Fascinoma

I rendezvoused with my siblings in my mother's home town, a rustbelt burg on the Great Lakes. It's a place of great natural beauty, at least when it's not iced in, but it's in the crapper economically. The old Carnegie Library is for sale, likewise the Free Methodist church downtown, and the newsstand where I bought Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels and several Kerouac books, along with other influential texts. One can buy a four-bedroom hosue there for under fifty thousand dollars. I saw a beautiful 150- year-old place on 25 acres with 1100 feet of creek frontage, asking $175, 000!

There must be hundreds, perhaps thousands of these towns. Union busting, NAFTA, free market capitalism in action. My fellow Americans, welcome to the Third World.