… So if David and I moved to Winston-Salem, would y’all ever come to visit?

We’ve been looking at houses there. There’s so much more of the types of neighborhoods we like there, and it’s all so much cheaper. Plus the decay and oldness of the place satisfies our ever-so-gothy aesthetic affectations… Plus it’s much closer to David’s folks, who are needing their baby nearby more and more lately.

… It’s by no means a sure thing, but I would regret the idea of all the new friends I made in Charlotte and having to do it over again…

Some relief from the horse latitudes came as the week drew to a close. We decided to bail for a quick trip to Winston for our last 24 hours together before I catch my jet plane west.

March will be a better month, right?

So Winston-Salem has just decided to level a neighborhood close to downtown to make way for a ballpark with adjacent upscale shopping, restaurants and bars. Chalk another victory for style over substance, wealthly shoppers and sports fans and alcoholics over working class families.

Is it still the 60s? I thought the idea of kicking people out of their homes for the sake of grand public works projects was something that died with Robert Moses? And is it just me or are almost all of the residents being cleared very dark-skinned? I know the church being kicked out is primarily black. How convenient that the City can legally remove a ’slum’ - no one will complain, of course, because most of those who vote for the politicans who are doing this are not poor or black.

Don’t get too comfortable in your own home, my friend. You never know when Big Brother might decide your home looks like a convenient place for a place of mass spectator combat, or an expressway to nowhere. I remember back when Santa Claus was in business - before Robert Moses demolished his workshop to build the North Pole Expressway - Moses said that Santa would be better of if he retired to Florida, and I agree that naming it the Robert Moses North Pole Expressway was inevitable. But I miss Santa.

Anyway, I wrote a letter to my City Council member, at least…

This is a great tool which seems to get to the heart of what I journaled about a while back: how well does your ‘hood walk?

 The results? What I expected. My neighborhood in SF got an 85 (out of 100) and my neighborhood in Winston got a 48. I’m actually surprised my neighborhood in WS got so high a score. But then, I never much planned to be able to walk farther than my yard - thus my desire to grow ever more abundant foodstuffs on my property…