August 1

 Welcome to August. Only ninety-some days til the election and it can't come soon enough though I don't expect the political temperature to break no matter who wins. We have had a couple of nice quiet days because we have left the TV off. It is becoming less and less useful. What I can tolerate Mom finds boring and she starts insisting that there MUST be something else. I read off what is on the schedule to prove there really isn't anything better. The old joke about 500 channels and nothing to watch is still absolutely right. Most of what she can tolerate if find downright irritating. Especially the politics.

We had to drive about 50 miles to a doctor's appointment. Luckily we left in plenty of time. It is construction season here and we had to slow down through several sections. The map programs were an irritation because they kept indicating the Toll Road. We have never liked driving that route west and now the powers that be have removed the last of the cash lanes. You have to have some kind of account that automatically scans your license and debits you. We don't do that kind of thing. I found another route after a bit of searching that we were somewhat familiar with. The one with construction well underway.

Part of that route took us through part of Gary just south of the Northwest campus of Indiana University. That is an area I remember well from my first successful stint in higher education in the mid-1970s. Then it was still a busy commercial area with a variety of stores, restaurants and a couple of bars. NOT ANYMORE. Even the pharmacy that had been there seemingly forever has closed. We could tell when we entered Gary. The streets were horrible--even the main street we were on. Mom commented that Gary simply hadn't got to it yet. I told her I think the situation is worse than that. I don't think Gary has the money for the maintenance. Not only were the streets in critically bad shape but most of the traffic lights that worked fifty years ago weren't functioning and haven't been for some time. They hadn't been removed. Stop signs were simply added in front of them. I think I described a similar scene a few blocks south last year when we were trying to get home from visiting my brother.

Gary hasn't been able to attract new industries to replace the steel and refining that had made the city prosperous. Although several areas around Gary looked prosperous and much of it newly built up, most of the business appeared to be in the medical industry. A hospital we both knew has merged with a national chain that has also invaded our area. It has also expanded massively. Instead of strip malls of commercial outlets we saw strip malls of doctor's offices with a scattering of restaurants to serve the office and doctors' staffs.

I wonder if fifty years from now these areas will be as blighted as Gary. The major driver of medical expansion has been the aging of my generation--the Baby Boom. As we drove the expansion of baby and young children's merchandise, the growth of school expansion at all levels from pre-school through university, the growth off housing from starter homes to McMansions, we are now driving health care for an aging population. But the growth was followed by a crash. And so many areas are the modern equivalent of a "company town." As the company went so went the town.