Sailing To LaHaina

Actually, not really, though on Saturday my family and I head to Honolulu for seven days. We'll be visiting my wife's father and his family, whom I've never met. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the people I only read and read about. I'm not a big Hawaii kind of guy but the privilege of being able to go has me excited.

You know you're a yuppy homeowner when you remodel your backyard with nifty and trendy items that will make your house appear dated the second you put it on the market. While not selling my house anytime soon, we are making some additions and corrections to the yard. My biggest complaint is the damn lawn and its lack of purpose. Many historians have analyzed and critiqued the American love for and dedication to a living form that serves no other purpose but taking much desired time out of people's weekends to mow and weed. What's the purpose of my backyard lawn? For me to practice hating life, swearing, getting angry at my neighbors because theirs look better, for the neighbors animals to crap on, for weeds to drive me to drink. Just about the only thing that keeps me sane as I tend to my backyard sysiphusian weeding is a quote from Emerson: "a weed is any plant whose virtues have not been discovered". I'm still working on the thistles, ragweed and another vining plant with undiscovered virtue that plagues my weekends. Any rate, I'm hoping that with the changes to my backyard, I'll have my little West Coast sanctum sanctorum. I can't have my little mountain in Albemarle Country but hopefully I can have an outdoor fireplace and a little garden walkway.

I'm a bit troubled that the Republican-lead Congress failed to raise the minimum wage the same week it voted to give itself a three thousand dollar a year pay increase. For all of the aspirations and hope we place in our "elected" officials, I often despair that the system is run by the people it most benefits. Keep the minimum wage at $5.15, which it has remained since the GOP swept the House and began its full court press on the Senate. This, along with a national study showing that, for the most part, the middle class fails to exist in most major urban housing markets. This, for one simple reason: it can't afford to live in the cities. The urban poor are there with government assistance and every family member working her or his butt off just to pay astronomical rent in run-down conditions, the wealthy in their terribly expensive and oft-overpriced homes and apartments but the middle class, which has the option of fleeing to the suburbs and then hauling its ass back through rush hour commutes can't. What I wouldn't give to live in a wonderful city like Oakland or along the peninsula but I don't feel like being shot, mugged, raped or pillaged. By the real estate market, that is. Plus, in places where housing is "affordable", crime is sky-high and the public school systems are abysmal. So, shut up, Paul, take your kid to the little community pool and visit the city on the weekend, I guess. It's just that the cities are beginning to look as identical as the 'burbs but for different reasons. My home town, (which, by the way, I happen to really like), has the same box stores, the same boring house architecture (designed by art history flunkies) and the same suicidal commutes with poor urban planning. The cities all are looking the same, too: great cultural gatherings and sites, high crime in poverty-stricken areas where ethnic minorities who clean and labor for the wealthy often live in squalor, terrible parking, no chance of any middle class people living there, and the overall feeling that the situation will never change. What does need to happen in order to change our demographic makeup of our urban areas that would help our nation cut pollution, my wife's commute time, our schools to improve and our people to use space better?