IT SURE IS WHITE AROUND HERE, BUT IT HARDLY EVER SNOWS

Hot Springs Village. This place is sure full of white, Christian, right-wing Republicans. They must like golf.

I've been looking around to see how we take advantage of the local people. We do help the school districts, which is a good thing. Both the Fountain Lake and Jessieville school districts do quite well. I'm glad the young kids benefit from the Village. The local people who work in the Village is another story. The people who keep up our golf courses are sorely underpaid. They put in long hours in tough conditions and if not for the overtime, would barely be making a living wage. Another group of poorly paid workers build the homes we buy. Several builders are now employing Mexican workers, and paying them poorly. They put in extremely long hours, are highly talented, yet make pitifully little for their labor.

As a benefit to workers in the Village, i hear they get free amenities if they are at a pay grade of 10 or above. Seems that's mainly management. Pay grades 1-9 should get the free stuff.

I'm not so sure the POA directors understand their job or who they are working for. They seem to think the manager is in charge. We do not elect the manager. We elect them. You would think the last election would have taught them that. We hold them responsible, not the manager. The manager is their problem. They give their authority to the manager. They had better taketh back.

I'm going to be sixty-five come April. In today's society, getting to be 65 is a big deal. Medicare. Another ugly, evil, socialist program almost everyone in the Village partakes of. This place is practically a commune, what with all the Social Security and Medicare recipient's. Damn us Village socialists.

Living behind closed gates is something you have to get used to. In the end, I guess I'm as fearful as everyone else. It's the darn unforeseen: Old age, people of color, disease, financial ruin, change of any sort. It scares you. So we close ourselves in.