Back On Home Land

This is the picture in my mind when I'm away too long. But my return home wasn't a beautiful Savannah day - it was gray and cold and dreary. My lawn is brown, the paint is peeling, and it looks more like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil at high noon.

It didn't help that there wasn't really time to manicure anything. Between conference calls, lunch with the kids, errands, sorting out upcoming travel, setting up a birthday party, filing expense reports, and getting back in the swing at karate class, I only had time for one thing at home:

I figured it was now 9 days after the election and I didn't want to be accused of spiking the football, so I  finally picked the souvenir up off my lawn. I'll just wait by the phone for the Smithsonian to call.

When I settled down tonight I ordered a pizza, cracked open a Stone IPA and got caught up on Homeland. While I think Claire Danes's portrayal of Carrie Mathison is a little overdone, Damian Lewis as Sgt/POW/terrorist/Congressman Nicholas Brody is phenomenally layered and conflicted.

I like the second season better than the first, as the intrigue of Brody being a double agent is really reaching a boiling point. But there's still silly romance and family drama. If I'm going to watch a soap opera, it better have a lot of zombies getting decapitated on a weekly basis.

Although in the real-life intelligence community, it would seem that there's plenty of love affair sleaziness to go around. One pundit on whichever cable news outlet described the Petraeus fiasco as "The Real Housewives of CentCom." Maybe I'm too hard on these shows that romantically link all their main characters. Maybe life does imitate art after all.

Flash Backtime: A Yankee in the Garden of Good and Evil

I'm a northeast guy.

Grew up in Jersey. Went to Syracuse. Lived in Connecticut and on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

My wife's career brought us a pair of 3-year stints in Omaha and Kalamazoo.

My only knowledge of Savannah before we moved here was the movie adaptation of the John Berendt novel. Not even my extensive travels had ever landed me in this fashionable, unconventional, warm and friendly US city.

We moved here in October of 2007. I spent my first six months on the road, and then we bought a house. When I finally had a chance to breathe and soak things in, I was looking for an outlet for my perspective.

I wrote a blog for Savannah Now, the online arm of the Savannah Morning News. Posting my thoughts, observations, and experiences became habit-forming. On top of that it was an election year, and I had a chance to engage in many political differences of opinion. It wasn't why I started, and it's not where I am. But this site, like myself, is still a work in progress.

Anyway, my very first post "A Yankee in the Garden of Good and Evil" was written one year ago today.

May 20, 2008

Greetings and welcome to my first blog entry.

I grew up in the northeast and have spent the last several years in the midwest, before taking up (permanent) residence here in the Thomas Square district almost a year ago.

For those of you who have lived here your whole life, you can't possibly appreciate what a unique place this is.

In my neighborhood, you don't have to travel far to see it all. Churches next to tenements, next to mansions, next to empty lots, next to playgrounds.

Rich and poor, black and white, old and young, democrat and republican all live side-by-side. It is the contrary nature of this town that has me scratching my head about good and evil.

For every friendly neighbor, smiling waitress, or chatty supermarket cashier, there is the spectre of the all-too-common criminal.

My porch furniture may be locked up, but that doesn't deter the pettiest of thieves from walking up my steps and taking such personal items as a decorated Halloween pumpkin, a plant, or a pitcher of sun tea. I can't understand the mental makeup of someone who would take something of only sentimental value.

Back in New York City, I had my car broken into on more than one occasion, but it always seemed like it was par for the course. Here there's something more "unethical" about crime...if that makes any sense at all.