Henry and I are hosting playgroup this week and our house is such a disaster that I had to start cleaning today. What's sad is our house has only ~1200 square feet of living space. That gives you an idea of the magnitude of the mess.
Sometimes I think when we moved to this area we moved back in time to the turn of the 20th century. This feeling is mostly based on what comes up on the local news. This area is dealing with a huge drug-trafficking problem, enough that you hear about it pretty regularly on the news. What gets top-billing though is the arson problem. Central and Northeast PA seems to be lousy with firebugs. Arson feels like such an old-fashioned crime to me. Buildings are sent up in flames with such frequency that I'm surprised there are any left standing uncharred.
The other night news broke about a couple of corrupt judges in a nearby county who received oodles of money for placing juvenile offenders (is "delinquent" no longer politically correct?) in a specific detention facility. Often these kids didn't receive fair hearings. I'm not naive about the way some people operate in the world, but it's still frightening that this sort of thing happens, adults in power taking advantage of kids they should be helping. This particular news item struck me as being very Charles Dickens.
After watching the news story about the corrupt judges, which was, of course, followed by the latest incidents of arson, I couldn't shake the feeling that back in 2003 when we moved here we had somehow stepped through a time warp that had carried us back to the early 1900's.
Comments
I was awed by those two judges too, and not in a good way! Adrian was not surprised but that made me even more upset about the state of our current (or early 20th century) affairs.
Posted by: Megan | January 27, 2009 02:17 PM
the rough balance of cozy and quaint...
Posted by: phoebe | January 27, 2009 02:37 PM
Yeah, playgroup's at your house this week!!! This area is also the type of community that comes together to rebuild barns after fires (currently happening in west Union co.) and has ham loaf dinners (ah...yum?) to support families who are facing tough times...not likely to hear about through mass media. But I get your point those judges should be put in "their" detention center for life.
Posted by: Elizabeth | January 28, 2009 07:28 AM