Bully Pulpit

Soapboxes and pulpits are the stuff of frustrated minds. I hope my blog won't indulge in those venues, although I suspect that some of that will occur. In times as frustrating as these, with all the stuff to react to, it is difficult to imagine not complaining about things, and trying to solve them. Well, I hope that if and when I indulge myself it will be more in the solution columns. I have already had a couple of comments about this dilemma.

I have an acquaintance who has been a kind of counselor for me at times, with some astrology in the mix. He is a psychic, a word I do not use loosely, and his mind is much to be admired. He puts out a newsletter, and it is often dominated by the kind of verbiage that I have warned about above. With a difference, and that is that his vision (some dark) is very much based upon his d e e p concern for the outrageous things going on in our Nation and throughout the world. So in slightly different (shoes) he could be considered a muckraker, win the Sinclair Lewis award, etc.

The other aspect I want to mention is what might be called (in John Steinbeck's language, a book title) "the winter of our discontent".... It is so hard to live so long, to have gone up and down with optimism and cynicism, to be all but worn out by "hope" and despair, and then landed again on a rocky beach by the latest wave of w h a t e v e r. Part of it is undoubtedly the sheer amount of news coming at us, eg. with Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" ("bad news Amy"), and the bits and scraps of jetsam and flotsam coming from across the beleaguered planet. It may be a bit of news from an e-mail sent by a parent whose child serves in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the latest story of non-action in the long battle to change the problems in our watershed. Forgive me, people, if sometimes I indulge in the verbiage.