We are all Americans.

This is me. First thing in the morning. No makeup, no coffee, even. I want to put my tired, aging face right out there with no attempt to make it pretty or make you think I'm something other than who and what I am.

Why?

I want you to do the same. I want us to introduce ourselves to each other. Because it appears we don't know each other at all.

You'll consider me a a progressive liberal, or you'll think I'm an East Coast elitist. You'll be partially right, either way, and partially wrong. Black and white doesn't tell the whole story. Never does.

My name is Susan. I'm 59. I live on the East Coast. I grew up here, I went to college here, I worked here, had my two children here, and will probably die here. Not because it's better than anywhere else. It's just where my life happened.

I love the Midwest. It's where my mother grew up and where I went to visit every summer. I loved the flat farmland, the way they talked, the fact that everything they ate tested better than what we had at home. I think that huge expanses of farmland are beautiful in the same way the ocean is beautiful. It cuts us down to size, puts us in perspective.

My dad was an East Coast native and my mom's family wasn't keen on him. Likewise, my dad's family toward my mom.

So I understand that "them and us" thing that rose up and gave us Donald Trump as our next president. I get it.

As an only child, I never felt like I fit anywhere. Maybe that makes me the right person to start this attempt at a conversation. Bear with me. I'll explain.

First,  let me tell you who I am. I used to be a television news anchor and that was a pretty big deal in a pretty small city, but that was a long time ago. I've done radio news. I even worked for an NPR station (and if you don't like liberals that's probably really going to tick you off).

I've also taught high school English, I've worked in a retail store, I've been a secretary - and a very poor one, I must admit. I did a temp accounting job for a big corporation. I've been unemployed. I even got fired once.

These days, I sell real estate. I write. I've got novels the world has never seen. Maybe they never will. I did get my short stories published once. You'll probably never find the book. It's okay. I have written for newspapers and magazines. I love to write.

I was raised Catholic. I left it behind when my mother died. It was a crisis of faith and I lost.

I have two grown children who are the most amazing people on the planet. Really. I believe they are.

I'm divorced. It was a hard, sad time a long time ago and we both share the blame.

I met a nice man and I refuse to get married again. So you might tell me I am living in sin.

I pay more than $500 a month for my insurance with Obamacare, but before that, I had none at all. Real estate doesn't offer benefits.

My son and his girlfriend are getting married soon. I'm hoping it's my year for going to happy weddings - another of my favorite couples plans to get married, too - but it wasn't legal for them to marry until not too long ago.

I believe every human being has the same rights. I don't care what color they are, what gender, who they love, where they live, what or who they worship: humans are humans and as such, they deserve equal respect, equal rights, equal pay for equal work, and equal opportunities.

I supported Bernie Sanders. I wasn't rabid about it, but I believed, and still do, that he was the liberal answer to the "outsider" we were yearning for. I agreed with his platform. I reluctantly voted for Hillary Clinton because I could not vote for Donald Trump. But I wish I had had another choice. She was an insider in a system I believe has failed. And now it's collapsed.

Why not Trump? Here's what I ask you to understand, if you can: I believe what he said on the campaign trail. I believed it when he expressed racist, sexist, homophobic, discriminatory views. I believed it when he encouraged violence.

I do not think he is stupid. Far from it. I think he crafted the perfect expression of what a massive block of angry voters wished they could say, but couldn't.

The fact that he said it, out loud, on the campaign trail for the country's most important job, told me he is irresponsible. He erased that line that, until now, we didn't dare cross. And that has made a few truly angry, truly hate-filled people brave enough to begin expressing their rage at other people.

I'm hearing about gays being beaten, school kids making their black classmates move to the back of the bus, women grabbed. Is it just hysteria? I do not know. But no one ever wants to hear this might be happening. Not here. Not in America.

We are beyond that. Aren't we?

I believe he will support big business and the middle class will continue to suffer. I don't think he'll help the poor. I think he's a bad businessman and I see no evidence he won't be a very, very bad president.

He doesn't care about anything I care about.

Gun violence is an epidemic in this country. I want strict controls on who can have a gun and what kind of gun it can be. My dad was a hunter. He was responsible. But no one needs an assault weapon.

Factory farming scares me on a lot of levels. The food isn't healthy, many farmers have been put out of business. I try to be a vegetarian. My vegan friends will be horrified to learn that sometimes I fail. But mostly I succeed. It's better for the environment, it's better for my health, but more importantly it means a few less animals are tortured and killed just so I can eat.

I worry about the environment. I know the weather has changed and it makes no sense to me that we have no impact on the climate. With all the roads, the cars, the businesses...it just has to be connected. And science is clear that it does.

I believe science when it's conclusive. But I know sometimes scientists make mistakes, too.

I don't think I'm a snob. But I know education is really important, and I think everyone should have access to it. I don't think kids and their parents should go into massive debt to pay for it.

If a student wants to learn a trade instead, I think it's important that those jobs and those opportunities exist. And in many trades, there's the opportunity to open your own business. There should be government programs to help them make that happen, in lieu of support for their college education.

I support what we now call single payer health care. I think good health care should be the right of every citizen.

Maybe that's socialism. So be it, then. That label isn't frightening to me.

My America isn't Trump's America. Trump's America scares me. He's let loose something that may destroy us.

What is frightening is a country that is full of hate. I don't want to be afraid for my children's future. I don't want you to be afraid for your children's future.

We haven't been talking to each other. We don't know each other.

Let's talk. Introduce yourself. Let's make a start. And let's build a political system that listens to us, and responds to our concerns. Because it's a sure bet that we haven't had that. And I think we can agree on that.

Yes, there will likely be some nasty troll comments if this thing catches on. Ignore the noise. Let's try to build up some kind of trust again by getting to know each other.

Write to me at everydaypeopleproject2016@gmail.com and tell me your story. I'll post it here and link to it on FB and Instagram and Twitter. And don't forget we're all Americans.

Charlie Deitz

Charlie Deitz is not one to conform and his career has taken a number of unusual turns because he refuses to settle for work he doesn't love doing. I met him when we were both working for a National Public Radio affiliate – he covered the news in the Berkshires of Massachusetts and I covered New York's Hudson Valley. We both left for jobs that paid better, and when we reconnected he told me a lot has happened in the past five years or so. The latest news was he's earned his Master's degree from the University of Oregon. And he's at a crossroads again.

“It was a long haul, so thank God it's done. Now I can start the longer haul of PhD work. I do instructing and I'm also taking classes, but I'm still a slave. I don't make any money.”

“I'd like to have a hybrid job – do some reporting in some form and teach some classes. There are little mini-laboratory environments that get created – little projects, experiments – that's where you find the cool output from the professional world and academia when they start talking to each other.”

Deitz said before working as a bureau chief, he'd never been a field reporter. He put together an audition tape from gigs as an overnight radio news anchor.

“Before that I bounced around. When I moved out west from Jersey, I started working for AAA and made it to mid-level management, but after a few years I wanted to drift. And taxi driving would fund that project. But I always wanted to get into NPR. And I think it was after we had our first miscarriage was when I really felt like I needed ot make good on this life – go after what I wanted to do. That's when I got into the radio broadcast program outside of Portland, which opened the door to the overnight radio and then the affiliate in New York. The change was massive. Enormous. Earth changing. We were all very excited when the call came that I got the job. But we found out the Berkshires were a lot more expensive than we anticipated. And after we finally got a place, we found we were pregnant. And it was the beginning of the Great Recession. And my wife couldn't find work and we had to live on my salary. Not to badmouth the station, but I wished they'd paid me more. We moved to a smaller place. And after about two years, there wasn't any upward momentum. We'd gotten a raise – and I was like “Oh my God – I'm never going to be able to even buy a dinner. Everything's going to be out of a box.” I was living where the boss told me he wanted to live, and I was getting paid mileage, which I needed to help make ends meet. Then they moved the office and I wasn't in a position to move again. That was another $150 a month hit to our budget and that's what really forced me to start looking. I started sending out my resume – sent it both to colleges and newsrooms and figured I'd let the chips fall where they may. Turns out there's really a glut of talented people in the NPR world, stations weren't getting back to me, and University of Oregon got back to me and put money on the table to get me there.”

They took the Oregon offer, as it also put them back near his wife's family. “She found work after six or seven months, which isn't that long compared to where we'd just been. But to be able to have a house that was nice and clean, I really felt that difference. In the Berkshires, it seemed like every other week something massive would break – like the toilet would drain into the washing machine....”

Most people don't imagine that the reporters they hear on the radio or see on television might not be able to pay their bills. And thirty years ago, it wasn't an issue. But today, producers in a middle market television newsroom work part time in retail to pay their bills. Reporters for an NPR affiliate make thirty thousand or less – after years on the job.

“Reporters struggle. Especially TV reporters – they have to buy suits? I don't even own a suit – I don't know what I'd do. I'd probably look like some seventies sitcom extra.”

So what's he doing next?

“Right now, I'm at the point where I really don't know. I'm going through a divorce – nice little curveball – so I got into the PhD program back in March, then this happened, we each moved into our own places and split our time with Penny (their daughter). If this was chess, Katie definitely check-mated me because I eventually wanted to leave this area and look for jobs in California or back east. Now I'm kind of stuck here. Katie's not moving and I'm not even considering being away from Penny. So the PhD program is kind of a placeholder until I figure out what I can do here in this town to survive – something that's hopefully good for the world and pays me enough to pay for my apartment for say the next fourteen years. I have to play along – throw the designs out the window. But while I'm here, it's pretty fun to be in it for now if I don't think about where it's going. I get a lot of cool opportunities in the program.”

And I noted he'd get to be Doctor Deitz when it was over.

“I get to be Dr. Deitz! And working at some gas station! Dr. Gas!”

What happened, I wondered, to that sense we used to have that if you took a step ahead, you could plan ahead and be pretty sure you'd land on solid ground?

“I think that's what people tell themselves so they can force themselves to take a step. Like some sense that history is trying catch up with you and eat you if you don't move fast enough. I don't know anybody who's just kind of coasted into some luxurious lifestyle. Most of the people, even the professors, they had to go through the fire, too. Just like in news, academia is seeing a shift, towards pulverizing the entry level folks who do most of the work. It used to be you'd get your PhD, you'd work a few years, get your tenure. Now people who are associate professors have second jobs. I just have no intuition for where to go.”

We're Still Here - But We Don't Feel Well

I started this blog back in 2008. I was frightened by what I saw happening in my country.  The American Dream, that belief that hard work, intelligence and ambition could take you anywhere you desired, died.  It was a slow, sad, painful death and some of us still can't believe it's gone.

It is.

I have gone through all the stages of grief and have finally accepted that the world I grew up in no longer exists. The brave new world is not better. And we need to speak up about it.

I want to do something. I am not a policy maker (nor do I want to be), I am not a radical (except in my imagination), but I know something has gone terribly wrong and we all need to stop denying it.

There is not one simple fix for an incredibly complex web of issues. But fixes have to begin somewhere. So I'm focusing on work.We are working harder and longer than ever before, yet the middle class is heading for extinction. When it's gone, so is the society we say we live in.

I write.  I believe that this little corner of the blog universe is my place to shine a spotlight on individual stories, true stories that will illustrate what life is like in what we're told is post-recession America.

I have begun interviewing people from all walks of life, asking them about what it's like to try to stay afloat in the treacherous seas that are America after the economic meltdown.

 Some of them are working multiple jobs. Some are trying to find one. Some of them are at the top of their professions. Some thought they'd be retired by now.

They're young, they're old, they're saddled with college debt or never finished high school. They are us. And their stories are the real stories of what it's like in this country today.

There are other projects out there with similar (or even the same) names. It doesn't matter to me. What I'm doing is not the same as what they're doing, and we're all contributing to what I believe is a vital conversation.  I hope you'll look at all of them.  They matter. These people matter. We matter. All of us.

Like most of us, I work several jobs. Time is my challenge. But my intention is to post one story a week here, and I hope you'll read, comment and share. Welcome to Everyday People. Join in - share your story.

Moved...ComeVisit

I started a new chapter and a new blog to go with it...

Stop by and say hi.

http://nyhousejunkie.blogspot.com/

Best always,

Susan

The UK Is Burning

I have been listening to the news from the UK and it is both terrifying and heartbreaking.  It is also ominous.

Terrifying because the thought of gangs of angry, destructive people roaming the cities in packs, destroying everything in their path, is one that makes me feel particularly powerless.  How do you reason with a pack?

Heartbreaking because the "authorities" whose authority is being rejected are reacting like disapproving parents.  I actually heard one government spokesman say, "If they'll go home and behave we'll talk to them."  Behave?  Up until now, they have.  And no one talks to them.  That's not how the game is played.  Power talks to dissent when it can no longer ignore it.

Heartbreaking because there has to be a reason this is happening.  People don't just suddenly explode into violence.  They burn, slowly and steadily, for a long time.  They simmer.  If the heat isn't turned down, they boil.  And at some point, they boil over or blow up.

I don't condone violence.  I don't argue that there's anything justified about the destruction, the looting, the theft.  But I know there has got to be a REASON.  I found a Londoner's blog today that offers a damned good guess at what's happening.  Everyday people have nothing to lose and that is dangerous.


Meet Penny Red.  And pay attention.  Don't think this is a strictly UK phenomenon, you great embarrassments in Washington.

Panic in the Streets

Two Lives in the Recession

The new version of the American Dream appears to be just "getting by". Here's a story I did for the holidays profiling two lives - musician/photographer/writer DB Leonard and former social worker Sharon Butler.


Getting By As the New American Dream

"It's America - It'll Be Alright"

Have you wondered how the newest adults are handling this recession?

I met Geronimo Rodriguez and Ian Anderson after a long afternoon interviewing people about their own personal economic realities. They were sitting together in the shade of a tree near the local pizza joint, their heads bent over their guitars.

"Would you mind talking to me about the economy?" I asked Geronimo.

Ian had wandered off when I arrived, and I wasn't sure I wasn't intruding.

"Really? Yeah, yeah. Sure. I'll talk to you."

Geronimo is a pencil-thin guy with a generous mop of carefully styled black hair.

He's from Temecula, a town in southwest California.

"They were hit really hard there," he said. "People are lining the streets, looking for work. I was going to community college and there were more middle aged people in the class than there were people my age, you know? Like they'd been working at the same place for fifteen years, never went to school beyond high school, and now they're like, 'Hey, I'd better go back and learn some skills.' And kids my age, we're having a really hard time paying for school. Banks aren't lending anymore. How do you pay for it?"

Ian wandered back. He's a thin young fellow with a sandy beard and a knit cap. He said he was from Temecula, too.

"We drove out together. Three days straight. There wasn't any work there, so we figured we'd head east and see if we couldn't do better here."

"Where are you staying?" I asked.

"With friends, crashing wherever, sleeping in the car," Ian said.

"Yeah, we're doing a little more busking," Geronimo added. "You know, hey, can you spare a buck, we haven't eaten today. It's hard. But we got lucky and we've got jobs in New Jersey," he continued. "It's just for the summer, and maybe we'll be able to save up to get a place. And I want to go to school."

Ian told me he was in the Coast Guard until they booted him out after he got a concussion.

"I was seeing a lot of educated people joining up," he said. "I think they couldn't find any work, so they figured they'd be safe if they joined the military. To tell you the truth, I think it's kind of like a back door draft, you know?"

I asked them if they were scared.

"No, no," Ian said. "We'll be fine. We did this because we didn't have any responsibilities, no families to take care of. It'll be hard, but this is America. We've got the corner on the world's food supply. We've got plenty. I mean my belly's full and I haven't got a dime."

"I think," Geronimo said, "that maybe what this recession will do is make kids start to value an education again. Something good may come out of it."

"And I believe that entrepreneurs are going to be what pulls us out of this," Ian said. "We've had hard times before. We got through it. This is America. It'll be alright."

Calling For Stories

This blog is called everyday people. I conceived, initially, of a place where I could share the stories of some of the inspiring people I met through my radio show. Instead, the feverish months up to the presidential election transformed this virtual space into an area where I could vent my frustrations, scream my anger and shout my hope.

It is time to consciously change the direction of this blog, and bring it back closer to my original intent.

I want to hear your stories, and I will share the ones you will allow me to share. I want to hear what's happening to you and your family, how secure your employment feels or what's happening to you if you've lost your job. I want to hear how the recession is affecting you - and if you want to call it a depression I won't argue with you.

I want this blog to be a place where all of us can be heard...and as we all begin to speak together our voices will be louder. We are truly all in this together. And it is time for the Everyday People Project to finally live up to its name.

Write to me at everydaypeopleproject@gmail.com Tell me your stories, tell me if you are willing to allow me to share them or if you are writing just because you had to tell somebody, but you're not willing to tell everybody. Send me photos if you want. Write a poem.

Share your story. It matters.

Radioactivity, Coincidence and Individual Rights

If you read an older post, you'll know I've been hot on the trail of information regarding the US's latest gold rush - the race to drill a couple of miles into the ground, then horizontally, to suck up natural gas that has never been tapped.

So imagine my surprise when the author of the book "Welcome To Shirley, a memoir of an atomic town" today told me that her next project is a book on the "new gold rush" in her part of Pennsylvania. Yup. Horizontal drilling for natural gas.

Kelly McMaster's book is a good one. It's not a strident anti-nuke book, though after reading it you may think she ought to be a whole lot angrier and more bitter than she sounds. It's the story of a kid growing up in a wrong-side-of-the-tracks town on Long Island who loves where she comes from, and is shocked to discover that not everyone she meets after she leaves is afraid of developing cancer.

Long Island, she says, has a far higher-than-average rate of cancer. And she knows dozens of neighbors, young and old, who have developed some pretty strange cancers...sometimes more than one. And no one's ever said for sure if that's because their neighbor is the Brookhaven Nuclear Laboratory.

There were leaks from Brookhaven's reactors over the years, and the lab sits atop the aquifer which supplies the area's water. Nobody knew. The lab was eventually declared a Superfund site and a new administration was brought in. But McMasters believes the damage was already done.

"So what's your next project?" I asked her.

And that's when we started talking about gas drilling. She said she knows of people whose wells have gone dry once the drilling started. The horizontal fracking process takes millions of gallons of water, combined with some chemicals that, thanks to the federal government's industry-friendly mood, don't have to be disclosed.

"I'm just hoping I can preserve my little piece of property here," she told me.

And that got me thinking about rights we take for granted - but rights that maybe aren't as secure as we think they are.

For instance, HSO and I have a nice house within walking distance to town. There's a little traffic noise and our road is a favorite shortcut for locals, but it's far from busy.

But we noticed the other day that someone had hung pink plastic ribbons on bushes at the border with our neighbor. We assumed maybe they were thinking of putting up a fence. Instead, they stopped HSO the other day at the store.

"What's up with the ribbon? Are you doing some construction or something?"

Turns out the state was out marking boundaries, preparing to do something regarding traffic to a proposed affordable housing development that's going to be built about a quarter of a mile away. Our road isn't the best way to reach it. There's a closer road. But apparently something is being planned that could direct traffic up our street. And no one said a word.

"Don't they have to tell us?" HSO was not pleased.

I used to live in the cutest little schoolhouse in the world on a scenic road in a remote section of Connecticut. No one told me when I was buying it that the summer would be one long jet-engine howl of hoardes of motorcycles. I had to keep my windows closed. Despite that, conversation was impossible when they went by. I know, buyer beware. But really. And the town I lived in argued every year about those bikers.

"They bring business into town," some shop owners said.

"They drive down the value of our homes, make noise that's unbearable and hog up every parking spot in town," the residents countered.

Other merchants weren't so biker-friendly. I heard some say the bikers never bought anything more than coffee or a sandwich. And some said the bikers drove away families who might have shopped in town if it weren't overrun by middle aged men reclaiming their rebel youths.

So whose rights do we protect? The bikers' right to travel freely and make as much noise as they want because they argue it makes them easier to notice, thereby safer from cars? The rights of people who live on the roads they travel, who should have a reasonable assurance of comfort and protection from other people's noise when they're in their own homes? The rights of shopkeepers who have to make a living?

Do we have to sacrifice the rights of people who have bought homes in a neighborhood in favor of the right of affordable housing to others?

Is there a compromise position that protects all of them? Or do I conclude that all of our rights are suspect? Do we only have rights so long as no one else's rights take precedence?

A Bit of a Bygone Era

This is a photo of a painting called The Dream Garden...done by Nathan Dolinsky of the grounds near his home in the Catskills.

I went there today. It doesn't look much like this anymore.

Imagine an enchanted cottage and gardens, tangled vines, crumbling walls and complete solitude. That would be what I found.


The house is for sale and has been for quite some time. HSO and I have dreamed about it since we first started looking for a house almost two years ago. It was way beyond our means and clearly needed a lot of work. But we kept looking for it. We just wanted to see it.

As part of my 'make this job fun' resolution, I decided to track down the house and the man who clearly loved it. It's going to make a far better story than I could ever have imagined. I found a gallery (Bantam Fine Arts, to whom I owe a thanks for this photo of The Dream Garden) and that led me to fascinating people and ideas that I think would make terrific books. Now that's fun.

I also arranged to get a tour of the house with the realtor who's listed it. HSO is ecstatic. And my daughter, who loves abandoned old houses as much as her mother does, was willing to go look for it with me today. Kind of an advance scouting trip.

HSO and I have tried in the past and failed. But I had better directions today and voila! Down a long, overgrown driveway, into a clearing we walked and I stopped in my tracks. There is magic there. The old iron gate hangs open, an invitation to explore the overgrown grounds and peek in grimy windows where carefree people in summer finery once gathered to hear concerts and sip tea. The stones in the painting lean precariously toward the ground but the ghosts of what once was still linger, whispering of happy children, adults who remembered how to play. Music and art, they say softly, were as thick there as the bees buzzing in the flowers.

I know very little about Nathan Dolinsky. But I know I would have liked him. And there's something about this house that remembers those easier times. I can't wait to get inside. More to come....

New York's In Trouble

That's the conclusion of Governor David Paterson and he seems to know what he's talking about. I spent most of this week tracking down what that might mean...cuts to spending, cuts in staff, hiring freezes, and what about the oh-so-heavily-promoted Quadricentennial celebration? No answers so far, but it was interesting to have one assembly member tell me that 'before we make any cuts that hurt the people of this state or ask them to spend more to prevent any cuts, we should look at those kinds of projects a second time, at the very least put them off until a better time or maybe look at whether we should be in that business at all.' That got a rise out of the head of the Quad committee, who has to deal with said assembly member on her committee. "Why would he cut off a very big source of potential revenue to his own district by putting the brakes on a project that would benefit his area most of all?"

She was talking about the Walkway of Terror...better known as the Walkway Over the Hudson. It's a 35 million dollar project to convert a former railroad bridge into a massive pedestrian walkway. I'd scoff, but I've been on top of the Eiffel Tower. It's pretty cool. I suppose it's possible people will travel a long way to walk a mile above the Hudson.

Then there were interviews for The Show. I spoke with the founders of Ode magazine. I love the concept: highlight what's good in the world. It's not a Pollyanna magazine and it's not escapist. It looks at the issue we're all confronting but doesn't just moan or try to scare us to death - it looks at solutions.

The founders are a couple who used to be journalists. She's French, he's Dutch. He's measured in his responses, hers were so peppered with swear words that I'm going have to do some editing to make her FCC-acceptable. But they weren't gratuitous swears...they sprang from her frustration with a media obsessed with finding disaster everywhere.

I like Ode.

Then I spoke with the woman who gave up a bank job to run the Heidelberg Project in Detroit. I had never heard of it before I stumbled across a story on it this week. It's wonderful. An artist took some run down buildings in the most derelict part of the city and turned them into wild and amazing art. It's grown into a huge tourist destination and he's even being recognized by a prestigious international architectural competition.

"Are you surprised by the way your life has changed?" I asked her.

"I never saw this coming," she laughed. But she's having fun.

She told me too many people live the lives people expect of them...and then get trapped in the boxes they build.

I understand that. And I guess my efforts to live outside a box have led me here...and will undoubtedly take me places I haven't even imagined yet.

Trace Adkins and How I Lost Fifty Bucks

I took two days off from work. That sounds simple, but it's not when you're the only one responsible for creating a weekly half hour radio program. There was a lot of "get it done before you go" and "set it up for when you get back" going on. I'm finding this show takes a great deal of organizational skills - something I've never been accused of having in excess.

But I reached the end of the day Tuesday and decided that wherever I was in the process was going to have to do; I was going to a casino.

HSO's son, a grown man with a family of his own, is on the road crew on the Trace Adkins tour. Trace, if you don't know, is a big, burley, cowboy-hatted country singer with a deep bass voice and a rabid following of aspiring Hot Mamas inspired by his song of the same name. HSO's boy sets up the lights and spends a good part of the year living out of the tour bus. It's a strange life but one that seems to suit him.

"We'll be at the casino in New York," he told his father. "Come on up, stay a night, see the show and I'll get you in to meet Trace."

His father is a musician who cut his teeth on big hair bands and glam rock. He has a new album out that music critics seem to find difficult to categorize. I'd call it 'cinematic': it sounds like a movie soundtrack. One reviewer ended up calling HSO a 'mutant guitarist'. We kind of like that. "Swing, Battah Battah, Swing" isn't exactly HSO's style. But this is his boy offering, and it's a lovely gesture.

"Want to go?" he asked me.

I wouldn't miss it.

So we drove over three hours to a casino we'd only seen in commercials. The hotel tower stands alone amid miles of flat fields. It wasn't hard to find.

Inside, we found a bustling, modern, clean facility built around the concept of encouraging visitors to throw away their money. And they do.

The lobby is bright, shiny and welcoming. The rooms are more of the same. And the only thing to do there, unless you golf or want to spend the day getting a pedicure, is gamble. The casino is a massive, luxurious and dimly lit area in the center of the building and no matter where you go, someone nearby is betting on something.

The machines are bright and attractive. Many suck you in with familiarity - there's The Price is Right, Monopoly, and the classic match the fruit and win games. Others feel like video games - we saw an Alien game (presumably the Alien doesn't eat you if you lose), a pirate themed game (without Johnny Depp), a pharoah game (reminiscent of The Mummy), and everyone's favorites, Lotto and Keno. What is Keno, anyway? Everywhere we went, Keno numbers were flashing on flat screen televisions instead of the news.

We watched, mesmerized, as a woman kept pushing the button on her Keno game over and over, sometimes winning a dollar, more often losing. She didn't even look at what she was doing. She was talking to the woman beside her. Another woman was playing a match the fruit game. She patted the screen with her hands, willing it to stop where she wanted it to. It didn't look like that method helped much.

I handed over thirty dollars and got a plastic debit card which allowed me to play. Within ten minutes I was broke. I was dejected. I went to watch my companion play. HSO started out slowly, not sure how to play the video poker game he'd chosen. But soon he was hooked.

"I'm winning!" he announced. "I'm up twelve dollars!"

He paused.

"Maybe I should quit now."

But his machine had him in thrall and he pushed the button again, watching the cards flip over and reveal his hand.

HSO ended his gambling experience by walking away with a small win. Enough of a win that he gave me ten dollars to get me to stop grumbling about the money I'd lost.

"You," he informed me, "have a gambling problem."

"Yes," I agreed. "The problem is that I stink at it."

We had dinner with his son. The catering room was lined with a series of dishes that would do any fine restaurant proud. But the crew doesn't get to enjoy it. On show day, they run in and bolt down food while getting calls on their walkie talkies about last minute problems that need to be addressed.

"I have to run," we were told by our host. "There are some lights that aren't working and one of them caught fire."

We understood.

Our job was to line up in the lobby with others holding the coveted Trace Adkins Meet and Greet passes, from where we would eventually be escorted into the artist's presence for a quick hello and a photo opp.

I felt kind of bad about taking the spot from someone who might find it more of a treat, but HSO said he really wanted to let Trace know how much his son liked working for him. I agreed that was a good reason to take advantage of the opportunity.

Trace Adkins, if you don't know, is tall. I'm accustomed to tall people; my own son is six foot seven. But I don't meet many people close to his height. Trace, I'm told, is six foot six. Without his cowboy hat.

About fifty people lined up around the edge of the room and slowly made their way to Trace. A group of women started tittering before they even got next to him, and were so giddy by the time they got there they piled into him and nearly knocked him over.

"That poor, poor man," I whispered to HSO.

Trace posed briefly with each person in line, though many people were nice enough to observe the request that group shots be made whenever possible. The couple ahead of us invited Trace to a ball game if he was ever around. Trace seemed to consider it.

It was our turn. I, for once, didn't have to do or say a thing. I just walked up with HSO, he was introduced as the father of the lighting guy, and the two of them had a brief chat. The camera, unfortunately, chose that moment to blink out, and we ended up with two very blurry pictures of a short woman and two tall men, one of them wearing a cowboy hat.

After that we stayed for the concert. It was loud. Very loud. HSO, who has been quitting cigarettes for forty years, peeled off two filters for me to stick in my ears. They helped.

We watched the show, thanked HSO's son as he hustled around breaking down the set which would be trucked to Michigan along with the entire crew within the next two hours, and went back to the casino.

"What you need," HSO told me, "is a big drink with an umbrella in it in a quiet bar."

What I got was a lemonade in the casino karaoke bar. Because what we discovered is that this casino is dry. Bone dry. Which added a whole new element of oddity to the experience.

"Not one of these people is drunk!" we exclaimed in shock.

If they weren't drunk, how do we explain why they were staggering around the casino, yelling at each other happily, staring fixedly at video screens and losing money with abandon? I just don't know. But it sure was interesting to watch.