"What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do?"

While it's true that we make our own lives, it's harder to make an interesting life in some places than it is in others.
I remember talking to a man in the cable TV industry who compared selling cable in the Albuquerque region to selling it in the Baltimore area. "Albuquerque was a tough sell," he said, "but Baltimore was easy." I asked him why. "Because there's so many other things to do in Albuquerque."
I've lived in both places and he's right. Plenty to do there, not much to do here. Why is that? No, never mind, I don't care why. The better question is: Will it ever get any better?
My only hope for the region is BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) which has, for some sadistic reason, thousands of people moving to suburban Baltimore from points north, most of them within a few minutes ride of NYC. Think they'll like Harford County? I don't think so either.
In a recent Sun article, a man from a company relocating here was absolutely dumbfounded by the lack of decent restaurants showing up on his GPS. Well, I got news for you buddy, it wasn't a mapping error.
A couple of years back, I ran into a childhood friend who'd become a chef and opened an outstanding eatery in Harford County. He spoke to me of his frustration over regional tastes. He'd entered a dish in a local restaurant competition and been beaten out by "cheesy fries." Sadly, and inevitably, his outstanding eatery became a sports bar.
And that's just food. There ain't many other activities here either: cultural, recreational, shopping, educational - it's all pretty bleak.
One can eke out a sort of half-assed recreational life in Harford County, but it isn't easy. My hobbies these days include this blog, where I take pictures of old buildings that are on the verge of becoming parking lots. I have leveraged the great vacuity of the place into a kind of sad art. It's not much, but it gives me something to do.
You BRAC folks have a tough job ahead of you. You will be like pioneers homesteading on an empty plain. What will win out in the end: culture, or emptiness? The odds aren't at all clear.

A new life awaits in Harford County!