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Bill Brown

A complicated man.

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This weekend, Sandi and I were watching television when we saw an advertisement for a new show on CBS called Swingtown about a married couple that decide to engage in swinging. What the hell is wrong with the world? I'm no prude, but casual sex among married couples strikes me as profoundly wrong and not to be celebrated. Promiscuity is wrong in general but beyond the pale in spouses. Celebrating it is reprehensible.

We decided then and there that we wanted to live in a small town—a more wholesome place with better values that repudiates this Bacchanalian emotionalism that seems to have taken hold of our culture (at least the public face of it). The trouble is that we love our house, we love Phoenix, and we love the desert. No small towns accommodate those needs. So what to do?

My wife, the observant one, realized that Boulder Creek—our little subdivision section of Phoenix—is kind of like a small town. Why can't we make this into the small town we'd like? Well, obviously, the residents of Boulder Creek are varied and all-too-transient so I'm speaking figuratively. If we surround ourselves with good people (with good children), there's no reason why we couldn't get the positives of a small town while retaining the benefits of the big city!

Our little community is just like every other subdivision: get home from work, close up the garage door, and retreat into the microcosm. So we've just got to think of how to crack into that, how to give our area an identity that makes people want to participate. We've got to build the community that we want to live in.

Got any ideas to share? I'm thinking about a community Web site and perhaps a block party, but maybe you've seen something that works better. Please let me know either in a comment or by emailing me.