AP photo

Good morning, Netizens...

It is not quite dawn and while I sit in solitude on the stoop in front of the Virtual Ballroom, Spokane awakens, awakening from her sleep, she combs the beer cans out of her hair and makes preparations for another day's business.

I watch from the shadows as Foghorn, my next-door neighbor, wheels her car out of her parking place and drives down the avenue to her job at Albertsons. While there are many neighbors on my street, whose names I know, whose faces I recognize and whose spirits I cherish, Foghorn is perhaps the only person on the block who is aware of The Virtual Ballroom, although she has never set foot inside, just peered around the entrance curiously watching people come and go.

Old Mr. Odduck, who lives halfway down the block, acquired his name for his habit of saying, “Howdy Neighbor” to everyone who lives on this street as he drives or walks by. It isn't as if we have names that he would bother to remember, nor that he would stop and talk about the weather, politics or how the garden did this last summer. He simply waves his hand in a laconic manner, without affection nor animation, and travels onward, having fulfilled his neighborly obligation.

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