Pirmasens.... blog takeover...

So, I left Pirmasens, my hometown, in 1956. In fact when I think about it I actually spent one year in Speyer, then came back to the Horebstadt and subsequently left for Canada.
I have  lived in Ontario pretty well ever since, became a Canadian in 1967 ( our Centennial year) eventually obtained the famous American Green card, spent a bit of time in the USA but returned to Canada, Toronto area mostly,ran a business and lived in the same home for about 24 years.

I've been back to Germany on trips and visits but my last look at Pirmasens  was  over 20 years ago shortly after the Mauer went down.
The question is...so what am I doing writing a pirmasens blog, I really have no business doing that nor any connections there I can employ  and therefore in all fairness should be looking for someone to help me take this over and make some sense out of this thing, preferably in german.

In some way Pirmasens is almost a microcosm of what's happening to many areas of the world. The richy get richer or sell out to retire, the poor are left for  the government to look after or fend for themselves and aside from that other new elements take over, some good..some not so great. As far as I can tell Pirmasens has long lost it's base, it's industry, the production of quality footwaer and the machinery to make this stuff as well as the related supply industry. Places like that in Northamerica would become ghost-towns but even that possibility was no answer to the pirmasens dilemma because, after all germany is a relatively small country, densly populated and therefore to some degree the area appears to have become the dumping ground of surplus unutilised population.

Is this a fair assessement or just bullshit? I read a while ago in a mainstream german paper that Pirmasens was the poorest place in Germany..this judgement even included the former east Germany..die Zone, where life and living standards apparently are better than in my old hometown.

In the early 50's down the street from our house ( a Landgraf Ludwig Grenadier home leftover) there was a lage factory  Rheinberger....apparently the largest shoefactory in the world...long gone. The Machinery makers as well sold out to China I hear, most of the industry related to shoes and leather is gone.

My  E mail is leisfred@hotmail.com  if you care to contribute to this blog or take it over for the benefit of Pirmasens and it's inhabitants I would look foward to it.