Hitting us where we live: Austin

Brian Deer has chimed in--"chimed" seems such a missish word to use around Brian Deer--and in the course of detailing some of the reaction he witnessed (100 years ago, corsets would have been loosened and smelling salts brought out), Deer wandered over into my territory of Austin, TX.

Wakefield's family reportedly loves it here. I'm sure he loves his salary here, which is practically a necessity given how ridiculous the cost of living has gotten in this town since I took up fairly permanent residence in 1985.

Deer quotes some local pediatrician (or, if you're British, "paediatrician") as describing our town as "a very welcoming, somewhat renegade, community." Well,OK. This doc also describes Wakefield as having received a "lynching" in our local paper. And here I thought the paper was really doing the world a favor by telling the facts, rather than engaging in false "objectivity" by including the anti-vax side in Every Single Autism Article. They started doing that quite awhile back, before it became the vogue in the larger media outlets. Sometimes, I guess, familiarity does breed a bit of contempt.

The pediatrician quoted above also informed Mr. Deer that our town's motto is, "Keep Austin Weird." It used to be kinda weird, a funky, fun, laid-back place to hang out, see bands, drink beer, eat amazing Tex-Mex. These days, it seems more like one big sprawl of bad traffic, $6 milk gallons, overwhelming webs of freeways, and neverending ribbons of strip malls. Perhaps that's just my jaded perspective after watching Austin's explosive growth during the past quarter century.

It's been a bit weird for me lately, though, having El Doctor so nearby, seeing this entanglement of where I live with where I blog. ThoHo is so close to home that I drive by it often. Even stranger have been the days that I've been dining in a neighborhood eatery only to see Herr Doktor himself dining there as well, solo. I think he eats salad mostly. Tall guy. Bit dour and tired looking. I always keep an eye on him, wondering if he'll corner some unsuspecting child and ask for blood, but he hasn't done that so far. (I also keep my nose on high alert for the smell of sulfur). We're weird around here, still, and occasionally welcoming, but I don't think we'd welcome that.