NOTHING HAS CHANGED

I have always been a Bob Dylan fan, much to the chagrin of my wife.   During the mid 1960 I was in the military in a Navy special unit.    The Vietnam war was in it's beginnings and the counterculture seemed alien to me - out of step with my military commitment and programming.   But, the music haunted me.   As I got older and the concept of war soured, the protest songs of that era spoke to me in a deep resonance.  

We have a new car and it allows me to connect my small Sonsa music recorder to the car stereo    

Running numerous errands this morning (the wife at home) I  selected a Dylan album.  Dylan's gravel voice boomed through the six speakers with 'The Times They Are A Changing."   I played it again, and then again.   The power of Dylan is not in the music but in the words; and I couldn't help but reflect back some forty years to the hope for the future that was the basis of the protest generation.  

And I realized that nothing has changed.

 Come gather ’round people

Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth saving’
Then you better start swimming’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changing’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no telling’ who that it’s naming’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changing’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is raging’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changing’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changing’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fading’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changing’

Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music

We are still at war
The poor are still down trodden 
The government is dysfunctional
There is defacto-racism
And a drive to disenfranchise women and minorities.


The times did not change.

the Ol'Buzzard

OLD MAN SHOUTS AT CLOUDS

John McCain's Conspiracy Theory!

We have all had the old grandfather or old uncle that is permanently safety wired in the pissed off position.   My on wife makes it a point, when I start grumbling and grouching about how things are, to remind me that I am one step away from ‘Old Man Shouting at Clouds.’    

The personification of this axiom is John McCain.   McCain is a sour bitter old man who did not get his way four years ago and can’t move pass his disappointment.  

We all know that McCain suffered as a POW in Vietnam…as did many Americans.   His military service is to be praised.   But, though he is identified by his military service, he has not been a friend to the troops.   He has continually voted against increased funds for the VA and also against education and other benefits for veterans.  

We must remember that McCain is the son of an Admiral, who was the son of an Admiral, and that he is, and always has been, as out of touch with the military enlisted man as Mitt Romney is with food stamp recipients.

John McCain is not particularly bright (though, by the standards we set for our Senators and Congresspersons he is probably considered above average.)  He graduated at the bottom of his class in Annapolis; and we saw his ignorance demonstrated when he toured Iraq with Joe Lieberman during his run for President, and Lieberman had to correct him – that in fact Iraq and Afghanistan does not share a common border. 

And now John McCain shouts at clouds in hope of creating a conspiracy theory to motivate the idiot base of the Republican Party to demonstration against the President.  

the Ol'Buzzard speaks out about another Ol'Buzzard