the good life

If you have spent much time with me at all, you've surely heard at one point, "I'll know I've made it in life when I have a place to live with a piano in it."

That having been said, I really enjoyed this article from today's nytimes.com. But perhaps what struck me most was the final paragraph:

"But he is not a butler," she said. "He is a guest." She explained that having houseguests was a way of life that Americans don't always understand. "I grew up in a situation where you would never ask guests when they would be leaving," she said. "In Poland we have an old saying, 'Guest at home, God at home.' "

One of the things I really miss about the northeast is the innate sense of community its people have. (And actually, I even missed it a little in Vermont...for all of its self-declared progressiveness, its hospitality facet of community-mindedness is a shade weaker than Maine's.) In the midwest, there is practically no "innate sense of community" whatsoever. Still, it sounds like Poland has us northeastern-ers even further beat still, in terms of community-sensitivity, and it sounds rather pleasant.

(Side note: I always wondered how Erdos could've actually lived just hopping from friend's house to friend's house...but I guess now I have my answer...)