There is a fascinating discussion over on H. Bruce Miller's Source blog, The Wandering Eye, entitled; 'Jobless and Foreclosed in Paradise.'
Seems to me to be going to the very root of why people live in the Central Oregon.
I don't have a whole lot of personal experience living elsewhere. I lived in Eugene for school, and for a year or two after -- but I drove over Santiam Pass every chance I got.
I wanted badly to come back to Bend. I felt closed in at the Eugene student ghetto; I felt I needed space. Didn't care much for the rain.
So....Bend, to me, is paradise. I love the feel of it, the fung shui if you will, and yes, even the smell.
Most of my siblings spread to the four winds; my wife would move to Portland to be near the boys and not miss Bend all that much. My Mom missed the valley climate and the gardening season.
For me, it was about comfort zones. My twenties were rough, and I wanted my old home back. My childhood was great; I partook of every outdoor activity that Bend gave, fishing, hunting, hiking, camping, swimming, skiing every weekend, exploring, spelunking, climbing, waterskiing, horseback riding, motorcycling, off-roading (we called it booneystompin'); I had free range over the landscape.
For being a bookish kid, I was an active little bugger. But then, summers were twice as long back then.
I may not do much of any of that anymore, but there is still a rosy memory glow over this place.
So yeah, it's changed a bunch. But I try to see the basic outlines, and ignore the rest. Downtown, Franklin, Greenwood, 3rd St., Division, and so on are still Bend to me, all the outlying areas are like some alien overlay. Northwest Crossing is like another town, to me.
But I've noticed for some time that even though people move here, they don't always seem invested in the place. Even people who are active in local affairs, seem ready to leave if everything doesn't go their way.
Here's a conversation I have a few times everyday. "How long you been here?"
"The store has been here 30 years."
".....Oh.....I've never been in before."
With a big, 'what can I do?' shrug from me.
Even worse, people unaware of my wife's store. I'll probably get explanations in the comments, but really....there is no good explanation.
It's on the busiest corner of Bend (or all of Eastern Oregon, from what I've been told), it has the biggest signs allowed, plus more signs in the window, plus books lining all the windows.
There is no way you can live in Bend for more than a short time without having driven through that intersection -- more than once. No way.
Which means they are 'sleep-driving' through that intersection; unaware of everything around them. Which I can believe, when I see the way they drive.
Anyway, it won't surprise me if people bail out of Bend. They were never really here in the first place.
P.S. How can you not love Bend on a day like this. I so want to close the store and head into the woods.....
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2 comments:
So big hard comic man, I hear your looking to mix it up with other women?? How about a man who calls himself Carlin, but dresses like a woman, is that enough for you??
Forget the politicians. They're irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. They own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls!
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interest. That's right.
You know something? They don't want people who are smart enough sitting around the kitchen table to figure out they're getting f*cked by a system that threw them overboard thirty f*cking years ago. They don't want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paper work, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly sh*ttier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.
And now they're coming for your Social Security money. They want your f*cking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all from you sooner or later. Because they own this f*cking place. It's a big club... and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club.
By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long, beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy.
The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hard working people. Blue collar, white collar, doesn't matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue... these are people of modest means... continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a f*ck about them. They don't give a f*ck about you. They don't give a f*ck about you. They don't care about you. At all. At all. At all. And nobody seems to notice. And nobody seems to care.
That's what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will remain wilfully ignorant about the big red, white and blue dick that is being shoved up their ass every day. Because the owners know the truth. It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Dunc,
Come On! You really don't know why people don't know about your store or your wife's shop. Really? You don't know. There are two VERY obvious reasons and I'm stunned that you do not know.
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