wandering hillbilly

pinions of buddy don:
change in the air, then n now

i member how eggcitin thangs wuz in the 1960s. twuz a time when it seemed mos innythang wuz possibull, bof good n bad, when thonly thang fer sartin wuz how change wuz in the air.

• jfk wuz shot dead in dallas, witch once this happent, twuz kindly lack 9/11, only ye figgerd ifn they could git the presdint, then who could be safe? change wuz in the air.
  
• in case ye wuz thankin thangs wood settle down, thay wuz a slew of other asassinayshuns: robert f kennedy, malcolm x, martin luther king, jr.
  
• we had that vietnam war that wuz gittin more n more unpoplar with folks. kids wuz bein drafted. main thang folks had to figger wuz whuther they wood go fite in a war that more n more folks dint bleev in or try sumthin else, lack canada or the nashnull gard. as our current presdint put it whenever he wuz considerin whut to do, "In fairness, Bush has been candid about why he enlisted in the Air National Guard. Like many young men of his generation, he wanted to avoid Vietnam. He told one reporter, "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."  corse, twuznt everbidy who could better thayselves by choosin to fly ona counta how thay wuznt nearly a nuff places in the nashunul gard fer all the folk that wood lack to 'avoid vietnam,' so they wuz marchin in the streets agin the war n the draft.
  
• we had the civil rights movement that wuz gonna make thangs lack 'colord only' drankin fountains n black folk sittin in the back of the bus (without choice) a thang of the past n would even let black folk go to places lack the flagship univesty of tennessee, witch utk allowd black undergraduwaits fer the furst time in 1961. folks wuz marchin in the streets about civil rights n change wuz in the air.
  
• ever time ye herd a bunch of jets goin overhead, ye had to wonder whuther twuz the start of the nuclear war, witch the lucky ones had bomb shelters.
  
• riots wuz all over the place: detroit, watts, harlem, rochester, jersey city, newark, chicago n minny otherns. i member how we wuz livin 80 miles frum watts n ever gun in our little burg wuz bought up by the time the fires in watts wuz smolderin. n change wuz in the air.
  
• ye dun herd bout the drugs n the beatles n tuther soshul changes that cum along, witch bob dylans song "The Times They Are A'Changin'" splained thangs purty good.

no doubt ye kin cum up with yer own items frum back then. as ye mite member, this led to the 1970s, when it seemed lack everbidy wuz wontin to git mellow. n the 1980s, when greed wuz good.

corse, we gut back into lots of changes startin in the 1990s. furst, we deecided to put the justus system on its hed by deeclarin the presdint wuz guilty of sumthin n then spendin $70,000,000 tax payer dollars trine to proov it. then thar wuz that internet thang. n computers. n productivty risin lack crazy. n everday folks sankin (n losin) thar money in 401(k) plans.

but twuznt till i wuz read a articull from fortune magazine name of "CLIMATE COLLAPSE: The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare" that i begun to thank bout how twuz deja vu all over agin: in the new millenium, it seems lack innythang is possibull, lack in the 1960s, that thangs could fall apart. here's a couple of representative grafs frum that scary articull:

"The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.

Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia—it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change."

ifn ye put this together with sum of tuther changes we gut goin on rite now, ye kin almos git that same sixties feel:

• same sex marriages are brakin out in theory in massashusetts n in practice in san francisco lack crazy, witch that kindly reminds me of how folks wuz so scared bout integrayshun on a counta thangs wuz changin too fast -- besides, as twuz put to me, wood ye wont yer sister marryin one? [anser: depends on whuther she wuz in luv.] as ye kin see, change is in the air.
  
• return of wurds lack credibility gap n distrust of president. more change in the air.
  
• nuclear proliferayshun: who all has the bomb now?
  
  
  
  1. usa
     
  2. russia
     
  3. uk
     
  4. france
     
  5. china
     
  6. india
     
  7. pakistan
     
  8. belarus
     
  9. ukraine
     
  10. kazakhstan
      
  11. north korea
      
  12. israel
      
  13. a nuff change alreddy!

i'm hopin thats about as far as it goes. twuz eggcitin to live in amurka in the 1960s, but twuz also a time of danger n turmoil. but ifn times is gonna git that eggcitin agin, whars our beatles?