Rambling Thoughts

I had an unpleasant experience yesterday. Not really unpleasant, just sort of, well, unpleasant. I was talking with a co-worker, a woman in her early 30's, someone I like very much. We were talking about exciting performers and I mentioned Janis Joplin. She said, "who's that?" I told her to shut up and go away.

My day often finds me surrounded by 3 and 4 year olds. Another generation. But there's another one ahead of them, the one in between me and the 3 and 4 year olds. There are 5 generations alive. I'm already in the 3rd tier.

My thoughts and writings lately have focused on aging and passing time. I am surrounded by images and sounds that fill me with nostalgia and memories of the "old days." When I was a child, and my parents and grandparents talked about the old days, I would see images in my mind and they were all in sepia. When I think of my old days they are in bright vivid day-glo colors.

In " The Sixties: The years that shaped a generation," a PBS documentary, Charlie Kaiser, historian/writer (and aquaintance from NY) says, "It was absolutely exhilerating, it was the greatest time to be alive, ever, for sure." I feel that way too, as do many of my generation, but with it comes the sadness that the reality of today is the proof of my generations failure to change the world for the better.

Capitalism and all its evils is stronger than it was in the sixties. Nixon, a republican, was more of a liberal in his domestic policies than Clinton was. Government is bigger because defense and national security looms larger than social services. We still have too many children growing up poor and poorly educated. Institutionalized racism has made a snail's progress. America still engages in war in foreign lands with no visible "national threat" as the cause. America still sends poor and uneducated minorities in disproportionate-to-the-population amounts to fight these wars. Big, and bigger than ever, business still rules.

So while it may have been the most exhilerating and idealistic time to be alive, never has a generation aspired to so much and accomplished so little. Maybe that's why the memories of the culture are so important. We had the Beatles, and they changed everything, musically, at least.