There is no there there anymore, as Gertrude Stein put it. Interestingly enough, when I return to the city she grew up in -- Oakland, where I lived for 38 years -- so much has changed in so many different directions I understand what she meant. But when I go to the block I lived on, little has changed (other than the people residing there); an oasis of tranquility and charm in a strange new land. The opposite of her experience of returning to her childhood neighborhood, to which she was referring.
BTW, in Oakland's City Center there is a sculpture that simply states "There", in honor of Gertrude. A city whose gritty, self-deprecating view of its strengths and weaknesses always shines through even in the hardest of times.
