I took a walk around the village I live in earlier tonight. It seems to me there is no common ground, no plaza to amble around and meet up with people. It lacks a social center. It's two street business district used to serve that function, but we've grown too big. The village has almost 20,000 people living in it. Small enough to see a lot of familiar faces, but the days of a neighbor telling your parents that you were causing trouble are long gone.

Many of the village's young people have left, because they cannot afford the cost of living here. Here I am, 20 minutes from Manhattan but similar to a retired jockey, have no stake in the race. The borough we were once a part of, shrugged us off when we were no more than flea infested farmland. The real laugh is my county is down to a single working farm. Suburban but without the necessary rail/mass transit links to make intra county commuting, except by car, effective.

Similar to the Roman empire, the very forces that gave birth to the opportunities my family took advantage of, is now threatening to extinguish that opportunity.