I’ve been on vacation for the last several days, up in Washington. Glenna and I usually spend a week or two here twice a year, visiting family. Sometimes we fly up here, sometimes we make the 19 hour drive instead. This time we flew.

I love my family, and I do like to see them… But the last few times I’ve visited here, I’ve grown increasingly ill at ease with my old home town. I really can’t put my finger on what exactly it is, but there’s something wrong here. There’ve been a number of vit plant closures and layoffs so - once again - the local economy seems to be in a bit of a downturn - even as the national economy is starting to pick up steam again.

Sure, it’ll probably improve again - as it has before - but this place can only tie itself to the Nuclear clean-up industry for so long. At some point all of the work will have been done, and barring the powers-that-be expending the political capital needed to seriously re-introduce nuclear as a mainstream source of power again (unlikely), some day the jobs will be gone for good.

There has been plenty of talk about economic diversification the last decade or so, but I just haven’t seen it come to fruition. Everything here is, in some way, economically dependent on what goes on at Hanford.

There are other, more visible, signs of decay, too. Neighborhoods which I once thought of as being moderately upscale have gone downhill, with lawns left unmowed and homes unkempt. Apparently both violent and property related crime has been up, too. Several months ago my grandmother’s car was struck by another vehicle during a police pursuit (living in southern California for 4 years, I’ve yet to even see a car chase), and apparently someone is dealing something at all hours out of the house across the street from hers… Again, in what used to be a pretty quiet neighborhood.

Yeah, there are places that are still nice - parts of western/southern Kennewick, Richland, etc. but if enough damage is done to the less advantaged places the effects will spread.

I don’t know - much of this is cyclical, and some of what I’ve seen is certainly anecdotal in nature. It just seems to me, though, that a general feeling of despair and malaise has spread over my old home town in the last few years. It’s especially hard to see the growth and prosperity commonplace in my new home only to step off the plane a few hours later to find something altogether different here.

Some time ago I decided that I would not be coming back - but, I still hate to see things decline so dramatically here.

…

To be fair, it doesn’t help that I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately, as that’s a sure way to see the world around me with rust-colored glasses. To some degree this could probably be attributed to the weather and the changing of the seasons.

I’m not generally one to ascribe to myself some random illness at the drop of a hat, but I’ve long had symptoms a bit like a very mild form of Seasonal Affective Disorder (basically, the “winter blues”). The change from summer to fall - and then again from fall to winter - has always been a bit more melancholy for me than most. It has been better in recent years living with the more subtle seasonal shifts of SoCal, but… It still sucks.