art
Senior Member
Posts: 2111
Joined: Aug 2004
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Saturday February 28, 2009 12:25 AM
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Ya know, like many of us here I'm a "Baby-Boomer". For those too young to have experienced that period in American history, let me offer a no doubt incomplete and flawed remembrance.
Three B&W channels on the tv which faded to static between 12:00 and 1:00 AM each night. Watching a test-pattern the next AM waiting for programming. Hopefully cartoons but all too often Jack La Laine or Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Bonanza, Howdy-Dooty and Wagontrain. Hop-Sing, a marionette and Ward Bond... What role models...
In the Fall of '62 the Cuban Missile Crisis raised its ugly head, but being as young as we were we didn't realize the seriousness of it all, but noticed the once monthly then weekly Civil Defense drills were now executed daily as we children were escorted out of our classrooms, down the hallways and stairs and then into the deepest (securest?) bowels of our schools. We may not have understood and/or appreciated the actual seriousness of the experience, but one could sense the apprehension and/or fear in the teachers and the change in their demeanor. A decade or three later we would learn it was because some seriously expected thermonuclear war.
Then, JFK was assassinated in '63. Two weeks & two days after my 10th birthday and on my grandfathers 66th birthday (11/22) [Who btw would end up living in 11 decades, three centuries, two millenia. Born (metaphorically) behind a team of mules in a world of candles and oil lamps, died with man on the Moon and electric lights everywhere!] Then, after having weathered that, MLK was killed in April of '68 and RFK just two months later. Then a few months later the DNC Convention in Chicago. Oddly enough, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show provided children (at least those listening/watching) one of the few cogent explanations of the Cold War, although few appreciated it then.
Born into a world with The Bomb hanging over our heads, we cut our political teeth on Chicago and later Nixon and Watergate. I though it was very weird then, it's even weirder now.
How about you? Doesn't the current state of affairs just about void your wildest expectations???!!!
I had music to tide me over...
And when it comes to all night living
I know what I'm giving
I've got it all down to a tee
And its free.
A whole generation was raised on this (to one degree or another), or that very similar to it..
There once was a note, pure and easy,
Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.
The note is eternal, I hear it, it sees me,
Forever we blend it, forever we die.
I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.
As people assemble,
Civilization is trying to find a new way to die,
But killing is really merely scene changer,
All men are bored with other men's lies.
I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.
Gas on the hillside, oil in the teacup,
Watch all the chords of life lose their joy,
Distortion becomes somehow pure in its wildness,
The note that began all can also destroy.
We all know success when we all find our own dreams,
And our love is enough to knock down any walls,
And the future's been seen as men try to realize,
The simple secret of the note in us all.
I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.
There once was a note, pure and easy,
Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.
There once was a note, listen, listen., listen.., listen..., listen........................................................................
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Strange times are afoot.
The political jargon/rhetoric has crossed into multiple streams of obvious falsehoods purloined as TRUTH, the financial nexus of this country is now, unlike just six months ago, gone. evaporated. 401K's are 201K's (at best). Tis a whole new firmament...
And none of us suspected it.
I'm weirded out. And I've been to two county fairs and a hog calling contest! I've been around.
Anyone wanna' wager where we'll be in 12-16 months?
Hell, look what's happened to WCC!
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