Blue Skys

 Do you ever wake up in the morning and for just a few minutes you have ideas so clear in your mind about something, like what I might want to chat about here.  Then later when you sit down to type it just vanishes.  So I guess that makes something to type about.  I just finished a super good book called Water, Stone, Heart.  I would like to remember a few pages but know I probably wont.  But the feeling I got was the importance of community.  We have learned to live our lives so separate from others, especially I think in the big cities.  The main character in the book is a guy who went to school to study architecture and then went on to be a professor who never built anything.  He just taught about it.  When his wife walks out on him he takes a class in England to learn how to build stone hedges.  The author did a great job with his research and I am sure has his factual stuff down.  But in working in this little village on the Cornwall coast he regains his true passion of wanting to create real live communities like only Europeans seem to be able to do.  Of course he finds his soul mate and makes friends.  I loved the ending that of course always leaves the reader wanting to know more.  So for today I guess this is what I want to write about.  We get out and walk about 10 blocks around our quiet little suburban neighborhood every morning.  It really feels dead, as we rarely see anyone outside, other than maybe a couple other older folks trying to get their exercise in too before it gets to hot.  We live in a nice little burb a couple miles out of town with prob about 45 homes.  Kids come home from school and go inside and mostly don't come out unless its to load up and go somewhere else.  I feel good that we don't have loud neighbors and very few barking dogs but again it just feels sort of dead.  Am I getting to picky in my old age?  I want to see (really see) how I feel on my next trip down to our vacation house.  Want to see if it feels anymore like a community or just the same as here as that's the way we Americans know how to live now.  No more front porch sitting, we sit on our back porch that is covered and look at our fence which provides us privacy from neighbors,  we all do that.  Is it a fence for privacy or a fence to keep the world out?  Or maybe our way of living is a choice we make and we feel isolated because we isolate ourselves.  Hmm  

Thought for the day:  A stranger is a friend you haven't met.