The Paper is Greener

I love to keep up with local events. What's going on in the community, local political squabbles, high school sports, obituaries, bake sales, the usual stuff. The best way to keep up is the local paper, which is why I have a subscription and eagerly pull it out of my mailbox every week or so. Sometimes it's every other week. Sometimes I get this week's paper before last week's. That's not the fault of the paper or of any local delivery service. It's because my local paper comes from 1400 miles away.
Much to the loneliness of my wife, the kids and I spend our summers a loooooong way north of where we live. I feel incredibly lucky that we're able to do this, and I'll talk about it more as summer approaches. In fact, I probably won't be able to talk about much else. I get very excited. 
You might wonder if I keep up on local events where I live. Not really. I sort of keep a general eye on politics and goings on in Houston, which is the big city, but not local stuff. After 10 years I still feel, not like an outsider, but like someone who's just passing through. I don't feel that connected to a political and cultural system that I have every intention of leaving, and that's probably not a good thing. I do vote locally, though I don't feel that it does much good. The guy with the R next to his name is going to win it seems, regardless of what he says. Even if I agree with him, that's a little disheartening, it doesn't feel like real democracy. It gives me something to think about though.
So I keep up on the town where I spend my summers and send most of my tax money. Close to where I spent the first 24 years of my life, where I still feel a cultural connection. If things go as planned, we'll be here just a bit longer than that before we turn around and head north again, a long period migration involving moving trucks. There's a chance, I will admit, that by then I will have become as culturally assimilated to my home here as I was to my home there when I left. My children are growing up here, they are Native Texans, I have to keep reminding myself of that. Their home, their culture belongs here as much as mine still belongs 1400 miles north. Inevitably at least a few of them are going to stay around here, so I'm still going to be attached to the community even in my old age whether I want to be or not. I should start getting a paper here too, but I'll probably wait until they need to ship it 1400 miles north before I'm really interested. The paper is always greener on the other side. Or something.

Books I finished this week -
At Home, A Short History of Private Life - Bill Bryson
The Bagel - The Surprising History of a Modest Bread - Maria Balinska

At Home should have been titled 'More cool stuff that Bryson knows'. It's loosely based around a walk through the house but it rambles. It rambles so much. That's so much of what makes it awesome. Bryson wanders far and wide through England and the U.S. and all over the planet and it's people and their history. If you like 'Brief History of Everything' then go grab 'At Home' it's sort of like an extra 19 chapters of fantastic writing.
The Bagel is not what I expected. It was more of a history of Jewish Poland and its peoples from 1200 through immigration to the U.S. and their lives here. It mentions bagels, true, but only tangentially to give the story a bit of cohesion. With the exception of maybe one chapter, she could have written the book just as well without including a bagel in it anywhere. That's not to say that it's not a cool book, I learned a lot that I didn't otherwise know. We didn't cover a whole hell of a lot of Jewish Polish history in public school in the 80's, so it was interesting. Just know that even though it's a quick and interesting book, it might not exactly be what you expect when you see it on the shelf.