Passing History Friday Night
Saturday, August 8th, 2009I hadn’t noticed the downed trees. Driving home tonight I passed through a stretch of road historically so thick with trees you would think it’s twilight at noon. A couple of acres have been cleared. This county is roughly 85 percent fields and forest and I’m not opposed to the latest development but the change was nonetheless jarring. A fellow comes to the radio station every Wednesday and does a segment with me about finance, economy and investment. We’ve become friends and I like a phrase he often uses. “The only constant in our lives is change”, he tells me. September the 5th I mark two years on the job here at the Lower Shore. Two years ago tonight a short Asian man was barking orders at me, instructing me to hand sort third and second class mail before loading an automated machine. When he wanted to speak with me he would walk up and take my identity badge in his right hand and look at my name and then babble at me in some failed effort to communicate in English. “Beeeeelllll”, is all I understood.
While life here is quite different and a boon for my self esteem, not much about day-to-day life has changed around the house or at the grocery store. I met my buddy Phil Plack at the diner the other morning and we had breakfast in anonymity. I still cherish being unnoticed in public. The redhead dropped by on her way to a doctor’s visit and we talked about our hopes for the future. Too many to mention in my letter and perhaps we didn’t share nearly enough of our fears. Phil and the woman with the long red hair suggest I start making some demands at work. Hey, I’m just happy so many people are listening. Saturday I get to meet many, many of them.
A few weeks ago some folks affiliated with Delaware Tea Party asked if I could be the master of ceremonies at the first centrally located statewide tea party. Of course I accepted. I’m getting four hours in the sun on the Legislative Mall in Dover. We’ll see some of the national folks from across the big bay joining us and there was a rumor Glenn Beck would drop by, or some fellow on Facebook identifying himself as Glenn Beck. Tomorrow’s program is a warm-up for September the 12th in Washington. In between I’m squeezing in a vacation for my daughter. Last summer I postponed the time with my teenager because I was on a mission to Washington. One hundred twenty one miles by bicycle to deliver petitions to our elected officials and our state’s member of the House of Representatives brushed it aside. And he now wonders why he faced an angry “mob” on June Thirtieth. It was the spark igniting the powder keg. Georgetown, Delaware may well become the historical “Ground Zero” of a populace taking its government back from an insensitive House of Lords.
Not long ago I didn’t see much hope for my country’s future and it mirrored my time in the wilderness in late 2006 and 2007. The forest around me appeared an immovable object. Today I’ve been experiencing inner stirrings I haven’t felt in years. The feeling you had throughout the 24th of December, as a kid, as you watched the ticking clock and the anxiety multiplied exponentially. I see light.
Yesterday an old coworker sent me a note and said there was a time 4 years ago when I warned the country was heading for a crack-up that she thought I was cracking up. So did my employer, a company now heading for the fire sale. About the same time I made the on-air prediction I had a lunch meeting with an old friend, Father Chuck Vavonese. He’s the actual administrator of schools for the Syracuse Roman Catholic Diocese, even if the title belongs to someone else. We talked about our nation’s cultural and economic rot and he suggested a second civil war was approaching. It wouldn’t be regional, he explained, instead it would pit neighbor-against-neighbor. For Father Chuck it was 1850 all over again. Last week I thought the experience was 1859 and from what I’m observing today we could be at 1861 by summer’s end. Like the land down the road stripped bare of trees there won’t be any cover for which to hide. Now we’re riding history’s tide and it promises to sweep away so much and leave us a clean slate.
