Housing Bubble: How Our Neighborhoods Affect Our Friendships

So I went for a walk around my neighborhood last night. We'd just gotten home from dinner and I had just enough time to walk the 1.2 mile loop around twice before a combination of dusk setting in and the Cubs game starting. It was a nice evening out, not like in Summer when going for a walk at 7:30 means coming home drenched in sweat from the unrelenting south Georgia heat and humidity. No, this was still what passes for Spring with the humidity not being oppressive and the heat relatively non-existant.

And with it being such a beautiful evening, there were other people out too in our middle class neighborhood filled with three and four bedroom houses and two car garages. There was the woman jogging, the husband and wife walking their dog and the guy riding his motorcycle. I couldn't tell if he'd just purchased it and was learning to ride or just out for a night ride, though I suspect it was the former because anyone out for a night ride would presumably not be riding in a residential neighborhood. There was also the family of one of my son's classmates outside playing together. In this instance, the dad was racing his 7-year old daughter down the street with her younger sister hold her arms outstretched to be the finish line, with mom cheering her daughter on while the puppy looked confused and wasn't sure who to chase after.

I enjoyed seeing so many people out enjoying their evening. But as I walked, I paid closer attention to the houses that I'd passed hundreds of times before. Much like my home, most of these homes didn't really have a front porch and those that did didn't have much room for more than a chair or two. There was no convenient gathering places for neighbors to get together and talk while watching their kids play in the front yard and waving to passersby on the street.

This thought has been kicking around in my head for a while. Really, ever since I read "How Friendships Change in Adulthood" in the Atlantic and this "How our Housing Choices Make Adult Friendships More Difficult" on Vox. The truth is, at least for me in my little corner of the universe, we've set up housing and    and recreational activities in a way that we can easily be isolated for much of the time. Even something like my son's baseball or soccer games requires a 15 minute drive to the park where it's just my wife, son and I in the car. We've basically designed our society to minimize chance encounters with anyone we don't know or don't want to interact with.

But bumping in to people, especially the same people, over and over is how friendships develop. Removing the opportunities, either through our housing design or land use or our own tendencies to keep to ourselves, takes away opportunities to meet new people, experience new things and have a more fulfilling life.

Rereading that last paragraph, it sounds lofty, especially for me who is quite content to sit inside on a nice Spring night and turn on a ballgame and make dumb jokes online. I'm not extroverted and it's often easier for me to just keep to myself and do the things I know I like. And there's something to be said for how, for many people, their online life is a rich and rewarding to them as offline life is to others. But we can and should strive to be a little better about at least knowing the people who live around us. Not just their names or the names of their kids, but about what's going on with them.

Then again, during my walks I have the familiar white cord stretching from my phone up to my ears with my earbuds in blocking out the world and my neighbors and potential friends so I can listen to a podcast about fantasy baseball.

If sports were covered like politics

"That's all for the weather, let's go over to Jake Kershaw with sports."

"Thanks Wendy. A busy sports night all around, lot of action going on so let's get right to it. In baseball action, the Orioles took 3 innings, the Rays 2 and they tied in the other four innings. In other action in MLB, the Cubs took 4 innings while the Cardinals took 2 with a virtual tie in the other three. Moving on to football, the Ravens won in a blowout, taking three quarters while the Bengals got one...."

"Ummm, Jake, that's all well and good, but what about the final scores?"

"Jonathan, it only matters how many innings or quarters you win. I used to think final scores mattered, but then I started watching you and the other news anchors talking about the campaigns for the democratic and republican nomination and all you talk about is how many states each candidate won. All along I thought it was delegate totals that mattered, but all you and the other news anchors and analysts talk about is the number of states won, not the delegates, in those states. So obviously me, being the lowly sports guy, learned from you and now just report how many states, errr, innings or quarters, that teams win."

"Jake, that's not how it works, you need to know the score."

"You keep saying that, Jonathan, but didn't you just get done telling me it was a big night for Bernie Sanders because he won Michigan? You didn't tell me the score, just that he won Michigan and Hillary Clinton won Mississippi. So they tied 1-1. But if you look at the delegate count overall, Sanders won 69 and Clinton won 87. But you and your colleagues keep telling me the score was 1-1. So when I say the Ravens won 3-1, it makes just as much sense. And sure, if you want to count total runs, the Rays beat the Orioles 7-4, but they only outscored the Orioles in two innings while the Orioles outscored the Rays in three innings, so using what I've learned from you, I've converted all the sports coverage to saying who won certain periods or innings rather than final scores."

"Jake, people need to know the final score, that's why they tune in."

"You would think, Jonathan, you would think. But watching you news guys cover this election, it's pretty obvious that people tune in for the drama. Saying Clinton picked up roughly 20 more delegates is fine and accurate and all, but saying Clinton and Sanders split the two states and it's a closer race now, well that's drama. That will get people to tune in. And while 7-4 seems close in the Orioles game, 3-2 is much closer and creates much more drama and it's also factually correct."

"But it's not the innings that count, it's the runs. Come on Jake."

"And it's not the states that count, it's the delegates. So when you change your coverage and start talking about delegates, I'll go back to giving people the final score. You know, the useful information people need and not something useless like who won what state."

Trump is an Awful Person - That's Why I'm Voting For Him

Donald Trump is a loathsome, offensive, brute.

He's unfit to be elected to be a small town dogcatcher, let alone to the highest office in the country.

And yet, I can't wait to vote for him.

I should clarify here that I am opposed to everything Trump stands for, from his policies to his demeanor to his arrogance and everything else about him. I don't think all Mexicans are rapists and drug users. I think John McCain, whatever you think of his politics, is an American hero who deserves to be saluted an honored for his service. I think the idea that we need a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to be absurd and it's even more crazy to think Mexico would pay for it.

I think a total ban on Muslims entering the country is among the dumbest things ever proposed by a serious candidate for President. I find his treatment of women to be offensive. And while I don't find his lack of belief in the Christian God to be offensive, I find his pandering and attempts to make it look like he does to be completely unconvincing.

And yet, come Super Tuesday, I'm going to stroll in to my local precinct, request a Republican ballot, and proudly cast my vote for Trump to be the Republican nominee and standard bearer for the Grand Old Party.

A Trump presidency would be a disaster. I know this and you likely know this too. And so do nearly 60 percent of Americans who have a negative favorability rating of Trump.

So why would I want to vote for him?

Because it's not only about the presidency. A Trump candidacy would be an unmitigated disaster for rank and file Republicans, who by and large can't believe Trump  has gotten this far and also can't or won't find a way to stop him for fear of alienating his supporters who they need to win in November. But those supporters, as many as there are, aren't enough to carry him to victory in November.

A Trump nomination forces Republicans to either vote for Trump, who opposes key platforms that the Republican establishment holds dear, vote for the Democratic nominee (which, for those who place party before country, they would never do), vote third party, or stay home. Most of what I've seen suggests that voters would stay home rather than vote for Trump. (And you don't have to stay home guys, go out, have dinner and support the local economy).

But staying home has the added benefit of reducing Republican voter turnout for key Senate races for those senators who were elected in the 2010 Tea Party wave, thus increasing the chances of Democrats taking the seat and possibly flipping control of the Senate away from Republican control. And there lies the beauty of voting for Trump. It won't change one thing about my state. Georgia is going to vote Republican in the November election for president. It's highly likely that a Republican is going to win the senate seat in Georgia. But other states aren't nearly as certain, and Trump at the top of the ticket hurts down-ballot candidates by depressing Republican voter turnout.

Having said all that, I'm well aware and constantly push the idea that my vote doesn't matter. Not that democracy isn't a great idea, but statistically, my one vote out of hundreds of thousands cast won't make any statistical or actual difference. But since I live in a state that pretty solidly Republican, doesn't it make sense for me to cast my vote in that primary so I can at least have a voice in who will represent me?

Despite that fact, I'm looking forward for the chance to vote for Trump on Tuesday so I can vote against him in November. After all, isn't the whole point of elections to vote for what you want to happen in the future?

Sports and Politics Do Mix

Welcome back to 'I Didn't Inhale' the political talk show tacking the most important issues of the day as filtered through sports talk radio.

Those of you tuning in for the first time, I'm your host, Bill Graham.

Our first topic, the Democratic Caucuses in Nevada saw Hillary Clinton secure the win over rival Bernie Sanders, giving her two wins in the last three contests and seeming giving her momentum. Let's turn to our panel.

(Robert A. Johnson): I think the real question here is did Hillary win or did Bernie lose? Hillary may have played just well enough to win, but I'm not sure it was her best game. Bernie, meanwhile, seemed to throw the game away. He basically gave up in Las Vegas, showed no heart and no hustle. What was he doing out there?

(Charles "Chuck" Smith): What are you talking about? Of course Hillary won this matchup. Not only that, Hillary just knows how to win. The experience in the 2008 championship against Barak Obama was a learning experience for her. She took that and now she just knows how to win. She wanted it more than Sanders and that's why she came out on top.

(Johnson) Chuck, you have never been more wrong in your life, and that includes the time you got behind Santorum for his run. If Hillary knew how to win, she's be president now instead of running for president. Bernie picked the wrong time to play his worst game. We saw what he can do in New Hampshire and he nearly won Iowa. We're a couple of votes away from this series being entirely different.

(Smith) Robert, it's clear Hillary just wanted it more. You can say all you want about Sanders not playing well or focusing too much on rural Nevadans, but the fact is, Hillary just wanted it more and that's why she won.

(Graham) Ok guys, we're going to have to leave it there for now. Next topic, what did you see from each candidate? Chuck, we'll start with you.

(Smith) The biggest thing to take away from Nevada is just how clutch Clinton is. She bounced back from a tough loss and when the series was on the line, she came up big. Big time players make big time plays and that's what we saw from Hillary this weekend. I think the real question is can we consider Bernie an elite candidate?

(Johnson) Oh come on, of course Bernie is elite. In the last eight years, only three people have won a state in the Democratic party, Obama, Clinton and Bernie. To say he's not elite is just absurd.

(Smith) I mean, he won his neighboring state to where he's a senator. He basically won his home game. That doesn't scream elite to me. He's got to show me more if he's going to be an elite he's got do a lot more than what he's done so far. To me, it's preposterous, calling Bernie elite and things of that nature. Quite frankly, there's only one elite candidate and that's Hillary.

(Johnson) Are you insane? Bernie has Clinton running scared. Elite candidates don't run scared.

(Graham) That's all the time we have for today. Tune in next time we when take a look at the Republican field here on I Didn't Inhale.

The Passing of a Facebook Friend

We were Facebook friends, but I didn't know her well. She was an undergraduate student working in the campus recreation center where I was doing my Graduate Assistantship. We were probably at the same parties and we ran in to each other enough at work that we became friends online, but I'm not sure I could tell you anything about her life.

I don't know what she majored in or even where she was from. I don't even know what she did for a career. Every now and again she's show up in my news feed and I'd think, "oh yeah, her" before scrolling on to see what the next person posted so I could go "oh yeah, him," like we all do when we're reading Facebook.

But yesterday morning, I found out this woman who I barely knew and who probably wouldn't recognize me if I walked past her died suddenly.

Now, as happens in our digital age, my news feed was full of remembrances of this caring, sweet, beautiful woman. Real friends (not the Facebook kind like me) expressed their grief, sympathy, shock, prayers and every other emotion that accompanies the loss of a life so young.

All day, as more and more people learned of this young woman's passing, pictures of some party or work event or just dinner were posted. Friends shared memories of the good times while at the same time still trying to process the overwhelming grief they were feeling.
 
They're left to grapple with trying to understand something that has no answer. Why a woman so young and so loved would suddenly be gone. Each of her friends and family will come to their own answers that ultimately may be unsatisfying, but hopefully will bring each some measure of comfort as they try to remember her.

Ultimately, however, we all have to deal with both the best and worst part of life - it goes on. In times of grief and sorrow when we don't feel like we can face it anymore, life goes on. In times of joy and peace and calming when we never want the moment to end, life goes on. It is to be experienced uniquely in our own way for whatever time we have.