Daily Blues & Views

 I recently spent some time with my 97-year-old mother-in-law.  It was our first visit since COVID rearranged everyone's travel plan.  At her age, she's assumed her rightful place as the Grand Dame of my wife's family.  She is also a good touchstone for all the social, political, and cultural changes going on.  Her eyesight is not good, so I try to read to her on each visit.  It is always well received and much appreciated.  This time,  after a brief session, we were chatting and I happened to mention that I recently looked up the house I grew up in on Google maps.  From there I found a real estate listing and was able to see some of the sales histories since my sister and I sold the place after my father's death.  I was bemoaning the fact that there were no interior pictures but I could see that the front lawn and our big silver maple tree were gone replaced by concrete.  My father's beloved redwood on the front side had been paint...

 Hard Times.  Those two words have accompanied American history through many a decade.  When used by a noted historian like Howard Zinn, pay attention.  The quote below is currently making its way around social media and for good reason. Aside from offering hope in the midst of the current malaise, Zinn reminds us that courage and kindness exist concurrently in even the most difficult of circumstances.  Perhaps the real message here is to not freeze up, don't lock yourself away.  All around me today people are wondering how much more they can take.  With the pandemic, climate crisis, and the brutal invasion of Ukraine, which gives life to the specter of nuclear war, and perpetual racism, no wonder folks are trying to find a literal and figurative hole in which to hide.   Find the humanity, Zinn seems to say.  Like Mr. Rogers, who urged children in a crisis to find "the helpers," we must seek out those people and experiences where human l...

 Shakespeare spoke and wrote of a time that was, "out of joint."  A time when the music of the spheres (planets) was in discord rather than concord.  Music with the wrong sound from the wrong chords.  We all know the vicissitudes of normal life,  but there are times, like right now when the entire universe seems out of synch.   People sometimes say, "I'm snakebit" to describe the experience.  Yet when it seems like the entire universe is affected, it calls for a bigger idea.  Like the year 1968, our culture here in the U. S. of A seems to be going through this kind of reality.  As the world we knew 54 years ago, our country is incredibly divided.  We have an ever-increasing income gap and what we once knew as a generation gap and a credibility gap have been replaced by value shifts and calling out liars for what they are: liars.     As a child of the 60s, myself, I vividly recall that feeling of pervasive fear that came wi...