The Road Less Traveled

A blog for mindfulness...and various items. This just goes to show that even old farts can blog and go active in cyberspace. I have a 92 year old grandmother who does e-mail ! That's the kind of stock I come from !
I've had an inclination to write for as long as I can remember. I was Sports editor on my high school paper but left that post to enroll in literature courses where I got turned on to poetry. I was also into guitar and long-distance running. These have been life-long endeavors.
In college I briefly considered church ministry before setting my sights on becoming an educator. Then I got into psychology, transcendentalism, spiritualism, and existential philosophy. These have all had an impact on my work.
Not until well after marrying and establishing a family and career did I return to the pen with any regularity. In the mid 90's I experienced a creative outflow which produced hundreds of poems and lead to my first musical compositions. An avid rock guitarist I use the instrument to sonically parallel the lyrics I've written.
The creative flow is cycling again after a dormant period. Will it lead to Shangri-La or to Mordor ? I've reached that "fork in the road". I'll take "the road less traveled."
Mon Nov 21
The Derelictby Shrivedog      On a blustery morning in November of 2011 I stand in an isolated corner of Elk Grove California.  It’s a place where the roads are broad, recently constructed, and where the landscape holds traces of infrastructure, as though something was supposed to have been here that never arrived.  This used to be farm land.  Like so much open territory bought up by developers and speculators during the economic boom of the mid to late 1990’s, before the bubble burst, it seemed the citizens groups resisting rapid growth had finally run out of resources and the time ripe for the latest episode of suburban sprawl.  However, with the investment of more wealth in foreign banks, and with technological change throwing us into that ever volatile cyclone known as the global economy, the project ground to a sickening halt.       Looking toward the inflow of a coming storm, clouds fly like gloomy spirits over an old graveyard.  On the near horizon is a group of buildings that look abandoned; deserted by what was once a profitable, and promising addition to a burgeoning community.  Now dilapidated, weathered, and deteriorating, the metal-framed hulk sits ominously pressed against the cold morning sky.      In truth, the derelict project isn’t very old, at least not physically.  Originally intended to be an upscale indoor mall, the project was downsized to be an above average strip mall.  As the cost of steel and other materials sharply increased with the onset of the recession, the effort which was to become the “Lent Ranch Mall” was renamed “The Promenade”.  The planning for the Lent Ranch Project dates back to the 1990’s.  The final plan for the layout of the project was made public in July of 2001.  Throughout the late 90’s and into the middle of the first decade of the new millenium came the recall of a California Governor in the midst of a power-utility scandal, the crushing blow of foreclosures from amortized loans that no home buyer ever believed would see radical increases in interest rates, the monetary fallout created by 9-11 and unrest in the global community.  Since 2008, ”The Promenade” sits unfinished.  In like fashion, much of the land between here and the Sacramento River sits in a holding pattern after being bought up by speculators who now lack the resources or the markets to develop it.  Perhaps the only smart folks were the farmers who saw the writing on the wall, took the money offered them, and set out for greener pastures.      Meanwhile, what used to be considered an inevitable part of the business cycle, prosperity, alludes us like a fading apparition.  One wonders if we have a ghost of a chance of turning the derelict into something viable and lasting.  Nobody is sure, but, we have good roads now, even though nobody lives out here. 

The Derelict
by Shrivedog

      On a blustery morning in November of 2011 I stand in an isolated corner of Elk Grove California.  It’s a place where the roads are broad, recently constructed, and where the landscape holds traces of infrastructure, as though something was supposed to have been here that never arrived.  This used to be farm land.  Like so much open territory bought up by developers and speculators during the economic boom of the mid to late 1990’s, before the bubble burst, it seemed the citizens groups resisting rapid growth had finally run out of resources and the time ripe for the latest episode of suburban sprawl.  However, with the investment of more wealth in foreign banks, and with technological change throwing us into that ever volatile cyclone known as the global economy, the project ground to a sickening halt. 
     Looking toward the inflow of a coming storm, clouds fly like gloomy spirits over an old graveyard.  On the near horizon is a group of buildings that look abandoned; deserted by what was once a profitable, and promising addition to a burgeoning community.  Now dilapidated, weathered, and deteriorating, the metal-framed hulk sits ominously pressed against the cold morning sky. 
    In truth, the derelict project isn’t very old, at least not physically.  Originally intended to be an upscale indoor mall, the project was downsized to be an above average strip mall.  As the cost of steel and other materials sharply increased with the onset of the recession, the effort which was to become the “Lent Ranch Mall” was renamed “The Promenade”.  The planning for the Lent Ranch Project dates back to the 1990’s.  The final plan for the layout of the project was made public in July of 2001.  Throughout the late 90’s and into the middle of the first decade of the new millenium came the recall of a California Governor in the midst of a power-utility scandal, the crushing blow of foreclosures from amortized loans that no home buyer ever believed would see radical increases in interest rates, the monetary fallout created by 9-11 and unrest in the global community.  Since 2008, ”The Promenade” sits unfinished.  In like fashion, much of the land between here and the Sacramento River sits in a holding pattern after being bought up by speculators who now lack the resources or the markets to develop it.  Perhaps the only smart folks were the farmers who saw the writing on the wall, took the money offered them, and set out for greener pastures. 
     Meanwhile, what used to be considered an inevitable part of the business cycle, prosperity, alludes us like a fading apparition.  One wonders if we have a ghost of a chance of turning the derelict into something viable and lasting.  Nobody is sure, but, we have good roads now, even though nobody lives out here.