My niece has a subscription to bloomberg business (she did not ask for it, they just started sending her the mags a few years ago. Same thing has happened to me where they send you a mag to increase circulation and hope later that you will buy it).
Was reading today about how some million+ dollar homes in Vegas are being foreclosed on - not because the owners cannot afford it but because the value of the home is less than what was originally paid. It noted that about 70% of homes in Vegas are 'underwater'.
I am linking to a video I made of my mom a few months after she died - it shows glimpses of the home she lived in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGOq-M1dFHwGrandma and Grandpa paid $3000 for it. They raised their kids there. Had wonderful Sunday dinners. Saw grand kids and great grand kids in that home. Weddings, funerals (back in the day they showed the body at home. Mom's real dad died when she was 7 and he was shown in the living room, she always remembered him laying there in the coffin with two coins on his eyes - she was 7 at the time).
Grandpa (well, step grand-dad as grandma remarried, but he is the only grandpa I ever knew) was the mayor and police chief of the town. He built a park for the kids behind their house. They kept the basketballs and such at the house for all of the kids. They would come and get the equipment, go play, and then bring it back at the end of the day.
From the 30's up until 1978 (a year after grandma died) that house was home. Kids graduated, got married, there were big Christmas dinners there, more than one generation of kids coming up to get anything from tennis balls to basketballs to play in the park.
That house was a home. They probably could have sold it and bought a bigger one. No one wanted to. Mom bought her house here in Columbus in 1964 - one of the first few homes in this hood, and she never wanted to move because this was 'home'. It had memories, it had seen us kids grow up in it, memories with neighbors, grand kids, etc.
I grew up with that sort of American dream. Have a place to call home, raise a family, etc. Now homes have become houses, where the cash value means more than personal value. We keep replacing one thing for another always trying to trade up and make more money and have more and more.
Grandma had the same dishes as long as I could remember, and the same furniture. She would buy some new clothes here and there, a car if need be, etc. Throw away things like cell phones and such were just not around back then - when you bought something you expected it to last for years. From furniture to radios and TV's.
Now it almost seems that 'homes' have become something we feel the need to replace and upgrade every few years, and thus we tie a lot to the financial worth of said places.
Personally I think many, somewhere inside at least, want that old simple dream. A home. A place to call their own where they can watch their kids grow up and make memories in.
A house is made of brick and stone, but a home is made of love alone. A plaque that says that still hangs here in the kitchen.
Maybe the American dream has changed over the years, maybe now it is about getting a house and trading it every few years for a bigger and better one.
For me, bigger and better is something I am glad I did not grow up around - I grew up around family, love, and a place we knew we could always go to and be around family and friends. And bigger and better meant that this Sunday dinner had a bigger Turkey and better dessert than last week.
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