American Views Abroad

 
'The emotional toll of the American Dream is steep. What we see all over our nation is a situational loneliness of the most extreme kind ... I suspect that most Americans are unaware of how socially isolated they are among the strip malls and the gated apartment complexes....

'We are headed into a social and economic maelstrom so severe, as the people on this earth contest over the remaining oil and gas supplies, that everything about contemporary life in America will have to be rearranged, reorganized, reformed, and re-scaled.'
Big and Blue in the USA
by James Howard Kunstler
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/curmudgeon/index_BigAndBlue.html


These are comments on American life by Kunstler after he returns from a trip to England. One question you get asked a lot when you live abroad is if you want to return home again. It sort of hangs over your head and each time home you take another look around and see the changes. Actually you become highly sensitive to the changes of where you presently live and where you used to live. Today, for example, the news on radio announced that Germany will have its first female Chancellor and be run by a grand coalition of the two main political parties. An outsider in many ways has achieved a first plus a country will be run by compromise and coalition. Too interesting to want to pass up watching on the nightly news.


The US was the center of attention leading up to the November 2004 election, but since then comments here, until Katrina, have been more along the line on how nothing much is new or changing there. The war continues unabated, hurricanes create untold misery, but then so does nature in Central America and now out in Pakistan and India. Gasoline prices are going up which was bound to happen, but society outside the cities is so totally dependent on driving. Several years ago we purposely chose a bed and breakfast up in Maine about a mile from a town known for its restaurants and harbor. We had planned to walk in for dinner but were told upon arrival to forget about it. Europeans, the owner commented while shaking his head, always want to walk it. Unfortunately, his warning proved correct. Walking wasn't an option with fast traffic and no sidewalks or paths. It felt like losing a certain freedom -- not to be able to walk out the door and just move on your two feet whenever you feel like it.
- posted by Gloria @ 5:23 PM