Oh, we probably have similar ideas of community. I would love it if all you guys lived in walking distance and we could go out and drink beer and throw darts and argue politics at a local bar. But you don't, and like many middle class US-ers, I have been exiled to the burbs by the hard realities of the urban public school systems. (Ended up sending the daughter to private school in the city anyway.) Needless to say I don't mean the presence of minorities, in fact we choose to live in one of the two reasonable integrated 'burbs in Chicagoland for that reason, but the desperate lack of resources. And we therefore commute, plus we work long hours -- Americans work way harder/longer than just about anyone else -- and have nothing in common with the neighbors, or never see the neighbors with whom we have anything in common. The colleagues I'm closest too are as busy as I am; if I see them a few times a year it's lucky. Family is dispersed; mine are now all 1000-2500 miles away. It sucks, but hier wir keine Geimeinschaft haben. So, yes, I'd like to be able to drop in on Joanna or Kelly, say, hey, let's catch a show, go to a demo, whatever. (A couple-three times a year I _do_ see Doug & Liza, but I actually knew them both before the net -- also Brian, whom I didn't before the net. And Yoshie, whom I knew from Columbus.) But basically, there's not a lot of options. I'm lucky to have this. My netless espouza is very lonely.
--- ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> At around 5/12/06 8:56 pm, andie nachgeborenen
> wrote:
> >
> > Btw, unlike Ravi, I don't think that posting to
> lists
> > is "pretending" to be part of a community.
> >
>
> I don't think that it is pretending for all... just
> for me. If Internet
> groups provide a community for you, I am glad. But
> it doesn't for me.
> Perhaps because I have different ideas of a
> community. Which is not to
> say I have not made friends on this list. For
> example, Joanna is a great
> friend, but then again, it is not much fun (for me)
> to have friends 3000
> miles away.
>
> Some of it probably also has to do with expat
> status, as seen in
> Wojtek's response (similar to mine). I am guessing
> here, since I do not
> really know what a white USer's life looks like, but
> it's probably not
> as isolated as that of a non-white leftist
> foreign-born person's is.
> Especially if one does not get assimilated into the
> culture by adopting
> a passion for such things as baseball or tinkering
> with household
> appliances.
>
> --ravi
>
> ___________________________________
>
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>
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