therelevantrhino

It’s late here in the Heartland, and I am pausing briefly to reflect on much more than another upcoming road trip to another state. For many years, I traveled wherever for whatever: be it because of orders, job, or the hell of it. The last year, however, has been different. Ya see, in the course of the last year, I will have gone virtually coast to coast with a stopover in the buckle of the Bible Belt. For opportunity, yes, but more so because of economics.

By the time that most of you get to this post, I’ll be on the road (again, cue the Willie Nelson). Due to the current economic situation, which if you’ve been paying attention has been happening for over a year now, I’ve had to move from the lovely mountains of California to the gray, soulless prairie of Kansas. And now, I’m off to the mountains again–this time in Appalachia.

When searching for someplace to call home (for however long it may be so), figuring out how the hell to pay for things takes precedent over everything else. Believe me, I didn’t want to leave my comfy little hamlet in the Santa Cruz Mountains and land in fucking Kansas. Are you kidding me? I miss that place every day. But we live in a country where people wake up and find themselves displaced due to someone else’s poor decisions. Sometimes it was a business owner that felt he could make more profit if he shipped the jobs overseas, other times it’s because it was cheaper to liquidate your stock and buy a plant in a right-to-work state where you could exploit workers without fear of recompense. Sometimes, you just get lucky, the river card comes up just right, and (by the skin of your teeth and some generous relatives) you get to go someplace truly kick ass to finish a degree in the hopes that your chosen field will be prosperous in a few years.

After an election based largely on the theme of change, we all need to be aware that change comes in all forms. The writer Terry Pratchett places a curse in several of his books. The curse says, “May you live in interesting times”.

Friends and neighbors, we live in interesting times.

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