Growing Snowflowers

My point exactly!

Well, whaddya know! Just as I was lamenting my time here in the nether-burbs, I spot an interview on The Daily Show with Bill Bishop! This is on my list of must reads...seems like it explains my current conundrum. Here's what publisher's weekly said about the book.

Pulitzer Prize–finalist Bishop offers a one-idea grab bag with a thesis more provocative than its elaboration. Bishop contends that as Americans have moved over the past three decades, they have clustered in communities of sameness, among people with similar ways of life, beliefs, and in the end, politics. There are endless variations of this clustering—what Bishop dubs the Big Sort—as like-minded Americans self-segregate in states, cities—even neighborhoods. Consequences of the Big Sort are dire: balkanized communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible; a growing intolerance for political differences that has made national consensus impossible; and politics so polarized that Congress is stymied and elections are no longer just contests over policies, but bitter choices between ways of life. Bishop's argument is meticulously researched—surveys and polls proliferate—and his reach is broad. He splices statistics with snippets of sociological theory and case studies of specific towns to illustrate that while the Big Sort enervates government, it has been a boon to advertisers and churches, to anyone catering to and targeting taste. Bishop's portrait of our post materialistic society will probably generate chatter; the idea is catchy, but demonstrating that like does attract like becomes an exercise in redundancy.

Redundency, maybe...but it makes a lot of sense to me..truly an 'aha' moment for this subaru driving , organic eatin', BBC watching chickadee!

oh...look, the black spots are overwhelmingly democratic, the grey...republican...the gray...suburban...guess where we live...GRAY GRAY GRAY!