events with fuel and all are making exurbia become quaint.

I had a conversation just the other day about the whole rethinking process. How it comes about and how agile you can be to the situation. There are two events that forced my rethinking recently, the first was Katrina '05 and watching Memphis folk in a freefall as gas prices temporarly hit almost exactly what they are today for a week or two. I had just arrived back from a rail trip of the west coast (SF to Vancouver, BC.) I was amazed about how people treated it like heat wave that will eventually pass. It also gas seemed weird to be around 2 bucks a gallon since the 90's. Beyond fuel, we were just fortunate people focusing all our efforts on man made terror when natural forces had such an impact.

The second rethinking was much more personal. I experienced temporary blindness during the summer of '06. Having a short term disability can force a lot of hard decisions at once, probably the scariest, my livelihood being snuffed out. All my life I had been a graphical thinker, and suddenly I had to come up with an 'alternative'. Before it got too far, things came back to normal, but ominous prognoses were out there - it may come back.

Getting back to the article, it seems that thought forms are probably breaking down every day. Paradigms are shifting, new thought forms are coming to light, and probably a few more buzz word things are happening to the world around us. At any rate, as humans we adapt to new situations. Families who sought rural settings, must concider the urban for the good of themselves and the common good. McMansions will give way to mixed use buildings, Hummers will be traded in for Priuses. What a difference a few years can make.

tales of a bad blogger

2008-06-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

Being that my last post was 6/1 and I was planning to get posts up every Sunday, I have fallen terribly short. It must be on the account of my shallow thoughts, or rather my deeper thoughts have been paid for and I spend most of my free time staring into the landscape.

Sometimes my neighbor at work (who happens to be the office webmaster) have tea and lament about how bad our blogging habits have gotten. Sighs all around.

That being said, I will attempt to slap something together on my way home from work everyday. Enough said.

House - after one year of living

2008-06-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

About a year ago I got out of the blogging game. I had just taken a new job and soon after the orientation I was pulled in the undertow of hardcore new career anxiety. I would spend days and days writing and publishing things for work and learning new ropes. I probably started about 20 posts that never got off the ground (and about 100 or more comments on other blogs that I couldn't complete) I also got this work related blog to build. Long story short, if you want to kill your personal blogging life, do something work required.

After mulling it over a bit, I began to come up with a compromise about how to get my blog back with two rules. 1) Develop my interests that tend to be work related and I don't have enough time for or interest to keep them up on the clock. 2)Avoid all meta tags that would link this to something else, my hope is that the world wide web can still be anonymous for this to happen.

The title of this post is a bow to 'House - after five years of living' a film by Charles and Ray Eames. Its a hard act to keep up enthusiasm about the early International Movement, for me, its a lot more than left over furniture and architecture. The buildings of the movement have been written off for a long time now. I think this article in NYT began to let me understand why I got into this movement in the first place. At any rate, for me there is no physical house, but as at the images in the Eameses film depict, many images over time.

In the search for trying to find words to match these images over the past year, I recently stayed with friends on the east coast, the following are some of the answers I provided to questions.

Q- How's it going?

A- Umm, great, I guess. Things are working out. It was a radical break from the South, but it wasn't shocking. Well, let me back up, it was mildly shocking, I felt my life expectancy go thru the roof, I never drive my car, and never go anywhere with out a jacket.

Q- So, what about that North West weather?

A- Yeah, its no joke. I think this place has good fraction of newcomers who just can't get over it and bail the first year. Rain is easy, but the unending grey gets on your nerves after awhile. Not to say that there aren't welcome breaks of sun but living with two months of reliably good weather takes some time getting used to. I'd love to convince friends that its a swell place to be, but I wouldn't want to make them suffer.

Q- So its like miserable all the time?

A- I actually don't mind what I call the 50/50 days, cloudy mornings and sunny afternoons. I never care for sun in my eyes first thing in the morning anyway. Something nobody told me about is that there is more sun this time of year than others, we get almost 8 hours more sun light around summer solstice than winter. It get annoying when your dog wakes you up at 4:30 cause theres lite outside, and dusk last past 10. During the fall, gloom hits fast, but it kind of feels like a Morissey album, gloomy happy/sad.

Q- Ah, music, are you into the scene out there?

A- Well, no. I first moved here and took a craiglist share in band house with some great musicians. It was an incredible lifestyle, I felt walking around that there was a band practicing in almost every house. I later moved out to an island community, not to escape it, but rather not burn myself out on it. Theres also a ton of good radio and I listen to all my old favorite stations on the Internet.

Q- All that city and you had to move out to a burb?

A- Ok, sure I get your angle. The town was great, but in the end I didn't want to get attached to a place that gentrified and changed into something I loathed again. I loved my landing spot, but knew that I had to score a 1/2 mil house up there to really settle down. I did alot of freaking out and wanted my Memphis house back again. I considered all my options and resolved that I could live with a commute as long as I wasen't behind the wheel or in a bus. I also had to consider uprooting my son and moving him out here as well. In the end, the ferry commute made the most sense.

Q- Alright, weather conditions aside, why are you staying there and what would you tell somebody who was considering the city.

A- This place has a level of dorkiness that is way beyond anywhere else. Social groups of people who are programming new open source software, for fun?? Families who geek out on carbon footprint ratings. Road cyclists with the latest dorky technical gear (and I've been around alot of cyclists, but none with the abandon to totally dork out like this.) Wiccan covens, Dancing Mime troupes, juggling gangs, basically folks who are really into what the love doing, find friends into the same thing and don't care what others think. I think this kind of thing happens alot of places, but in little blocks here and there, here its the norm, reckless abandon, dorks rule.

More to come.. hopefully

Week Two- Lay of the land

2007-06-10T23:03:00.000-07:00

Chances are if you live in this city, you live on a slope. Most residential in the city is on hills of one sort of another and therefore industrial takes up most of the flatlands. Coming from a place that is mostly flat, this seems like a solid connection to where geography dictates zoning. As I've come to learn over time, much of this glacier alluvial has been heavily modified, or sluced to accomidate development here. Entire hills have been pulled down to make more level ground.

With all this re-grading going on to benefit the greater good, my knees still feel the burn. They were spoiled with walking and biking on flat ground for three years and now tell me when its going to rain and threaten to give way when I least expect it. I've done everything humanly possible to avoid a blowout, but I think its time I conceder the unthinkable, I might have to see a doc who will tell me that I will be on crutches for six months after surgery.

Seeing coworker go thru this is painful enough, even more distressing is that he will be out of commission the entire 'nice weather season' here. If it comes to that I would be fine, at least I'm not sweating my ass off and get to catch up on some reading and blogging.

Seattle : One week down

2007-06-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

Its very hard to document personal change, but from reviewing other blogs on relocations, I'm committed to giving a weekly revue of events and conclusions as I have time.

First of all, I came to this place with almost no connections to the city limits. I found a room on craigslist and picked it up. This neighborhood is very 1930s/40s suburban, yet the downtown skyline is in view on all the streets. My neighbors are predominantly Japanese-American retirees who little more than manicure their garden/yards sunup to sundown. There is a more Filipino element a few blocks away and just down the hill is Little Saigon (which is haunting similar to Cleveland) and at the bottom of the hill is call the 'International District' which I take as being p.c. for 'Chinatown'

I've tried to get out on my bike a few times, but the hills are too much for me and I need time to condition myself up before I can. I take the bus to work although I could beat it easily on bike. The entire city is addicted to buses for the time being until real (portland MAX style) light rail is completed. Being that my only places to be at the time are work and home, they do the job with few frills. I keep my headphones cranked up to avoid loudness in other languages.

The weather here is very nice, and all the locals tell me its a total anomaly that there is so much sun. So far the people are very nice also, but I guess that may change as the weather does. The generalization that this place is jacked up on espresso is for the most part true. But I've come to the point where my nervous system can't handle it and have to settle for my tea. I'm still shaking off a very long stressful road trip and sleeping and eating are finally coming back to normal. My landlord also co-owns a yoga studio down the street that is helping me adjust. My work here is going to be a lot harder than back in Memphis, I knew that before hand, and took it anyway. Now I just have to work on the defense mechnisims to keep my going.

More later..

This place blows!

2007-05-30T21:16:00.001-07:00

I can't understand why anybody would choose to live here

Coming Clean

2007-05-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

Its already May! Its about to get hotter than hell, and I will be leaving soon.

I've been very cagey with my posts as of late mostly due to a job hunt, and the dangers of totally blowing my cover, to possible future employers and current co-workers. But things have settled down recently, and the quest is over. I got the gig and now I've got to get to the business of sorting myself out, packing up and driving over that bridge one more time.

This being the case, my last day set, I've got a lot of explaining to do. I don't use canned answers and never downplay the feeling of getting ripped apart. We all have one hometown, and mine will always be Memphis. Short of a natural disaster, it will always be here, clunking along, happily running about 10 years behind the coasts. My decision was based on the assumption that I am (professionally) a sum of all my experiences. I thrive off of exposure to new ideas, and my livelihood banks upon that assumption. I'm almost ready to turn around and give back my lessons learned, but need a better capstone before settling down.

One reading this would probably expect that I just wanted to go to grad school, which is far from what I'm getting at. I'm the type that needs to apply learned items immediately to resonate. After absorption, I tend to broadcast these items quickly. Coincidentally,
this is a very marketable skill for workplaces. I was in search of the perfect space that can handle the convergence of Architecture, technology and sustainability. I can now say that I've found that place where I feel very comfortable and feel surrounded by people who take the 'changing the world' phrase very seriously.

On the local blogs, I find the enthusiasm about locals wanting to make good changes here very refreshing. But what about the bigger idea, that there really are 'change the world' ideas out there that could have far reaching effects. Leadership here feels like being a missionary of great ideas that are worth spreading, but look elsewhere for application. Life is short and impatience is a virtue of mine. The sense of urgency in my tone comes from a gut feeling that the problem solving momentum should be kept at a fever pitch.

As a second motivator, I think that Memphis folk are generally a stagnant lot, that could use a lot more exposure to the rest of the world. Thats a generalizing statement if there every was one, but I work on a theory that the more exposed a populace is to the outside, the better rounded its attitudes (tword civic, social and professional ends.) In the end it comes down to perspective, and lack thereof.

Can perspective change in a vacuum? Rhetorical question, but its rather obvious that this city depends heavily on outsiders for leadership. Sometimes branded as carpetbaggers, they are literally the lifeblood of the town. Some mornings, I wake up and think that the city will just come to its senses, admit that it has nothing to lose, stop defending its sacred cows and realize that its statistically impossible to increase the Graceland fan base. Greater success stories have been made from much less fertile soil than here.

The above are just some things that stuck in my head from many conversations recently that have been raking me over the coals for such an insensitive act. My comeback is that I plan to be a bridge of good ideas back and forth, and that having folks out there spreading the word of what a cool place Memphis is can be better than having all this activity bottled up and undersold.

Many Apologies

2007-03-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

I know, Its been awhile, and for good reason, home internet access is a not a possibility anymore and I don't want to give my employer reasons to hate me for being an internet slacker. So gettin online is gonna be a problem for a few more days. I could give you a laundry list on top of its just too freaking nice outside to get down about my web presence, but I shall refrain. (any suggestions on a non-starbucks late night wi-fi joint?)

Anyway, while you were in the midst of March madness I was doing hard work out West, now that the jet lag has worn off and pending commitments are squared away (and get off my bike for a little while) I might get some time to work on the photos and put together my first MATAlac Research Labs post of whats going on.

Excited?

thank you for hanging on there

Sincerely

# 53-Summer-Binghampton

Big time extra credit if you know this building!

A month late and in questionable weather

2007-02-19T23:13:00.000-08:00

My new baby has arrived. This being the second bike (and my first new bike in 12 years) I was really stoked when it started coming together last month, only to find that I had to wait another month to get it in my size. Some guy 12 years ago talked me into a size too small and I always regretted it.

I picked it up and thought I was going to pack it into my car, but figured that I would test ride it for a bit while I was still at the shop. a bit turned in to two hours in the blowing light flurries saturday and I was fully in love. Sunday the sun came out and I made no less than six stops between downtown and east memphis showing friends off my new baby. I had forgotten how fun it all was, socializing by bike. Who could resist hanging out for a sec when you roll up in a bike. But I also came back to the realization that some drivers (especially SUV drivers) can be totally annoying and totally fuc&!ng dangerous at times.

Anyway, I bought this specifically for commuting to work. About a year ago I got into the idea of getting a Vespa scooter, then found out that I wasen't affluent enough to purchase one outright and didn't care for crazy high interest rate payments. I had a bike, but it was a bike left after my crazy meth head neighbors 'upgraded' it with my bike. It was a piece of junk and always reminded me of the bike I lost. After my apt building made a big deal of my bike being chained up outside, I parted it out and went bikeless since last october.

Around November, I asked my gear head co-worker what kind of bike he would pick as a high-end commuter (a car replacing bike) and he picked the one pictured above. I figured it was only good practice since I was trying to sell clients and others on the idea that it was smarter to put in bike racks instead of taking up more ground for extra parking. That problem solved, I got the extra bonus of reconnecting with the experience of biking that I had cultivated in NY and the side effect of physical activity. This being the driving factor, I explored the possibility that I could actually park my car 90% of the time and only use it for long hauls out of the neighborhood. (the 90% is a very optimisic case, If I reach 50% work commutes I would call it a big success)

So there you have it, big problems and cool solutions, kinda like what I want to do all together in a nutshell. I will let you know how it goes, but I can't say that I want to get fully involved in a commuter biking blog. Well see. Hopefully it can offset some of the more depressing posts that I put up.

The Tipping Point

2007-02-15T20:01:00.000-08:00

Its been awhile, and I've been ultra busy. But its time to let it all out...

The Greening Greater Memphis meeting was a week ago, and what a difference a week makes. Talking with others the past week, it was really a coup of marketing that got so many people out there, and listening to the right messages. But of all the people that I talked to who were involved, it seemed like a beautiful anarchy of various causes coming together for something that could work out to really change the city. I've always had the sense that the city could transcend it current disposition of crime ridden, poverty stricken, backwards mindset hell hole and become the progressive capital of the south (just below Austin of course.) For a moment it came together; if public consensus builds an idea better than goverments and corportations can, than it has to be followed out exactly. As I saw the slides show places that I had once lived near, I began to realize that I could never see this with fresh enough eyes to get motivated behind it. Are we here to copy other success stories or rather to define our own successes as we find them.

I liked it when Alex Garvin got up and talked about Wharton expressing his need for 'magnets' , probably the most profound thing I heard all night. Like putting something together that would really rope 'em in every day, year round. We're talking about THE amenity, that is going to fire all cylinders at once and get something off the ground. When he put up Bryant Park as a 'magnet' he could have put up a number of places, like Pioneer Square in Portland or Dupont Circle in DC. These are city magnets, where the populace loses their inhibitions about exposing themselves to the 'element' and people can meet with others, enjoy outdoor dining, maybe a movie. There's nothing super magnetic about greenlines or a park that requires driving to. (btw: I'm a little miffed about how all the speakers glossed over the only existing greenline in the VECA neighborhood)

When it comes down to it, Memphis is moderately endowed with natural resources when you look at the national picture. The one clear thing that I noticed of the two greenlines put up on the presentation is that it was claiming to benefit all of Memphis, but it seemed like only certain owners stood to benefit, when wide swaths of central and south memphis were totally missed ( probably the places that needed the most effort.) At any rate, its heart was in the right place, but I think that the populace was signing up for a harder fight than at first glance.

For all the gains in aura that the GGM meeting brought up last week, I find it funny that people aren't talking about how Main street's largest employer behind the government and MLGW delivered what amounts to a slap in the face for the city when they decided to move out east (seriously, check out the spin ,) All tied up in stadiums and greenlines, we've stopped negotiation with the lifeblood of the city, the largest employers, and let the philosophy of "If we create buildings for the rich (bigger tax base) than the rich will come", they won't come if they don't have the jobs to come here for. They will move out there to be closer to work and wash their hands of the whole deal.

Feeling the crunch of this, still renting because what I want - I cant afford, and a collapse of sorts in my personal life, have had me on the phone to the Pacific time zone to find out what may (and probably will) come next. As painful as this is to write about, its even worse to live out, like a long-term bad hangover and all you want is relief. I keep telling myself that I could have avoided alot of grief and not become so attached, but it happened. Once I thought that I could breeze thru here without any drama, when exactly the opposite has happened, I got hung up in a situaion that I had to go with Plan B. Life becomes un-enjoyable and talking to friends gets harder because you know you're decisions are going to distance you from them. I feel much older that I did a week ago, and a little less wiser.

Responcibilities, Prequels and Caveats

2007-02-02T11:51:00.000-08:00

Wow, getting listed as a 'good Memphis blog' in fearlessvk's blog (btw- thx vk) is something that I wasen't prepared for. To give you a better explanation of what is going on here, I need to give you a bit of a preamble.

First, I picked the name MATAlac a few years ago on the Goner board. I first heard MATAlac during H.S., its a hybrid of MATA (Memphis Area Transit Authority- Substandard public transit exclusively used by the lowest of the lower class) and Cadillac (preferred ride of Memphians looking to make a statement, regardless of race.) Anyway, I was started on public transit early since I had to ride the bus from the burbs to Midtown to go to school. I was always the only school kid on the bus in the morning and taking it home I learned how drug deals go down when I took the Binghampton route. Before coming back here, I was completely acclimated to NYCTA(80% of NYers use it every day!) My mastery of public transit even extended on how to use commuter train lines in Upstate NY and create cool hikes between train stations around where the AT crosses the Hudson. Every time I visit a place I always want to ride the public transit and see how people live and see everything. Back in 2005 I rode almost every transit system from the Bay area up to Vancouver, BC (and took Amtrak between points). I'm usually the guy talking to the driver and getting to know his world- the operators attitude means a lot to make the entire experience happen. I could go on and on about the range of operators that I've met over the years.

Getting back here, I took a job where I had to ride the bus, not to make a statement, but I went years car free in NY and needed a way to get places. I lived close to a stop, but it took the bus twice as long to get places, 30 minutes between busses, and schedules were bad (just try to make sense of that MATA phone based schedules, I dare you). Later on my bike was absconded (I wanted to leave that day), and things just got worse. I eventually broke down and bought a reasonable car outright and in lieu of a large note, I pay in repair and insurance. I've had spells of bus riding since then for one reason or another, but its never something I look forward to and public transit w/o headphones is pure hell.

I once attended a planning meeting for MATA (they list them on their website when they bother to update it) and walked into a total quagmire of a stagnant bureaucracy, unresponsive to riders needs and no solid plan for the future that doesn't involve greedy city contractors and big development interests in brand new transit stations for poor people, yay! At any rate, a public transit system is a barometer of the cities health in general.

I'm not for making a deeper analysis of city demographics. I wanted to ride the bus and I slipped into the car ownership trap like everyone else. Everyone tells me to wait 5 years and see what happens. Ok, so I wait 5 years, now what, is my life transformed by city improvements? Are they on the horizon? Would my voice make a difference in the city mind set? If I were working in Gates' paradigm of vision vs delusion, I would chalk it up to a major delusion of the populace that this is normal, nothing needs maintenance and if it doesn't work, I'll just move further away from the problem. The invisible hand will take care of everything.

As much as I fretted over it, I think the root problem is that Memphis doesn't realize that all of these ills have been vaccinated in other places. Our leaders attend these national conferences and meet with people who have solved these problems, yet they don't apply them here.

Anyway- a rhetorical question to be played out in blogs when I have more time.

Footnote- Isn't Anything refers to the My Bloody Valentine's 1988 LP release before Loveless. For Kevin Shields to dub an album of amazing distortion range of is the definition of cynical understatement.

Happy Groundhog Day!!!

2007-02-02T11:13:00.000-08:00

I'm so happy about Groundhog Day that I could spit. Woo Hoo!

Most of my excitement about today isn't based upon the tradition, but rather the movie Groundhog Day (1993) w/ one of Bill Murray's better parts pre-Rushmore. The movie parallels my life since coming back here. Like Phil in the movie, I came back with a general idea that it this town was a 'hit it and split it' gig, then woke up the the fact that everyday was turning out be a basic repeat of the last day. Self-destructive tendencies took over for awhile, then realized that the only way to move on is to find a reason to live and push on without concern for status quo. Shake thing up as hard as you want, blindside people with your thoughts and flip 'em out of this rut that is called Memphis mindset. I've made some great friends along the way, but working on the principal that everything has time limits, hence nothing should be put off until tomorrow, make every moment count especially when you aren't getting paid a dime (or any other currency) in compensation. I sum it up this way- you have no idea where you will end up keeping your options open. I sure hope the movie is on cable tonight.

The End of Apathy

2007-01-26T14:08:00.000-08:00

Due to some recent conversations I've dubbed 2007 the end of apathy for my generation. I've worked so hard in my past to avoid coming off as righteous, and in the midsummer of my years it has become an unavoidable consequence of being human: we're born, raised, live a little and then some day it hits us what we are suppose to be doing. About a week ago I was asked to write a three sentence bio for an introduction to a slide show I was presenting. I listed off a lot of things that could be construed as a well-rounded professional, but in very small doses. Something that would tell the audience: Wow, he's been in a lot of fields of work, but what does it all mean? What is he getting at?

My co-workers have a high tolerance for my rumination of facts with no real direction, no application and barely any sense. Others have better skills to lay these things out more clearly for public consumption than I. Some are so cultured that they must now work in service positions, librarians, or even a worse fate, Advertising Executives.

Although I was an witness to the WTC collapse and aftermath first hand, it was Katrina in '05 that really opened my eyes to a changing world and what kind of reaction I was going to make internally to help solve problems. To delve in further, I found that my professional practice and my aims to make changes had a clear intersection. Not only was it clear, but it was like watching someone fall down and no one around to help them up, nobody was helping us up to realize that our entire way of thinking (as American consumers) was not only wrong, but lethal to our existence.

This direction began with survival instincts rather than political ones. Further I believe that a politically polarized society has created an opening for people to forge their own way and make changes happen regardless of contemporary politics. A self-reliant party of one with a mandate to make changes in the system.

I told my son the other day that if he is around younger kids, then he is the leader by default of that organization, and therefore he is residually responsible for their well being. He gave me a puzzled look and told me he would think about it. I have been made a leader a few times because of my height, you get burned enough you figure that it will happen again and maybe making a gesture to know a little of what you are talking about. Somewhere in that process comes the point that you could be busted as a hypocrite if you don't practice your own schpeel. Good intentions sometimes make messes.

To summarize, one day you find you're an adult, as crappy as it sounds. If I get labeled that, my intention is that I will fight for what I know is good* with every bit of my consciousness known. Wiping away the apathetic years when we did things that were so obscure and taking on the hair shirt, wearing it as directed.

*as defined in PHIL 101

"If you want one year of prosperity, plant corn.
If you want ten years of prosperity, plant trees.
If you want one hundred years of prosperity, educate people."

— Chinese proverb

"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive."

- Albert Einstein

“Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.”

- Walt Whitman

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing."

— Thomas Jefferson

In Search Of...

2007-01-04T22:18:00.000-08:00

This thing is now open, but I really don't know how much I can post. I usually write very late at night get 3-4 hrs of sleep and do it al over again. My days are hacked up and ideas are hard to articulate I'm the person that will stop a conversation for and uncomfortable 5 seconds, to make sure I've understood and made the adaquate responce.

After mulling over MySpace for a few months, I decided last night that I had to put something together to get some ideas out with the least amount of ego.

I'm not sending out invites to this page. I mostly want to comment on other boards, yet want to have a bit of a paper trail for the interested.

I mostly post on Memphis related boards. I was raised out in the suburbs around here and came in the city frequently when I was young. After HS I was definitely not college bound, moved to Midtown and worked in food service for about a year and a half. After a rough spell I enlisted in the U.S. Army and left town. I ended up spending time in 4 states on the east coast, mostly in DC and NY. Went to college, started work in the Architecture business up there.

12 years later I return, take a much needed break and get back to work. I was very low key at first. Its very weird to come back to a hometown and hangout with totally new people. It seems like all my friends from here are scattered to the wind.

The most striking difference is that most of the people I know thru work are from other towns. Many from the south, but a few from other places. In this group I have the unique position to act as a bridge to the indigenous.

A few months back I was de-planing on a business trip and a co-worker asked me why everyone in Memphis hated Herenton. I couldn't defend or attack him so I just mentioned that he was a polarizing figure in city, but basically he has the right idea. Some people here definitely live in the past, and can't face the fact that race is a dead issue here. Black political power is here to stay, and in a odd juxtaposition, blood related to the house servants of the biggest political boss the city has ever known, E.H. Crump. Those who disagreed voted with their feet and moved to the cheap post wwII suburbs.

By the time of my birth, much of the beauty of pre-1900 Memphis had been razed. But when you look at Midtown (roughly the area between the parkways and the Medical Center) there are still many views that haven't changed since the prohibition days. Many cities have neighborhoods like this, but here in the south, there are few other contiguous areas such as this unaltered by time. Possibly the blockage of I-40 is the main cause of this unique condition, but that could as well be a main contribution of the radical disconnection between downtown and the rest of the city. A partial city within a city.

I've never taken the downtown renaissance here seriously. What kind of renaissance leaves the city with the same skyline 25 years after it began? I would accept the assertion that the rebirth is mostly a residential development boom, but that becomes hollow when there are still blocks of empty store fronts and some of the cities largest buildings are unoccupied.

Rather than hack my cynical notions onward, I'd like to state that Memphis is a very unique place that is probably one of this countries best offerings as a regional center, and a mid-sized city. But will always be alluded by the Atlantas and Houstons out there for being out 'world-classed' for lack of a better word. This place is very much grounded in its past, and probably sought after for that very reason.

I may move somewhere else someday, but I know Memphis isn't going anywhere fast and I can always count on it being here for me.