A poem and prediction

You don't hear the Strawberry Roan
anymore.
The city fathers no longer play billiards as they
once did.
Men no longer tip their hats to ladies.
Indeed, there are no ladies
as there once were,
just as there are no bustles
or cannonballs, or willow fishing poles,
and baking pies is a
lost art,
along with darning socks,
and milking cows,
and churning butter,
and gathering eggs,
and eight horse teams,
and baking bread,
and hay rides in the snow,
and shivarees,
and wakes,
and all the memories I have,
from my childhood,
so long ago.
The world does not wait
for the likes of me,
the sentimental
and the slow.


I am about to be 75 years old. Never in my lifetime have I been so depressed about the state of the world. Not even during WW II. Not even during he McCarthy era. Not even during Vietnam. The current Bush/Cheney administration has made the greatest mess of things in history. The national debt is out of control. The very real threat of global warming is being ignored. The environment is being systematically destroyed. The situation in Iraq and in Afghanistan deteriorates day by day. Civil liberties and the Constitution are under attack. Corporations rule. The middle class is disappearing. The rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. The powers that be have abandoned the people in favor of pretty much unregulated big business. We have entered a new era in which might makes right has returned from the past. These are, indeed, troubled times.

For Bush/Cheney disaster is success. Lies are truth. Science is wrong. Fundamentalism is the way. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary things in Iraq are just going fine. They seem to be so completely divorced from reality as to make you believe they are actually living on a different planet. And yet there are those who continue to support them. The election is said to be so close the outcome cannot be predicted. I don’t believe it. If there is a fair election (doubtful at this point) I see no way Bush/Cheney can be elected. Try to think just who, outside of corporate interests, religious fundamentalists and the NRA, will vote for them? A majority of American women apparently believe in choice. Most of the large unions have endorsed Kerry. A majority of Americans believe the assault weapons ban should have been continued. A majority of Hispanics favor Kerry. Virtually all Blacks will vote Kerry. Young people, apparently registering to vote in record numbers are said to be two to one in favor of Kerry. Older people being ripped off by the Medicare scam are not too likely to vote for Bush/Cheney. Trial lawyers will certainly not vote for them. Scientists will not. Most teachers will probably not. I predict the largest voter turnout in history and it will not favor Republicans who have shown no sense of decency or fair play for the last twelve years. But, then, I said Ronald Reagan could never be elected President. Sigh!