It’s been awhile but I have lots to say and I probably won’t get to most of it. First Mona and I will be moving to Cleveland, Ohio. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Why would anyone move there? That’s what I was thinking. Well, this whole thing came about when I was doing some research on the cheapest places to live in the US. To make a long story short, Cleveland is really high on the list and Mona can get a transfer there. But you might be thinking, yeah dude, of course it’s cheap it’s Cleveland!!!
Actually, we are looking at two areas that are just outside of Cleveland. They are Lakewood and Shaker Heights. Lakewood is considered a New Urbanist dream. For those of you who are not familiar with New Urbanism, it’s the idea that communities should be walkable. Where you buy food, go to work, and enjoy entertainment would all be within walking distance of where you live. For example, Mona and I live in a New Urbanist neighborhood now since we can walk everywhere. In many ways, I’ve made walking very central to my life. Almost every morning, I take Zola to the original Farmers Market (where we see Mario Lopez filming the show Extra!), La Brea Tar Pits, The Grove, and Pan Pacific Park. It’s amazing that I don’t get sick of my walks. In fact, I still walk around thinking this place is amazing. I love all the art deco architecture, the variety of plant life, and all the originality. (I actually just got home from a one hour walk around my neighborhood at around midnight. Still tons of people out walking their dogs or just enjoying the night air. It feels totally safe even though we are about 5 miles from downtown LA and about 3 mile from where two of the most violent gangs started).
We traveled out last weekend to check out the areas. Lakewood is a really amazing place and we ended up talking to a bunch of the locals. Everywhere we went, people were striking up conversation with us. You are right on Lake Erie and everything is within walking distance. The downtown is pretty cool and they say that most people spend lots of time on their front porches which means you might be friends with your neighbors. I also hear that block parties are pretty common and most people celebrate the Fourth of July by going to the town parade and then spending the day shooting off fireworks in the neighborhood. I guess some folks will spend thousands to give a show for the whole block. So you are in an urban environment with a small town feel. Its even gotten awards for coolest suburb in the US and also an awards for being the best place to raise your family. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.
The second place is like the Beverly Hills of Ohio. Oh yeah, many of the homes in this area go for around $100,000! You can’t even buy a 1 bedroom condo in South Central Los Angeles for that much! Both places are amazing. Lakewood is all about community while Shaker Heights is about privacy and feeling … well… rich. There are real trade offs on both. It will be a tough decision.
About 8 months ago, Mona and I had looked at this really great home in Gilbert, Arizona. The place was huge, nice clean area, brand new house, lots of shopping nearby. The house was a great deal especially since it had a pool and it looked out into a park and the original price had been cut by half. However, I wasn’t excited about it. Why? Well, it took me awhile to figure this out but it’s because I find Phoenix suburbs to be absolutely alienating. I’m not sure if it’s just in Phoenix or all suburbs. Either way, I just get this overwhelming sense of alienation while I’m there. The feeling is like the type of weather you really don’t like but at least weather eventually changes. So for my sanity, I need to be somewhere to eliminate that “emotion.” My quality of life actually increases when I live somewhere I enjoy.
I’ve been working on my latest book with mixed news. The stuff I have so far is excellent. However, it’s taking me much longer than I thought. Writing fiction is so much easier. When you write non-fiction you still need to be entertaining but you also need to make sure what you are saying is logical, consistent, clear, and true. That means a lot of research is involved and I’m constantly reading journals for information. One of the great things about my work is that I have access to most journals that have been written. Even better is that I get about 6 hours a night to write. Anyway, I was just rereading some of my work and some of it is so radical (but true) that I really had to set down the pages to absorb the material. That’s good in my book… ha ha get it!
For those of you that don’t know, I’m writing a book on political philosophy. One thing that really sucks is that the language used by political philosophers have almost the exact opposite meaning to most people. To a political philosopher, a liberal (which is usually considered to be someone on the Left) is a Libertarian (which is someone who is one the far Right). I usually refer to myself as a Left-Libertarian. But most people think you can’t be a Left-Libertarian because they are opposites. Sometimes I’ll say I’m a Libertarian-Socialist but socialism here also has its opposite meaning. A socialist is usually defined as someone who advocates for state ownership. I advocate no such thing. I advocate for workers’ self-management. Instead of the state owning the workplace, all the workers are part owner. Also, I sometimes refer to myself as an Anarchist. Again, the opposite meaning. Most people who hear Anarchist think chaos, disorder, destruction while the word should be associated with a completely organized society. The word actually means anti-authoritarianism and nothing more. Anyway, you can read more about it when you buy my book for yourself and all of your friends and family:D
It has been almost a year since I’ve posted anything. That’s pretty bad. Things in LA have been good. Zola is making all sorts of progress. She is starting to talk and just in the last few weeks she started walking. Mona and I have been to quite a few concerts. Our last one was Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the Fox Theater in Pomona. A couple of months back we saw Blonde Redhead for the second time at the Hollywood Music Box. I think the best show that we’ve seen so far was Do Make Say Think at The Troubadour in West Hollywood. We went to some other concerts but I can’t remember them right now. Oh yeah, no road-trips in the last year which is extremely rare for us. I think we’ve just been too busy.
Oh yeah, and my predictions in my last blog all came true even though the media was saying the economy was about to pick up again. Some of my views have changed but I still think I got it right. In fact, to write my book I’ve had to become familiar with Classical Economics, Austrian economics, Neo-classical economics, Keynesianism, Post-Keynesianism, Marxism, institutionalism (old and new), abundance economics, green economics, and I’m sure there are more. When I say I had to learn these, I’m not saying I picked up some intro book at Barnes and Noble. I had to special order in depth books on these topics and none of them were easy to read. They were all pretty technical. Plus, I disagreed with most of them. Yeah, not fun at all.
I’m going to try and post some video in the next couple of days from our trip to Lakewood and Shaker Heights. Until next time…
Oh, and Mona's having a baby in the next few weeks. Right. I keep forgetting. Too much going on!
