Oh, I don't think there is a solution to the manufacturing problem beyond the obvious development of new products here that then go into production here. but even in those instances, if the product is successful, the company will ultimately look overseas for production capacity. long term the solution is our economy will change in some largely unforseen way to accomodate available labor. in the end, of course, life-styles will change, worldwide wages will stabilize and we'll all have have a happy christmas. but not in our lifetime. perception being everything, my impressions of how the world worked as a child are pretty immaterial to how I think the world has changed since I was a child. the problems seem bigger (yes even allowing for the atomic bomb thing) and the solutions seem more elusive. but every generation thinks the world is going to hell in a handbasket, that the next generation is ungrateful/prideful/poorlyeduc­ated/toonoisy/andunhygienic. someday someone's going to be right about that. maybe. as a child I used to obsess about dying, the idea terrified me, I'd lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling thinking about my grandfather dying, what he must have been thinking right before he died, you know, was he scared, and where his body was right that moment and what must be happening to it. I don't think about it much anymore, truth be told when I do think of it, I think of it kinda like a three day week end. I didn't pick management as a career, I just fell into it because I have no skills. I wouldn't go back to pick another career cause I don't think we 'pick' much in life. I think that whole idea is an illusion. I look back at my life at various points and think about how I felt at that moment about the 'future' and how if I'd known what was going to happen, the pain I was going to be involved in, the ignorance and stupidity I was going to be guilty of, I'd have blown my brains out and that's the god's honest truth. I think stupidity allows us to go on. I was an indifferent student because I was stupid. the sap was rising and it was irresistable. I couldn't walk slow. I am a more ardent student with every passing day. time is not on my side. for fun I read and write and ride a bike long distances. I like old films and puttering around the house and watching my kid do just about anything. we're going to Europe next year and we're talking about finally going to Africa. I've travelled a little bit and for all our faults (and there are plenty) we've still got a lot right in this country. Spike has been back to Vietnam twice. I owe him a trip. I know people can be thoughtless and cruel. I wish I didn't know that. I don't have a lot of 'Holy Shit' moments anymore. maybe that comes with old age, not so much wisdom but more when we get old we stop putting ourselves out there and taking chances where the holy shit moments are. among my mother's possessions that fell to me for custodianship after her death is a large cardboard box of family pictures, mostly snapshots taken back in the day when she and my father were young people just starting out. as kids we used to look through these pictures, sometimes by ourselves other times with an adult narrating for us, but always with rapt attention to the stories that went with the images. there are hundreds of them. in one, my mother, a remarkably beautiful woman is seen sitting on a blanket in a park under a tree with the sunlight streaming down on her. next to her on the blanket is an infant looking up at her face. I remember the first time someone, probably her, told me I was that infant, I was probably four or five years old when I heard that for the first time. I couldn't get enough of that picture. I really studied that little kid laying there helplessly on that blanket. pure egocentrism. it was a delicious feeling to be so near the center of attention. I had pretty mcuh forgotten that photograph, hadn't thought of it in many years. I never really understood parenthood when I was younger. I didn't become a father until rather late in life (41) and over the years when friends had kids and I'd hear them talk about thier children, I thought it was a little overdone. I had one close friend who had been divorced a couple of years turn down a sizable promotion because it would have meant moving to a faraway city. he told me he couldn't bear the thought of being so far from his son. (I'm ashamed to say I probably said something like 'oh brother' to myself). my son is now 23. he is as fine a person as I've ever known. I like hearing his voice, sometimes when we're together, I can't help not listening to what he's saying and I catch myself just watching his face move and hearing that little smoky quality in his voice that he inherited from his mother. a few months ago we got that old cardboard box down from the closet, he wanted me to reacquaint him with some relatives long since passed on. so we spent an hour or two with me telling stories and him looking at the images and that certain little snapshot of my mother on that blanket in the park turned up. and I couldn't help seeing that young woman with her child in a completely new way. I knew exactly how she felt about me. maybe for the first time. I watched my son as he looked at it, too. I watched him study the baby's face and the mother's and look at the background and then back at us on the blanket. he thought it was kind of interesting that that was me in the picture. he doesn't have a clear memory of my mother. I could see that someday he's going to revisit these things, too. I guess that's a holy shit moment.