Notes from Abroad:
Several years ago I thought I saw into the future where I saw many of us – in the winter time, in the cold – walking around wearing battery charged, heated underwear, comfy and chattering to one another. Instead, here we are, all huddled down, cold and miserable, staring into our iPhones, too busy to be sociable. As Yogi Berra put it, “It is hard to make predictions – especially about the future”. One more thing about the Future…It has been said “The future is not what it used to be”…. Building on that I would add: “The Present is not what it used to be, in that it has a certain ‘miasma’ which I did not notice before. One good thing is my awareness has not been dulled into indifference. I am still capable of being shocked by daily events. Threats of 200% tariffs here & there, our supporting Russian aggression…those sorts of events…Oh, and don’t forget officially Banning ordinary words from the Government parlance (i.e., Disability, Diversity, Exclusion, Equity, Female, Gender, Hate speech, Antiracist, Biases, Cultural relevance, Minority, Women, Victims…200 awful words like those.) To describe my condition, I feel like I have been psychologically inducted into a mental Gitmo and can’t get out. When I wake in the morning I stagger to my i-phone and am greeted by the news of German Tourists being mistakingly arrested by ICE and confined in solitary for days…and ‘He Who Will Not Be Named’ saying he did not know some of the Jan 6’ers were violent”…That Russia won’t give up what it wants in Ukraine…That the price of eggs is going up and we should all raise chickens in our back yard; but I don’t have a back yard.. …and Hannity claiming he can say whatever he wants on TV because he is in the entertainment business not the news business, and I can’t turn the news off because if I do I won’t know if we are going to invade Canada or if there won’t be any avocados, or anything to buy at Walmart because the Chinese are going to screw us price-wise, or if we don’t get those minerals from Greenland our enemies will…and are we ever again going to get wine from France or Italy? Or, are any of those foreign countries ever going to like us again? And, Oh My God, it is hard to get away from it all. You say call your Congressperson and I say they don’t answer the phones, and I’m told they don’t read their emails either. And if you stick your face out of the crowd and protest with vigor, you might get death threats, or worse, your family might get the death threats, or sent to El Salvador. So maybe you should just stay silent. But wait: Consider the Fire-ants: When they want to cross a river they form a raft made of themselves and the Fire-ant raft floats successfully across the river …but I wonder what happens to the ants on the bottom of the raft…Where was I? Oh yes …I was lost.
Enough of this carping. Some Poetry from days gone by…
- “Hope you got your things together, hope you are quite prepared to die/looks like we’re in for Nasty weather/one eye taken for an eye/Well, don’t go around tonight/Well, it’s bound to take your life/There’s a Bad Moon on the rise.” -Creedence Clearwater Revival, 1969…(The more things change…)
- “But storms never last, do they baby?/
Bad times all pass with the wind/
Your hand in mine stills the thunder/
And you make the sun wanna shine” -Dr. Hook, 1979. (Hope it’s that easy) - “I heard the sound of thunder that roared out a warning/I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world/I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazing/ I heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening/I heard one person starve, I heard many people, I heard many people laughing…/And it’s A Hard Rain A Gonna Fall.” -Dylan, “A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall, 1963
…and Goodnight to Andi, wherever you are.
