This image was lost some time after publication.

When we last checked in on Salon's crazy columnist Cary Tennis, he was angrily telling all his online critics to leave him alone. And he hasn't heard anything from us since! Unfortunately, outside criticism was the only thing keeping Cary tethered to reality. Its absence has him backsliding, as evidenced by his response yesterday to a rich guy asking if he should leave the suburbs because he hates it, even though he has a new, expensive house. What about the commuting situation, and the volatile housing market,and his wife's career? So many factors to consider. Is he being rash? And Cary Tennis replied: Why not move to my imaginary Fantasy Land, instead?

Dear Living the American Dream ...

The kind of American dream you are living is the kind you wake up from in cold sweats.

There is another American dream.

It is a dream of wholesale revamping of cities, towns, transit and housing. In this dream, you get up in the morning and shower with solar-heated water and walk down a pleasantly crowded pedestrian way to catch some breakfast at a sunny outdoor cafe and then walk to a well-designed mass transit hub where you catch a fast, comfortable and efficient train to work. Or you work at home, using video hookups when necessary for meetings, transferring digital files at high speed, and when you start to feel isolated and restless you step out of your house to mingle on the street or jog or cycle on a nature path. And maybe you pick some wild watercress on the way and when you get back you make a salad for your wife, who is conducting a seminar on Chaucer in the living room.