Not the best of moods....

Once I listed nostalgic remembrances; the ones that made me smile. Today, I am enjoying a day off but my mood is one that is hard to describe. I feel nostalgic but pensive like the past is a pleasant aroma with tentacles of reeking emanations that actually came from the future. Perhaps instead, they are the future’s dirty roots growing around the past’s pleasant herbs and spices planting themselves so that when the future arrives (as it has) the thistles and stinkweed cannot be uprooted without destroying whatever remains that is good. Okay this is beginning to sound quite gloomy – I will make a list and see if you get the feeling when I am done.

I remember:
1. When before my eyes on national television I watched Chinese students die in massacre at Tiananmen Square – That was 1989.
2. I remember my father being upset because people blamed President Dwight Eisenhower for Joseph McCarthy’s political noosing of anything and anyone whom he chose to associate with Communism; and then the media began to dismantle his distinguished military career and demand apologies for his decisions as a military leader. I don’t remember much else other than I thought Eisenhower was a German word for something to eat that my father didn’t like. I was 3 or 4.
3. I remember when Elvis was censored on the Ed Sullivan Show and the pre-teens and teens were outraged. The parents were neutral but vocal in church groups. The grandparents were appalled and supported the censor. The teens said grandparents were too old to know anything. Forced retirement rid American Corporate Life of old ideas during that decade.
4. In 1970-2 a Dallas Football player was arrested for exposing himself to a child. He was kicked off the team but they won the Super Bowl.
5. January 22, 1973 the Supreme Court gave America the right to kill its unborn as it decided the case of Roe vs. Wade. The grandparent were appalled – but they had no more clout amidst the American Monied.
6. When John F. Kennedy was shot, and Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. There was war every night on TV – soldiers were dying while we ate roast and mashed potatoes.
7. In the late 60’s daredevils like Evil Kneivel made the news breaking most of the bones in his body while doing something bizarre on a motorcycle. America wanted more.
8. When no one knew the ill-effects of drugs like cocaine or marijuana, or heroine – until someone you knew died.
9. When gas went from 35 cents to 40 cents in the 1970’s and we complained about inflation. It was called the Oil Crisis.
10. Three astronauts died in Apollo 1 but it wasn’t that big of news - America was more interested in the visit of the Beattles that year while Grissom and the others were buried with forgettable fanfare.
11. Flip Wilson cross-dressed – and America thought it was humor – the devil got the credit.


Okay so my mood – well – hmmm - my mood needs to change! I guess I need to stop this nonsense and get out my Psalms, take a ride in the sunshine, watch Julie and Julia again, or read the comic strips on the paper. I know – I will have chocolate….Mindy and Joe have me craving a certain chocolate bar!