https://www.angelfire.com/empire/cavegirl/index.html
rabarrington@hotmail.com
or at least I hope so.
Last week when I was back home I picked up a copy of the Regional and read a few columns.
Some of the girls at my old high school are gathering prom dresses for an auction to benefit Doctors Without Borders. All proceeds go toward DWB. No party for the girls for doing a humanitarian gesture.
There was also a nearly-all school walkout. Due to recent school funding cutbacks three teachers were being dismissed. So the students did a protest. Not that the protest will change anything, yet I admire the students right to make noise, say what they think. Hurrah for public discourse.
Down here everything is much different. It is all me me me. The children sell overpriced products to raise money for gifts for themselves. The premier prize being a party for the biggest seller plus two friends in the back of a limo for three hours.
The children are party-liners, little replicas of their Yuppie parents. It is very sad.
By living here I am taking on that Illinois patina. I am afraid it has already happened to some extent. It is like that old warning about becoming who you hang with, becoming who you work with, becoming where you live, etc, etc, etc.
My father rented the back guesthouse to a man who was doing specialized laser research. Down the block a retired man was building a helicopter from scratch. Another man, much younger, who worked at a boat company, was building a concrete boat in his spare time. (Yes, he did finish it and launched it in Lake Michigan.) A woman on the next block was an orchid breeder. And Mr. Suchan grew a garden as big as a football field. He knew how to store food so he could eat year-round.
I miss all of that indiviualism.
I think it is time to go home.
I think T. Wolfe is wrong. You can go home again. I have seen his Asheville. It is broken down, forgotten. My town, oh it is wonderful. The vast lake still glitters like thousands of bits of broken mirror. I like the way my face wiggles when I look into it. I like the scent of rotting fish and dried-up algae.
I want to go home.
(This painting is a "piggie" that I did as a commission. It is of a true-to-life family on a camping trip. It is about passion and love.)
