Monday, June 23, 2008
Monday meader
Sumer ist i-cummin in...It's here: the days are in the warm seventies and above, and the nights are pleasant. Yesterday we were up in the foothills of the Ochoco Mountains and the slopes were vivid with wildflowers. Hayfields in canyon bottoms were green and freshly mown. It was beautiful.
About time.
I've wallowed my way through Father's Day and my 70th birthday; neither event exactly inspired me. Father's Day I felt sad, as I have every Father's Day since my son died. It seems a reasonable response. Seventy years old is, well, another day. Birthdays aren't like sudden time-warps or earthquakes. Just another day like yesterday—except people are usually nicer to the person having a birthday. Presents are always nice, of course, and so's getting taken out to dinner. That's about it. There's no way to compare being seventy to being sixty-nine, really. That's good. Life is, after all, one schlep after another.
George Carlin died. That's too bad, I guess. He was an opponent of the status quo, the hypocritical, and the schlock. Sometimes he depressed me with his acidity and bleak view of life—at least of the official reality. But usually he was right on target. I'm grateful for all his insights. I think he was probably right about the futility of our political system and the hopes for political solutions. Things aren't getting better so much as we're getting more things. We're still gobbling up the world's resources, fouling our nests as fast as possible, and pretending the future is some magical space where Everything's OK.
Uh, folks, I don't think so...I think we're in big trouble. Certainly here in America we're in big trouble. We're rapidly achieving Most Hated Nation status. We get the goodies and the rest of the world gets AIDS, endless wars and Depleted Uranium, and the joy of being exploited by "the greatest country in the world," as Bill Clinton put it.
And, now, I think, I'll go to the library and hang out with some books for a while.
About time.
I've wallowed my way through Father's Day and my 70th birthday; neither event exactly inspired me. Father's Day I felt sad, as I have every Father's Day since my son died. It seems a reasonable response. Seventy years old is, well, another day. Birthdays aren't like sudden time-warps or earthquakes. Just another day like yesterday—except people are usually nicer to the person having a birthday. Presents are always nice, of course, and so's getting taken out to dinner. That's about it. There's no way to compare being seventy to being sixty-nine, really. That's good. Life is, after all, one schlep after another.
George Carlin died. That's too bad, I guess. He was an opponent of the status quo, the hypocritical, and the schlock. Sometimes he depressed me with his acidity and bleak view of life—at least of the official reality. But usually he was right on target. I'm grateful for all his insights. I think he was probably right about the futility of our political system and the hopes for political solutions. Things aren't getting better so much as we're getting more things. We're still gobbling up the world's resources, fouling our nests as fast as possible, and pretending the future is some magical space where Everything's OK.
Uh, folks, I don't think so...I think we're in big trouble. Certainly here in America we're in big trouble. We're rapidly achieving Most Hated Nation status. We get the goodies and the rest of the world gets AIDS, endless wars and Depleted Uranium, and the joy of being exploited by "the greatest country in the world," as Bill Clinton put it.
And, now, I think, I'll go to the library and hang out with some books for a while.
