Tuesday, August 27, 2002

Are We There Yet? I've reached the point in the grim march that buying an apartment has become where I just don't care anymore. I really wanted to move, and I was pretty excited about this apartment. But I've lost track of how many people I've given $50 to $100 to check my credit; I'm entirely out of my depth trying to arrange the renovations, and the laziness of our broker is only making things worse; and yesterday I learned that if the seller's bank fails to provide the proper paperwork (which was requested on August 1) by tomorrow's closing, we'll have to re-schedule the closing and pay another few hundred dollars in fees. Everyone says, "Congratulations! You must be so excited." But I'm not. Good, bad, or indifferent, I just want this to be over. I feel this emptiness that's impossible to describe, the dizzying freedom of being an adult on my own in a callous world without having been properly equipped. When I was seven or eight, I was left behind by my class on a field trip into New York to see a Broadway show. I'm feeling that same panic, that same sense of being overwhelmed now. Obviously, I figured my way out of that, and I'm sure that I'll figure my way out of this as well. But I'm not enjoying myself, and I'm not excited. And yes, I am aware of exactly how many people are unable to afford what we're buying. But someone else's suffering isn't going to make me feel better. 9:53:20 PM     What do you think? ()

Didn't There Used to Be a City Here? Yesterday, the New York Times ran a good summary of the seemingly endless descent of Hartford, Connecticut. I grew up and lived in Connecticut (until I had the means to leave), mostly in and around Hartford, so this is a story with which I am familiar. The article correctly identifies home rule as the fundamental problem leading to all of the others, not just for Hartford, but for all of the cities in Connecticut. Under home rule, the cities (which provide much of the employment and culture and virtually all of social services in the otherwise barren, homogeneous state) have no lever to wrest support from the wealthy suburbs that surround them. And as the article puts it: ...in a city where even second-tier problems are huge--Hartford's airport, 15 miles away, for example, is the only one its size in the nation that functions without any state subsidy or public transportation--all roads to recovery go through the wealthier suburbs... It's pretty much impossible to make the case to the suburbs that it's in their interest to help the cities. Instead, Hartford is going to continue shrinking (the population has decreased by forty percent in the last fifty years), becoming a black hole of intense poverty and its attendant problems that will rival anything in the Third World. 7:55:36 AM     What do you think? ()

© Copyright 2003 Morgan N. Sandquist. Last update: 11/2/03; 10:26:59 AM.

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