Welcome to you but not necessarily to the back porch, it’s just too cold. I guess what we’re gonna have to look at is maybe putting a wood-burning stove there on that back porch cause I don’t have any intentions of closing it in. Anyway, I’m about the only one here right now everybody’s kinda hunkered down inside. Most southern people don’t have any problem with the fall and really not much problem with the Winters, as they’re usually mild in this area even here on the plateau just outside of Nashville. When the fall gets here for southern folks the low 60s and then into the low 50s that that’s heaven itself and we enjoy every minute of it. The magnificent colors of the trees and for those of us that can get there that fantastic mountain air that just seems to have a different vibe to it than that city stuff. Now I have no absolute idea about what we would’ve talked about tonight except for one subject for sure and that’s the election in my area for the seventh District congressional seat. We’ll get to that in a moment. You know the holiday season used to be a time when   people came together and there was a just a general feeling of kindness and courtesy towards everyone and of course it was always a very special time for families. I remember the older shopping malls before they became shooting galleries, they were usually L shaped U shaped or in some cases they were simply a half circle. The idea was that all of your favorite stores would be there. I kind of referred to them as strip malls, and then somebody came along and decided let’s put an extended roof on this thing make some concourses to travel back-and-forth and add another floor and some escalators and we’ve got a winner, oh, and don’t forget the food court. The strip was gone, and here was the mall in all its glory. Now going to the mall to shop was a family event. They’re all kinds of things there, all kinds of stores and all kinds of people. Now you have to be careful but one of my favorite things to do at the mall was just simply to sit on one of those iron or wood benches and just watch people. I begin to notice over the years, people had a more distressed look on their face. You could see people that there was no doubt that they were sad and weren’t feeling too good about things. Then they were those smiling laughing really enjoy being together and being among people. Whether we admitted or not, man was created to need fellowship. So…. If you enjoy being among people, the mall was a place to be. But then along came the Internet and with it a familiar term, “what can Brown do for you?” We began to hear more and more people share with each other in groups or family gatherings. Oh, it’s so much easier to shop by Internet, and that is what they were doing. The fellowship, the being among people, getting out and enjoying all the different venues that were available were slowly narrowing down to coffee, shops, and donut bars. And then came the hammer, with a weird name and an unbelievable inventory. Amazon,  it was very much like a jungle with all kinds of animals, but the animals turned out to be products, things people were looking for and wanted. Now they were various costs or fees that were associated with this modern day convenience but it wasn’t long before those little blue trucks or big blue trucks with a big smile on the side were running around in everybody’s neighborhood delivering everything you might need and if that wasn’t enough, sometimes you can get it the very next day. All this convenience and all these products all this availability, somewhere in all of that we lost our community. It became rather fashionable to not have to mingle with crowds and quite frankly the uncertainty of your own safety in some places which kept people away. My sister refers to it as “going out there”, there being the Internet. For some of us older folks it’s all really confusing. They’ve got a couple of stores that you even can buy membership, now let’s be honest you have to buy that membership because that’s the only way you can get in the store. It’s a mystery to me. It’s almost like there’s something uplifting or something special about having to pay be among a lot of people.

And now for that other thing that I was suggesting we talk about, actually ponder. There was a special election in the seventh district to fill of vacancy from a resignation of a gentleman from Congress in that district. You had the usual two candidates well a lot more than that, but the two major candidates in the Republican and Democratic party running for that open seat. Nashville, Tennessee, which one of the districts in this congressional district and it’s grown by almost 300 people a day over the past few years and that may sound kind of ridiculous to you, but the figures are government figures if that means anything, and that explosion in population was due to people fleeing some of the more regressive blue states. These folks wanted relief from high taxes, they want better school systems, and they were looking for a cheaper cost of living than what they were accustomed to. The democratic candidate, a lady who would really be classified as a new breed Socialist Democrat was making quite an impact on the election. Now here’s the ponder of the day. As I said earlier, Nashville is in within the seventh district. It is now become a kind of democratic stronghold. In other words it’s gone blue. I am not sure about the actual percentage, but I know it one time while I was watching the returns come in last night. The Democratic candidate at one time had 84% of the vote for that district. Now as some of us old folks here in the south would say “here’s the short of it”. The Republican candidate won the election for that vacant congressional seat but only by 9%. Here again is your Ponder for the day.

 Why would you travel all of the distances that many these folks have traveled only to vote for what you were running from?

Kurt