Gee, do you think it might be for sale?

It’s quite a bit colder in Boise than it was in NYC and there is grass-covering snow in the front yard. My house here faces North so in the winter the front area is like Antarctica; no sun shines on the snow fields of Bethel Street.

This most recent New York trip was very good on several levels. First, i was reminded that theatre is still alive and that good acting is a joy. Aaron Sorkin’s “The Farnsworth Experiment” is still in my mind. I’d be curious to see the script… i have a feeling it’s thick as a phone book. Mr. Sorkin’s style of quick witted, layered speech works better on stage than on TV. There were many words used that night.

Of course no trip to NYC would be complete without a visit to The Mother Ship:

No, we didn’t go in. Are you nuts, the line was around the block. We went up 5th Ave to the Central Park Zoo and went in there to watch them feed the penguins.

But now to the heart of the matter:

In 1.5 months i’ll be 44 years old. Kids half my age, who spent four years in various levels of training, are flooding the market in New York City and, bankrolled by parents, are willing to work for a fraction of what i would need. I have no respect in my field, i don’t even know if i have a field given how the internet has slid towards just another TV channel. So, the big question is, what comes next? I mean that in the big sense… what comes next? Do we put the Idaho place up for sale, eventually sell it, then i crawl back to New York City to live in an apartment in The Bronx until such time as either our tenants move out or we elect to buy a place up the Hudson? Does Annette give up her stressful but reasonably well-funded job and return to Idaho and try to scratch a living here? Do we buy the place shown above up in the Catskills and try to make a go of a local business with our friends from Chaoskitty.com? Does Annette return to Idaho and not seek full-time employment but rather stays home raising the puppy that we’ve always wanted, writes articles, and shops for work with a greater eye toward doing what she actually wants as opposed to what she thinks she should be doing. Do we go on status-quo and see how the housing “adjustment” plays out and see what opportunities present themselves?

Fuck-all if I know.

Catskill Park and the surrounding area is quite the mixed bag. Annette and i used to travel up to the park twice a year when we lived in New York in fall and spring. We treated it as a pilgrimage to visit the source of our drinking water… and to see how the place was evolving. As you would expect businesses that were opening in spring with great fanfare were gone by the time fall rolled around and the storefront or the standalone building was vacant. I compare the Catskill region to a kinder, gentler version of the U.P. of Michigan. Both regions are littered with the bones of attempts to make money. The Catskills have always been a resort area catering to city folk looking for a cheap vacation, but there is little for kids to do there, so the clientele have often been older childless couples, or more recently, gay couples looking for some “authentic” stuff to decorate their front hall in their apartment in Chelsea. Who could forget Woody Allen’s immortal joke that opens “Annie Hall” “These two elderly women are visiting a Catskill mountain resort and the one says ‘the food at this place is really terrible,’ and the other one says, ‘yes, and such small portions.’”

I mean, name another place that, for at least the 8 million new yorkers, would have the same impact in that joke. The Catskills have this weird inferiority complex that seems more than just NYC cultural. Consider the history of the region: it basically exists to this day as the water supply for the big city 90 miles south that sits on rocky islands surrounded by salt and brackish water. Zoning laws within and surrounding Catskill park are determined by the needs of New York City. Lot size and wastewater treatment for towns whose full time residents probably never even visit New York are controlled by the thirst of those remote masses. Hell, one of the recent “capitulations” has been the placing of state signs showing the original locations of many towns before they were forcibly relocated by the eminent domain needs of New York City’s drinking water.

Also, in what i, bleeding heart liberal that i am, i see as a spectacular failure of social policy some of the upstate counties have engaged in disastrous social assistance programs. While farms and businesses failed left and right individuals could apply for assistance so they wouldn’t starve or freeze to death. But all that did was create a generation dependent on assistance and ill-equipped to re-enter the sputtering job market as tourist dollars ebb and flow. It seems to me that supporting a family who can’t pay their mortgage enough to keep them in their home, but not investing in the local economy so they have some hope of actually building some kind of a life is tantamount to punishment. I would argue the near-pornographic excesses of some areas of The City need to be spread around a little better. There was a time during the 70’s when the state of New York carried the City of New York, but that pendulum has swung in a big way. As a New York City property owner i see no problem with diverting some of the wealth flowing into Brooklyn and Manhattan like a stream in flood to the upstate counties. But i would want to see those funds invested in infrastructure, communications, utilities, township improvement projects, entrepreneurial grants and small business assistance centers.