State of the Union and other stuff on January 28, 2010
The State of the Union address last night from President Obama sounded like an apology and also like asking for a little latitude and support. He is a truly great speaker but the political forces both in the United States and in the world make it very hard to maintain the stamina, course of action, power to affect change and be a master negotiator. He kept referring to his campaign promises during his speech. He said he needed help to make his promises come to fruition. No kidding bub. Fathers and forefathers learned this concept throughout the history of these United States.
This is a reality that everyone in the history of the world has learned. Like King Solomon, anybody with ambition, anyone who strives to be in charge (of whatever their mind believes is their destiny) learns at some point in their life that nothing in this physical plane lasts. Almost without exception everyone who comes undone as an individual has fallen to a vanity that is consuming. This is especially true of public figures from athletes to presidents. Even candidates for president have fallen from “grace”.
The news today also told us that “The Catcher of the Rye” author died today. Some say he lived most of his life after that book was written as a recluse. He appears to have become a victim of his fame. He lived 91 years, or he existed for many years. He had a passion for writing but after his fame from “The Catcher” he said all of the piles of paper all over his residence since he withdrew from people were written for himself. Sounds to me like a few I have known who literally “lost touch”.
I do find myself looking back at the times of growing up with awe and amazement. One thought, aside from all the good memories, is that I still get a little chill thinking about how I made it out of those awkward times.
I remember walking several miles at night to get to and from high school football games. I did the same playing baseball on Pony, Colt, American Legion and high school teams.
In all those times I only had a couple of incidents that could have ended badly. Once a “very bad” dude and his friend stopped me (I was walking towards them so I could not avoid them). I was walking home on a chilly night after playing ball. The dude said something about me and my baseball uniform. Then he said I’ll bet you think you are pretty cool, huh. I answered immediately that I felt pretty good about myself (not the brightest thing I ever said). He looked kind of surprised (actually dumbfounded). He grabbed my cleats that were unfortunately hanging around my neck. Now I am looking at my metal cleats in my face wondering how badly I am going to feel in the next few minutes. To my complete shock he threw my cleats (still tied around my neck) against my chest and said that I should be careful walking home late at night. He continued with “you never know who you’re going to run into on the street”. Another time I was riding in a friends car and he was going pretty fast. We came around a corner sliding and still “hauling” when we both saw a car in our lane that we knew was going slow because we were approaching very fast. I looked and there was a car coming the other way and there was a car parked on the side of our part of the road. I sensed that he would have to try to go between the parked car and the slow mover in front of us. He obviously was thinking the same thing. He sped up and “aimed” for the space between the slow moving car and the parked car. It was like slow motion and quiet as I saw the gap and felt us pass through that space. Neither of us said anything for a while. We both knew that we had dodged a very bad outcome and that we certainly had to believe that we were not alone that night.
I won’t dwell on this day any longer except to say the stock market fell over a hundred points, the Supreme Court was “flogged” in public to the chagrin of some of the justices, one in ten people looking for a job don’t have one and the people of this country surely came away from the ninety minute “state of the union” address with a little apprehension and ill feelings.
I say that we should all pay attention and heed what people have said all my life. I can’t count the number of times I have been cautioned to not believe everything we hear no matter who says it, believe only half of what we see until we can prove it to ourselves and always remain cautiously optimistic in our sense of what is going on as our present becomes history. Arrogance does not really count as an attribute. Hear (here) is one song that I really like about everybody, especially this guy who really hated it when my son told him it was one of my favorites. He immediately turned off the radio when he heard what my son innocently commented on about the song. he was my son’s stepfather.
The song is “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”. There are a couple of others included that have been big to me. One is from “forty licks” by the Rolling Stones called “Miss You”. I was looking at the tongue picture from the album that was pretty big back in the day. I had this thought (or flashback) at the time about when I was in the service and met this good-looking girl and asked her for a date.
I had told her my name was Muffy. Much later that night I told her my last name was Diver. Pretty stupid on my part because when I knocked on the door to pick her up for our date she introduced me to her father “dad, this is Muffy Diver”. I was kinda frozen and quickly shook his hand and asked her if she was ready to go. She said yes and I could hardly move fast enough to get into my car. I am still wondering about that night.
So here are the songs I was referring to earlier.
Miss You - Rolling Stones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOf0FsA0Fio
Professional Concert Version - Everybody Wants To Rule The World - Tears For Fears
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMjzxHzZnnI
Listen To The Music - Doobie Brothers
http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/music/watch/v294452pMYWAJkc
Why Worry - Dire Straits