Whatever Happened?

So here it is at 2 a.m. on a Friday morning and I have insomnia from a massive overdose of diet cola and I'm channel surfing. I come across VH-1 Classic and it is showing Woodstock. Great! A trip down memory lane.

So I'm 'feeling groovy' watching the pinnacle of my wasted youth as a wannabe hippie and remembering the music and the friends and lovers I associate with the time. And I start realizing how pathetic the people I am watching are. I'm not looking at a massive gathering of peace, love and music. I'm looking at the largest crowd of lonely people ever gathered in one place. I listen to the quotes and realize just how needy these people are. They are not in the majority, and certainly aren't role models. They are looking to find acceptance and be "free" while in reality they are prisoners to their own devices.

I think about how much my own pathos and emerging adulthood resembles these people. At the time, I was in my early 20s and searching for my own set of truths. I hated the war in Vietnam, but that was because my best friend was killed there and I sure as hell didn't want to wind up in the same situation. I never did drugs, which in looking back made little difference in my life since I had so many manic highs I frequently acted just as stupid anyway. Drugs, especially LSD, terrified me. I knew someone who had a "bad" trip and later committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a commuter train. Ironically, his dad was a magician and he dabbled in being an escape artist. He certainly did the ultimate escape act.

So my watching transformed from looking for an escape to an escapade in regretting the past and finally a reflection on the present. So much of who I am and what I believed in were formed in those days. Do I regret the decisions I made? Yes. But I also accept them.

At the same time, there is something sinister seeping into me. And I just can't figure out what it is. Then it hits me. The main sponsor of the movie is Wal-Mart, the epitome of big business! Whatever happened to the upagainstthewallmuthafucka attitude? And then my answer came. Other sponsors were for all kinds of medications. The Woodstock Generation, the epitome of youth, are now a bunch of geezers! We used to say "never trust anyone over 30" and now we've gone from being children of the '60s to being in our sixties! It sucks.

Feeling Old And Useless

I just got a message on YouTube. As of March 30, they won’t support my browser, version 2.0 of Firefox. They haven’t supported my Safari 1.3 for a couple of years. It crashes when I try to go to it (and Facebook and many other sites for that matter). I also have an older version of Flash and can’t see a lot of animations.

That’s because I have an older computer. It’s about 8 years old. It uses Mac OS X version 3.9.9. That OS is about seven years old. I have a somewhat newer computer, 5 years old, using Mac OS 4.11 that still will function with all the sites -- but it too seems destined for eventual replacement.

I’ve loved Apple computers ever since they came out. I’ve brought them into several businesses and two public schools. They’re easy to use and I used one while obtaining a masters degree in educational computing while everyone else was working in Windows.

I have what was once worth about $8,000 in software applications including desktop publishing, web publishing, video production and the usual suspects like MS office. But much of that software dates back to the 1990s, the dinosaur age by computer standards.

Except for Internet apps, it works. In fact it works almost perfectly. The only problem I have is the spacebar (it’s a laptop) isn’t working and I have to plug in a $13 keyboard. And therein lies a problem I have avoided for many years. I’ve got a chip on my shoulder about it. But Apple also has a chip -- an Intel one. And my software won’t work with their computers since they introduced Intel chips to replace the older Motorola Power PC chips around five years ago.

I actually bought a Mac Mini with the new chip when they came out. And then returned it to the store and exchanged it for the last of the Power PC models because the newest one wouldn’t work with my software. Actually the reason I bought that computer was because Turbo Tax was no longer compatible with my operating system at that time and I was forced to upgrade.

So here I sit, perfectly happy with my Mac, but the Internet is gradually conspiring to not let me use it any more. And I know that the inevitable is going to happen in a couple of years when technology will come against the Mini too. What’s going to happen then? I’m going to have to not only get a new computer – which I can’t afford – but newer software too. And I’ll never have the capability I once had because I’ll never be able to afford all that replacement software.

The computer industry has no respect, or support for the old. And I’ve realized that we treat our older citizens in the same way.

No matter how skilled and experienced we are, we can easily be replaced by younger models.

The cost of maintaining us becomes greater as we start to fall apart.

The closer we get to being completely useless, the more our needs are ignored.

C’est la vie!

Tea Party Doubts

I have been spending much of the morning researching what’s behind the Tea Party movement. And frankly, a lot of it scares me. Scares me may even be an understatement.

At first glance, I think the people behind it have a lot of good ideas. Washington is simply not working any more. And while I’m no great fan of Sarah Palin, I happened to see her keynote speech and enjoyed it. Though I consider myself a liberal hippie-type person who is a child of the ‘60s, I also have an open mind about conservative ideas. For example, I oppose abortion and don’t think the bailout was a good idea. I am incensed that after the government saved the banks, they have turned around and made credit way too expensive and far less available to most Americans. In doing so, my home value has collapsed and my social security payments have stalled despite whopping increases in health care expenses. At the same time, I want socialized medicine because the once-nonprofit health care companies such as Blue Cross are now bleeding us dry. And I wouldn’t be surviving financially if it weren’t for the Obama administration’s program of subsidizing COBRA paayments.

And I have been affected by the Tea Party in at least one way. When our Congressman held a meeting to hear comments about health care last year, it had to be moved from a 300+ capacity town hall meeting to a school when thousands showed up violently protesting and police had to stop people from attending because it was so packed.

Anyway, I started running around the Internet looking at various articles ranging from the New York Times to Newsweek to Fox News. And while Palin’s speech was much talked about, she overshadowed the other speeches and I learned that the movement has more than its share of fanatics.

The Birchers – the reviving John Birch Society that finds enemies under every rock. In the 1970s, these were the ones who opposed fluoridation of water to prevent tooth decay because it was a commie plot to soften American’s brains. The Mitchell Trio’s lambasting song still applies. Hear it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG6taS9R1KM

The Birthers – the continuing push for those who claim the president is not a citizen of the United States.

The Truthers – Those who contend the 9/11 attacks came from the political left and not terrorists.

The Oath Keepers -- with their rag tag militia following urging members of the military and police not to obey orders they feel are unconstitutional.

One of the more interesting articles is by Jonathan Kay, a conservative Canadian who is an editor with the Canadian Post. Writing in Newsweek’s web site, he summarizes his attendance at the Tea Party convention as an attendee, not a media member, thusly: "After I spent the weekend at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tenn., it has become clear to me that the movement is dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality. It's more John Birch than John Adams."

Kay examines many of the speakers at the convention and their speeches and comes to the conclusion that the movement is becoming a collation of right wing fanatics.

Go to http://www.newsweek.com/id/233331/page1 for his full article.

Today’s New York Times had an extensive article focusing on many of the people in the movement. Much of the focus in in ultra-rural areas where there is little political power and people feel they are not part of the process. While many conservatives would say that the Times has its own agenda, the article focuses on many people ranging from Ruby Ridge fanatics to a gun toting grandma ready to be at the heart of a new American revolution. "Peaceful means," she continued, "are the best way of going about it. But sometimes you are not given a choice."

Go to http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html? for the full article.

When I was that child of the ‘60s, being against both the Vietnam War and the corrupt Nixon administration, I liked to quote the declaration of independence:
"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

But I learned over time that in this system of government we have survived both Vietnam and Nixon. It has survived George W. Bush and the Great Depression. It survived a civil war and the the McCarthy era. And it will survive the Tea Party.

But it still scares me.

Intelligent Design- If I only had a brain!

"God made the world in six days flat.
On the seventh, he said: ‘I’ll rest.’
So he let the thing into orbit swing
To give it a dry run test.
A billion years went by
And he took a lookat the whirling blob
His spirits fell and he shrugged:
‘Oh, well! It was only a six-day job.’"
E.Y. "Yip" Harberg, Rhymes for the Irreverent

In a recent documentary now playing on cable television, Ben Stein, genius and television personality, (Wooow!) is exploring the raging debate in the academic community over intelligent design versus Darwinism. According to the documentary, the scientists are adamant about Darwinism. But when you talk to them off the record, they concede that Darwinism has its weaknesses and intelligent design has its strengths. Many say there is so much bitterness between the scientific and religious communities that there is no ground for meeting in the middle. But there can be when people aren’t so adamant about winning their points.

It brought me back to a presentation I made in a grad schol class. The class was one in Human Development and was designed for a look at the many philosophies of mankind. The professor had decided that each member of the class would make a presentation on a specific subject.

"Is there anyone who believes in creationism?" she asked. I raised my hand immediately and the others sort of looked at each other as if to ask "what is she talking about?" Anyway, since the philosophies of humanity started "in the beginning," I was asked if I could make my presentation next week. I always loved going first in grad school because I could coast for the rest of the course. It leaves little time for apprehension because one must get moving immediately. In addition, I tend to give very impressive grad school presentations since I had years of professional advertising experience making presentations to clients.

Anyway, I did a lot of research, prepared a slide presentation, and gave a presentation that blew people out of the water. Some of the major points were:

The Biblical record of creation as outlined in Genesis, Chapter1, lines up with most of science if you switch the word "day" with "era." God, in my view, always has been and always will be and what we would consider a day, he could consider trillions of years.

So we have the big bang ("Let there be light") followed by the formation of planets which seperated light from darkness. Then came the formation of a dome to separate the water on the land and on the ground, or the development of an atmosphere, which eventually produced a sea. After that, comes the creation of life in the sea, and then then came animal life on the land. And finally, came the creation of man before God took a rest.

Can anyone tell me what the difference is between the modern scientific and ancient religious versions except that there was an intelligence behind it.

I then went on to challenge some of the issues of evolution such as the inability of separate species to breed. The dog and cat of my children’s youth often made out, but there were not dats or cogs as a result. We can pretty much say the age of recorded history of intelligent man matches the Biblical timeline. I also noted that some of the geological issues had faults. For example, the results of the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in Washington State produced material that was carbon dated at millions of years ago.

Anyway, the main issue is how can we be an accident? The entire universe follows strict laws of design. You can compare our atomic structure to that of a solar system, and the solar systems to the galaxies. Can all this be a freak accident? What I urged was to consider, in a reasonable manner, the evidence on both sides of the dispute. By accident or design, my home page had a survey the day of the presentation that said there is an almost equal division between the two concepts.

I do not know if I changed any minds that day, nor do I care. Furthermore, I do not even care how much the scientific knowledge matches up with the creation theory. My bottom line is mankind is by nature, guess what? C-R-E-A-T-O-R-S. I was recently reminded in another blog how much we have emerged from the primoral goo to fight off the animals that wanted us for food. The story of mankind is that of creativity. From basic tools, to wheels and harnessing fire, to the ancient civilizations, we have used our creativity to fight our way to the top, even if it means fighting each other at the same time.

The poem that introduced this page was by E. Y. Harberg. Google him if you want to know more about him. Some of his poems can be found at YouTube URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s14U0XJ8ocQ

Besides these poems, he wrote the two iconic songs of the Great Depression. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "Brother Can You Spare a Dime."

He was a lifelong friend and collabrator of Ira Girshwin. He wrote for Broadway Reviews like the Ziegfield Follies, and the music for such Broadway hits as Finian's Rainbow and of course all the music for The Wizard of Oz. He wrote lyrics for Stephen Sondheim.

And yet, he is an unknown figure in history – just as many of us are. A kid who grew up on New York's lower East Side. Both sides of my family come from that type of existence. And perhaps something we create will influence others, peraps in a subtle way. A kindness may change the world. And so may some meaness. But no matter, what little mankind has created is no accident. Thus, is it so hard to believe that neither is our vast universe?