The UnTexan

WHY PORTLAND IS PORTLAND AND AUSTIN ISN'T

Austin will never be Portland no matter how many tattooed geeks, techies and Asian engineers move here. Portland is a smart place to live. It has trains and brains and bike lanes. Austin's not smart enough to overcome its greedy, strip-developing, lethal-injecting, pickup-driving, traffic-jamming Texas heart and none of the Austin cheerleaders and Austin boosters can shovel enough shit to cover that up. It is what it is and it ain't what it ain't.

Which is what makes this little tale so heartwarming:

My neighborhood's community email has been hopping. Folks have been in a tizzy the past few days over a low-flying cop helicopter. Of course, it doesn't take anything more than a couple of black guys fishing in the local pond to get people tizzy-fied and emailing about the imagined horrors of urban crime and dark invaders with evil intentions (someone who saw the guys fishing said she suspected they were selling drugs because one of them kept talking on his cell phone and she called the police even though she had no idea what the guy was talking about; a black neighbor sent out an email saying it seemed like the neighborhood hasn't changed much in the 20-plus years he has been here and that "fishing while black" -- in fact, doing anything while black -- still seemed to be enough of a crime for neighbors to bring the cops down on a man's ass. But many a proud Austinite's lily white breast hides a dark and racist heart; it comes with the territory, just like the pickup driving and lethal injecting and that last little bit of the Old South that J. Frank Dobie couldn't bury with cowboy talk). So, for a couple of days, the angsty emails have been flying and dark and violent urban fantasies growing around that cop chopper that was flying so low.

Well, here's what happened (directly from the email traffic): "OK! So, There were two individuals stealing livestock... one was detained. Then the other was found and both transported to jail. They were stealing goats and the goats were already loaded in the truck. So the police were just in time! And they got the bad guys!! I hope the bad guys have to pay for the hours worth of helicoptor fuel, etc."

And this was almost in the shadow of the highest tech Samsung factory at the edge of town.

Now if I happened to be the police reporter at the local newspaper, I would make a special effort to write about those goat rustlers just to give Austinites a little perspective about the past they cannot escape no matter how much they twitter and tweet. But the newspaper won't do that. The American-Statesman is not in the perspective business, it is in the cheerleader business. The Austin Chronicle is just about as bad, with overlong stories in little-bitty type. And if you give folks a real glimpse of themselves, the whole damned thing might fall apart. Austin is dreaming hipster dreams. It can't afford nightmares about goat rustlers.

DEATH AND TEXAS AND GOV. PERRY

There is a good chance that Texas has executed an innocent man. What else would you expect from the state that elected Rick Perry to be its governor? Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for setting the fire that killed his three children. Now it appears that there are huge questions about whether the blaze was arson or not. Ooooops! But Gov. Perry isn't letting that bother him one little bit. When asked about the case, Perry said he thinks Willingham was guilty even if the arson evidence doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The question (appropriately raised by Michael Landauer of the Dallas Morning News): "How does the governor think Willingham killed his kids if not by arson?" If the arson wasn't arson what was Willingham guilty of? Even for Gov. Perry, not known for his intellectual prowess, this seems pretty damned dumb. The sad thing about the whole case is that no matter what, Perry goes on being governor and Willingham goes on being dead.

And Texas goes on killing people who kill people (or not). Christopher Coleman is due to die today while the rest of Texas settles in for a good dinner and an evening in front of the TV. Kenneth Mosely is scheduled to die Sept. 24. And John Ballentine on Sept 30. Six more are scheduled for execution by mid-November.

There was an op-ed piece from the New York Times in the local newspaper this morning. It quotes President John Kennedy telling his wife as they prepared to fly to Texas on the last day of his life, "We're heading into nut country today." Texas will kill you if it gets half a chance. JFK knew it. Todd Willingham knew it. I know it. And two of the three of us are already dead. I think about that sometimes.

After seven years I remain the UnTexan. Texas kills.

JIMMY CARTER GETS IT RIGHT

Former President Jimmy Carter said that when South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson yelled "You lie!" at President Barack Obama, the comment was "based in racism." I agree. And it's about time somebody was willing to say it loud and proud. Carter also said, "There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president." Right again. The people who didn't want their children to hear Obama's speech at school for fear of his "socialistic agenda" (as one Texas mama put it on national TV) are cut from the same stars-and-bars cloth as the ones who have tried so hard to link the words "nigger" and "nazi" (and they know "nigger-nazi" has a certain ugly appeal to it) over the past few weeks. Carter says correctly that this is not about health care or socialism or anything else, but is rooted in something far deeper, plain old dumbass racism, and comes straight from America's white trash heart. Carter is saying what needs to be said.

As for telling it like it is: Kanye West IS a jackass.

HOW DO THEY SPELL 'APPALACHIAN' IN SOUTH CAROLINA? 'A-R-G-E-N-T-I-N-A'

It was bad enough when North Carolina politician John Edwards messed around on the famously cancer-stricken Mrs. Edwards. Now South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford decides to leave the wife and kids at home and chase his piece of Argentinian ass all the way to Buenos Aires ON FATHER'S DAY. Sanford is one of those scripture-quoting Republican true believers, a self-described "person of faith" who said he believes in "moral absolutes" (and I'll bet he believes in all of the "Thou shalts" and "Thou shalt nots" in the convenient way most of those wealthy and overbred Low Country South Carolina types do). He set out saying he was taking a hike on the Appalachian Trail, but ended up in Argentina because he said he wanted to "do something exotic." A psychologist I know said lots of muddling middle-aged guys confuse sex with something exotic and never make it to the bottom of figuring out what their real problem is (probably something to do with age, work, their boss, their unresolved and -- suddenly, frighteningly rejuvenated on some deep dark level -- relationship with their mothers. It's not that these guys want to fuck their mothers, but they feel like they want to do something to somebody and it feels like wanting to fuck somebody in the worst sort of way). Who do you fuck when you can't fuck your mother? Somebody strange (as in "get some strange"). Somebody "exotic."  So Sanford's exotic Argentinian was another version of Edwards' exotic video artiste. In both cases the poor bastards confused sex with something exotic and look where it got them. (Bill Clinton doesn't figure into this discussion because he had his own somewhat-puzzling-but-mostly-unexotic-Dixie-fratboy-if-it-moves-fuck-it-Lewinsky-esque interpretation of what it means to "get some strange"). I bet Gov. Sanford could have bought a lot of therapy for what this is going to cost him and he would have ended up in a better place than Buenos Aires. Instead, he did go to Buenos Aires and could only say when he returned, "I spent the last five days of my life crying in Argentina" and a bunch of other crap. (Do these dumbasses ever think about what they are saying?) Well, cry me a river, but don't expect any tears from anyone else. Then go shove Evita into your dvd player, drop your drawers, do what you apparently do best and shut up about it.

Oh, yeah. Farrah Fawcett finally died.

Can you believe The New York Times actually put this crap on page 1?

POST-OP: OBAMA'S INAUGURATION AND THE LONG-AGO WAIL OF A SMALL, BLACK BOY

My thyroid has been replaced by tiny pills that I will take every morning for the rest of my life. The surgery went well. For a man who has learned to measure all other pain against the pain of gout attacks and kidney stones, it didn't even hurt very much. When the nurses asked me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten (ten, I've been there), it never measured up (and there was morphine to get me over the rough spots and even some spots that weren't all that rough). Even better was the news that after a thorough biopsy, nothing cancerous was found. The incision is healing. I am recovering and was ready for the inauguration of Barack Obama. Watching it made me feel good -- and made me feel American in ways I haven't at several points in my life. I especially liked the part of his speech where he said we are a young country, but that it is time "to set aside childish things." I liked the we-are-young-but-not-that-young tone of it, the oh-grow-upness of it.

I was raised among racists in North Carolina and around all of the formalized and enforced racism that involved. However, my people discouraged the use of the word "nigger" (most of them, most of the time) and felt pretty good about themselves for doing it, but they still drank from the "Whites Only" water fountains, rode at the front of the bus, etc. It was a word I knew and knew better than to utter. I still cannot say it or write it without squirming a little. And I never felt I needed to say it. From a very young age, I didn't get the point of the racism around me. I was exposed to it, schooled in it, baptized in it. Once when I was very young, my mother and I were in a department store. She heard a child crying, turned around and I was gone. I was a little boy, but I was bigger than the kid I had trapped behind a counter. It was a black kid. I wasn't hitting him or threatening him. I was rubbing his hair (at least that is how my mother described it later, laughing as she told the story; other people laughed too). Nobody in my family had hair like that. I had never been close enough to hair like that to touch it (I didn't know any black kids). Simple curiosity. But he was wailing because he was scared (he didn't know any white kids either) and I never heard my mother coming. Suddenly I was jerked up by my arm and hauled around the counter. She put her face close to mine and said in a forceful near whisper (my mother liked to whisper that way when she was upset enough to get intimate about it), "His mother will cut your heart out." (There had to be a relentless imparting of this sort of knowledge and information to make racism work from generation to generation.)  I have always wondered what that little boy's mother hissed at him, but no matter what was hissed, whispered, said calmly, jokingly or shouted at me then or later, the racism never took hold. Of course, people I grew up around never missed a chance to run down "niggers" in one way or another. I heard endlessly that they were, among other things, "worthless," "shiftless," "dumb" and "dirty." I heard they were armed and dangerous (apparently even when they took their children shopping downtown). By then I had seen lots of black people up close (the same people who called them names hired them for maids and gardeners, cooks and cleaners and we hired them too). I found none of those things to be true. Then I heard what was called "nigger" music and its niggerness sounded so good to me, it pretty much became my music. After that it didn't matter. I suppose black people set me free. I know I could not have escaped without their help. I left North Carolina, then left the South completely not too many years later. I am sure there were people who tagged me a "niggerlover" and I didn't want to live around people like that (or become like them). So I didn't.

But I don't mind living around all of those people who are glad Barack Obama is president (and some of them are back home in North Carolina, which Obama won). Things have changed some, and I am sure some of the people I grew up around have changed too (black people attended my mother's funeral a couple of years ago, so I suppose she changed too). Now I hope we really can set aside childish things like Obama says. Trapped and wailing children, trapped and hissing mothers. Maybe Obama will help all of us grow up. I hope so. I really do.

______________________________

Meanwhile, I listen to Otis Redding singing Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come (my favorite version from the album Otis Blue) and Sam Cooke singing it too. Bettye LaVette sang the hell out of it (with Jon Bon Jovi for some unfathomable reason) at the big shindig for Obama last Sunday. I wish I had that one too.

LAUREN HANSELL: BITCHING FOR JESUS IN BASTROP

I am not a religious person, but I have read the Bible from cover to cover and pondered it as I read. I attended church regularly through my teens. I was on the verge of giving up being a Presbyterian and becoming a Catholic one time at a particularly histrionic point in my religious existence. I even married a Baptist once, but it didn't work out; I have always found sin to be more lovable than Baptists. Sometime after that, I gave up church for Lent and have never felt moved to go back. I have studied Christianity, practiced Christianity and given up Christianity, but through it all, Jesus never struck me as a bitchy sort of guy. And he never let that Son-of-Godness business go to his head. I liked that.

Lauren Hansell in Bastrop, Texas, is one of those particularly irritating, self-righteous and huffy Christians (she prays with Bastrop High School kids around the school flagpole on Fridays) who has let the Son-of-Godness stuff really go to her head. She homeschools her children and she bitches for Jesus. I don't particularly like people like her or the cross they rode in on.

What she is bitching about (in Jesus's name, I'm sure) is a mural on the high school wall (pointed out to her after it had been on the wall for five years by the girls basketball coach) meant to depict both "history and cultural unity in Bastrop (Texas)," according to a story in today's Austin newspaper. The story is in the paper because Hansell took her bitching to a public forum in Bastrop on the subject.

The mural includes some unsavory bits of local history that Hansell doesn't like : war, Mexicans and Comanches, black slaves picking cotton (ethnic Texans prefer their history Alamo-ish, their Mexicans mowing, their blacks in handcuffs and their Indians gone). But it also includes the same stuff that always reduces Christians like Hansell to bitchy nitwitism: images from other religions/faiths/beliefs. And to make matters worse for Hansell, the mural also shows children of various ethnicities reaching out to each other in unity. She claims she wants a more positive image of African Americans presented, but that is pure tokenism (bitchy Christians love tokenism). Peace and unity seem to be a mural message that really grinds Hansell's grits. She apparently told the newspaper that the mural "presents a new age idea of peace and unity that could be confusing to Christian students."

"Oh, my gosh," Hansell said when she saw the mural. And God knows, we sure wouldn't want anybody's Christian kid confused by such ideas as peace and unity by golly.

The mural was done five years ago with a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, an organization firmly in the grip of the followers of good Christian soldier George Bush, a man clearly unfazed by any ideas of peace and unity. (Well, he lets somebody handle the soldier part, but you see what I'm saying: The people appointed by the people elected by Lauren Hansell and her ilk LIKED THE MURAL ENOUGH TO FUND IT TO THE TUNE OF $10,000). But Hansell, good Christian nitwit, is untroubled by details like that.

What Lauren Hansell is doing is obscene in its naked stupidity. Jesus needs to give her a good bitch slappin' and tell her to shut up, but He really doesn't seem to care enough one way or the other to do it. So the untended sheep will keep bleating. But in all of my religious experience and Bible reading, I have never found anything that says anybody can bitch her way into heaven, no matter how much she prays by that high school flag pole.

TOYS 'R' TEXAS or THE HAMMER OF INSATIABILITY

Adam & Eve can sell sex toys in Texas. Legally. Just in time for Valentine's Day, a federal court struck down a Texas law banning the sale of sex toys. The court said the state was trying to legislate morality, invade the privacy of playful Texans in search of relief and violating the Constitution. What the court actually said was, "What ever one might think or believe about the use of these devices, government interference with their personal use and private use violates the Constitution" I like that phrase "think or believe" with which the ruling takes in the thoughtful and the faithful, the Unitarians and the Baptists, (or as a friend said, "the rational and the irrational") all at once. Adam & Eve (a distributor of sex toys) and a couple of sex toy stores in Austin sued to get the law overturned on appeal after it was originally tossed out of court by a judge who said the Constitution did not guarantee the right to promote naughty stuff. The appeals court disagreed.

So what did the court overturn? From the actual Texas law governing "three-dimensional" stuff (they have a different law for "flat" stuff and set that out in the law): "'Obscene device' means a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." Imagine a lonely Texas puritan in a cowboy hat, some damp-palmed member of the legislature, in a dimly lit room with his pen and his heated imagination, sweating over fitting the words "dildo" and "artificial vagina" and "genital organs" (feeling the thrill that only a puritan can feel at writing words like that) into the same sentence. I am sure he wrote the words over and over, like a naughty boy at a blackboard, until he got things just right. At any rate, the appeals court just erased it all (even the tingle words).

Not that the law wasn't ever enforced. A few years back, a woman named Joanne Webb was arrested for having a party (a Tupperware sort of party, only she called it a "Passion Party") in Burleson, Texas (self-appointed "City of Character" and hometown of American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson), where she allegedly peddled various pokers, prodders, ticklers, vibrators and assorted feel-good items to the suburban gals up there near Ft. Worth. But somebody didn't like Joanne or maybe didn't really like for suburban gals to feel that good and turned her in (Joann was already crossways with the daughter of a big shot local evangelical minister, but police claim whoever phoned in the tip remains anonymous, despite caller ID). A female undercover cop was dispatched and promptly purchased couple of vibrators that looked like penises and were obviously built to stimulate sexual organs (in open violation of Texas law against those very things). Joanne was busted and ended up on national tv. Eventually, after lots of hoopla, the charges were dropped. Nowadays Joanne could get back to doing her part for the economy without fear of arrest if it weren't for the fact that she and her husband were financially, emotionally and just about every other way possible destroyed by the whole thing (just as any anonymous, self-righteous, puritan would have wanted it).

I hope Joanne at least feels proud about the law that ruined her being overturned. I know I do. I am not really a Texan but I live in Texas and I must admit I felt a little tug pride when I found out real Texans and fake Texans alike now could fearlessly buy and sell sex toys -- for the simple reason that it made Texas appear more enlightened than Louisiana, Mississippi (which does not take a whole lot of enlightenment) and, somewhat strangely, Virginia (which is normally so far above Louisiana and Mississippi and Texas that it is hard to believe they all once belonged to the same Confederacy). Joanne could still be arrested in any of those states for having what she called a "Passion Party," but not here.

I am sure there were lots of private celebrations and maybe a bit of celebratory shopping (there are lots of Republicans in Texas and Republicans see shopping as a patriotic act, no matter what they are shopping for; even President Bush, who says he is from Texas, has said Americans should express their patriotism and defiance by shopping, first in the face of 9/11 and more recently in the face of a troubled economy ). And there are so many stimulating and puzzling things for the newly liberated Texas shopper to choose from, things most of them would be incapable of thinking up even in their naughtiest fantasies, and so many companies on the Internet to choose from.

And perhaps the most appropriate response. The Blowfish Company (or The Blowfishies as they prefer to call themselves), one of the biggest purveyors of things sexual and erotic, decided to have a sale in honor of the newly sex-toy enlightened Lonestar State. Under the headline "Don't Mess with Texas: A Big Toy Review," and after slyly indicating that the sex toy ban didn't hurt its Texas mail-order business any ("the law was more honored in the breach than in the observance here at Blowfish"). "In celebration, and in honor of Texas as the state where everything is bigger, we'd like to take a quick tour through some of our largest toys." The tour begins with The Hammer of Insatiability and moves on to Titan and Bigboi. It seems the most fitting (or unfitting, but painful either way) of celebrations.

Texas is now sex-toy enlightened, but it remains right down there with Mississippi and Louisiana in lots of other ways. A woman named Raije Rian, 41, recently was given 23 years for sexually assaulting a teen-ager in Williamson County, even after the boy's mother said there was no assaulting going on -- it was oral sex and comedian George Carlin said such boys are not victims, they they are "lucky" -- and that her 16-year-old son  made a "big boy" decision and faces "big boy" consequences. And the consequences? The boy's mother is not going to let him get his driver's license and she is not going to let him out of her sight. Meanwhile Rian will spend at least 13 years in jail and has permanently lost custody of her two children, who will be put up for adoption. The former Williamson County attorney once told me, "Williamson County justice is just." He said it with a straight face. Puritans are like that.

Somebody should hit Texans like that upside the head with a Hammer of Insatiability. Here's where you can buy one. Legally.

GETTING WIGGY OVER IGGY

So, if you consider yourself a dog's mother are you simply admitting that you are a bitch?

In the case of Mutts and Moms that would appear to be the case. That is the name of the pet adoption outfit that took away Ellen DeGeneres's dog, Iggy, after she found a new home for it with her hairdresser. Marina Batkis and Vanessa Chekroun, the bitchy gals at Mutts and Moms where Ellen  found Iggy, got all huffy, went to the hairdresser's house and repossessed Iggy from the family (remember Miss Hannigan from Annie? it was like that). They claimed Ellen violated the adoption contract. Ellen wept on television. Mutts and Moms received threats. The story has even knocked Britney turning herself in (for a parking lot hit-and-run) while wearing a dress so short her pink panties (or her pink whatever) were peeking out from underneath out of the top spot for celebrity news. The absurdity of the whole thing is mind boggling.

A few points:

1) Iggy is a dog. A dog is property. Dog ownership is not parenthood.

2) The Misses Hannigan over at Mutts and Moms (and all their doggie disturbed ilk) are being real doggie mommies about this and should get a grip on #1.

3) Ellen is a ratings hound (and she isn't the only one involved in this story).

4) People actually care about this shit and will watch it on television (and read the blogs).

Personally, I think Kevin Federline should be given custody of Iggy along with his and Britney's two children. A guy, two kids and a dog. It sounds almost wholesome, doesn't it? It sure beats the hell out of Britney, Ellen and the doggie mommies at Mutts and Moms.

UNFRIENDLY FIREPOWER

Here in Texas the governor and the legislature just love to take up any issue that passes the time and keeps them from getting anything meaningful done (somewhere out there the times may be a-changing, but Texas lawmakers are still true believers in the Republican Party mantra: "We don’t give a damn about you." And they are acting like it too). Now they have decided the world might be a safer place if college teachers and students were allowed to carry concealed weapons. As Gov. Rick "Richochet" Perry said, "I think it's time for us to have that debate in Texas.” Then he added (wasn’t there anyone there to stop him before he talked himself onto shaky ground?), "It makes sense for Texans to be able to protect themselves from deranged individuals," something that he might have thought better of saying, given some of the deranged notions he keeps trying to pass off on his fellow Texans. But it is a proven fact that dumb runs long and deep among Texas legislators and their governor. (It is no wonder that Texas public schools are mired in the test-besotted shit way down under the dank bottom of the mediocrity pile. Go over the the Capitol and look at who is trying to patch things up.) So, they want to spend some time talking about arming the college student population to keep what happened at Virginia Tech from happening anywhere else (who knows; maybe they can make themselves believe that arming students IS doing something for the schools). But the odds against what happened at Virginia Tech happening again – Cho’s not coming back and guys like Cho are thankfully few and far between – and the odds for some sort of other tragic shooting incident happening with a bunch of guns in the hands of people for whom a beer bong is considered classy entertainment, are so great that nobody, even here in Texas, should be dumb enough to seriously contemplate arming college students and the people who teach them. I have  been on a couple of college faculties and I wouldn’t want any of those people or their students toting a weapon. Henry Kissinger knows what I am talking about; he said, “Academic politics are so bitter because the stakes are so low.” Henry wouldn’t want some bitter, low-stakes failed-novelist English professor carrying a concealed weapon and neither do I. But Texas legislators, who can’t even spell Kissinger (and the way they see it "Cho" rhymes with "NRA"), want to arm the whole bunch. Though I would bet that when Richochet Rick and his Republican posse close their eyes and conjure up that well-armed student he is a whiteboy – probably in a fraternity – with a nice pickup; what they are definitely not envisioning is one of those hip-hoppy black students with do-rag and a scowl (there aren’t many black guys, hippy-hoppy or otherwise, strolling around the UT campus here in Austin – this is Texas after all – but somehow a few are admitted from time to time).

And “friendly fire” seems to be a concept beyond the grasp of the people who want to arm college students. Former pro football player Pat Tillman was killed tragically (if un-heroically and unnecessarily as it turns out) by his own troops in Afghanistan, and they were allegedly a disciplined bunch of trained fighters. College students, individually or in groups, are not particularly known for their discipline in the first place. Imagine how many of their fellow students they could kill with friendly fire when some guy they think is the next Cho shows up (whether he is another Cho or not). Bang. Friendly fire. Your kid’s dead and so is mine because they shot each other.

Concealed weapons on campus? It’s deranged (to steal a word from Richochet Rick). But it's also Texas.

LOVE AND THY NAHA NEIGHBORS

I want to give the NAHA and Renters Association a poke in their rulebook with a sharp stick (actually, I simply want them to read what I have written about them both recently and in the past. I figure that should do the trick). However, I can’t send them my blog’s URL. My wife’s email address is the email of record for our NAHA etc. membership and their email account will not allow me to send anything to them because it does not recognize me as a certified member/sender of email (these are clearly people who fear outsiders whether they are real yard-parking yahoos or only virtual yahoos like me). And my wife won’t send it along either. She accuses me of simply trying to provoke these NAHA etc. people. It’s true. And I don’t see anything wrong with it. I have spent a great deal of my life provoking people in one way or another, and if anybody needs provoking, this bunch of rule-flinging hypocrites does. And a poke in the rules is what some people need. My wife believes we should take a more constructive approach to our philosophical differences with the NAHA and Renters Association’s car-parking notions and obsessions (and their notions of email democracy), and that my blog entry might compromise that possibility (she likes constructive solutions; I prefer, shall we say, a less constructive approach). She thinks we should go to some NAHA meetings and maybe suggest something other than parking that these people might want to get worked up about. She thinks we have to participate before we can be critical. She is making a list to take to the meeting. I think she believes these NAHA etc. people actually give a damn about this stuff. And she does not want me alienating the neighborhood before she gets the chance to find out. I don’t think it matters whether I alienate them or not (I am not a love-thy-neighbor sort of guy anyway). The NAHA and Renters Association people aren’t going to change; they don’t care about anything but rules and more rules and picking out who they want to enforce them against next (Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds understands what I am talking about). So why not at least make them uncomfortable in their intransigence? I want to goad, poke, prod and jab the NAHA and Renters Association. And I want them to get the point. But my wife clearly isn’t very comfortable with that idea. So, the NAHA and Renters Association will never know I have had them on my mind lately unless one of them stumbles across my blog. It’s frustrating. But I will not push the issue. I might not love my neighbor (ambivalent is about the best I can do with that), but I really love my wife (and she knows it and loves me back). So, the way I figure it, this sort of feels like censorship, but it must be love. The NAHA meeting is next week.