American Contrasts

I've been at a developer conference in Las Vegas for the past few days. The contrasts have been striking, absolutely over the top bling and glitz and 'forced scale'. The hotels are huge, the distances between the hotel where we are staying and the hotel where our conference is being held is over a km as the wolf runs. To get there we need to go through a casino, part of Arthur's castle, part of New York, two more casino's and past a very large pool area to the conference center - and these hotels are directly across the street from each other.

While we are moving between those venus we frequently pass beggars and hawkers on the street. The beggars are most commonly white, the hawkers of the little cards for naked girls are most commonly latino. As we are in the casino's the service staff are most commonly black...

The beggars stack out ground on the few limited 'public' spaces. Much of the Vegas strip is in-fact not public space, it's part of the buildings that they are in-front of, and it's under the control of the security staff of that building, who 'Move Along' anyone that is begging, drunk etc. very quickly - and they contact the security at the next building to come and meet the beggar to keep them going.

I've passed war veterans, poor young couples on the street with their dog, a female accordion player with no legs and what appeared to be a woman in her 60's that had a sign up asking for help with her medical bills because she had cancer and needed treatment. She looked like someone's grandmother. Obviously ill, and in need of a warm bed a comfy chair and a little care, not sitting amongst the dirt and plants on the ground, with her dirty cardboard sign, half falling asleep in the afternoon heat...

The contrast between that crushing poverty and a society that is so obviously rich. So rich that they can build monuments to wealth, where people sit and put their money into machines and bet it on cards for hours on end in a vain hope of getting still more money, is stunning. This is a country that claims to uphold Christian values, to care what happens to people as Christ did. What I've seen here has nothing to do with the message that Christ gave us and much much more to do with greed.

It makes me sad, I suspect that I will return here sometime in my life, but I see little reason to seek this place out.

Three more days to go, and I'm ready to go home.

Evan

Photo: Evan Young 2012

 

New Year 2009

Another year gone...

Personal Development (Training/Certification)

Made no progress here - I guess I need to decide if this is really important.

Craft Room

Like many people we still have a 'deep dark secret' in a pile of collected junk that we need to sort through. If anything this has gotten worse...

Tasks

This has improved but need to get better at focusing real time onto tasks be they work, personal projects, Scouts or just having time to enjoy cooking dinner.

Painting the Living Room

This is probably one of our 'next tasks' only issue is that the living area has a vaulted ceiling over the stairs that is going to be very very difficult to paint.

Ideas for 2009

I'm going to try and limit 'Aimless Surfing'...I frequently sit on the couch and surf the net - whatever I find interesting, problem is it isn't productive time. At the same time the TV is on and that just creates mental noise (as one blog I read this year said) if I'm going to make time to accomplish tasks then I need to have less unfocused time when I'm not productive.

I continue to try and change the 'tone' of the items I buy - wood, stone, stoneware, metal in place of plastic and that has been somewhat successful.

Kiddo is now old enough that S. and I are going to try and take him out canoeing this summer - we'll see how that works out.

New Year

Wow it's already the end of January and I haven't posted yet - bad blogger...

This is actually going to be my '2007 Year in Review' Post. I know that many families send out those letters at Christmas and some people find them really annoying to read (I usually don't by the way).

If you don't like those letters, you probably want to skip this post!



Accomplished (From things To Do and What Didn't Work, from last year)

Personal Organization

With the completion of the basement this has improved - we still have a house with a 2.5 year old kiddo but it is getting better. I'm keeping accurate and better notes; I use one large Blueline Twin Wire Bound notebook for my paid-work notes and continue to use (and enjoy) my Moleskine for all else (Scouts, Church, Personal) and I carry that everywhere that I go, these notes are transcribed to Minutes, Calendar, Agendas etc. as needed but I only need to go to one place to find everything that is actionable.

Finish Basement

Thankfully this is all but completed - some trim remains outstanding but we are now moved into this space and using it much to the enjoyment of the house - and it's spin off effect is that less 'stuff' gets stuck upstairs.

Yard / Outside

The sod is down, the path almost completed and we are now enjoying the space we planted many many bulbs that will come up in the spring! The Deck remains to be finished but that seems much more easy to accomplish now.

Garage Cleaning

Both cars are back in the garage now and much (though not all) of the crap has been thrown out or given away! No more scraping the windows!

Outstanding

Personal Development (Training/Certification)

Made no progress here - I guess I need to decide if this is really important.

Craft Room

Like many people we still have a 'deep dark secret' in a pile of collected junk that we need to sort through.

Tasks

This has improved but need to get better at focusing real time onto tasks be they work, personal projects, Scouts or just having time to enjoy cooking dinner.

Painting the Living Room

This is probably one of our 'next tasks' only issue is that the living area has a vaulted ceiling over the stairs that is going to be very very difficult to paint.

Ideas for 2008

I'm going to try and limit 'Aimless Surfing'...I frequently sit on the couch and surf the net - whatever I find interesting, problem is it isn't productive on any level. At the same time the TV is on and that just creates mental noise (as one blog I read this year said) if I'm going to make time to accomplish tasks then I need to have less unfocused time when I'm not productive.

I continue to try and change the 'tone' of the items I buy - wood, stone, stoneware, metal in place of plastic and that has been somewhat successful.

Kiddo is now old enough that S. and I are going to try and take him out canoeing this summer - we'll see how that works out.

Have a great 2008!

BTW my 2006 Year in Review is here if you want to read it

Evan

Photo Credit: Fabrizio Morroia from Flickr