As I’m writing this, I keep hearing the Chambers Brothers playing in my head. I am now, officially, a Septuagenarian. I’ve made it further than my dad did by over a year, I am the oldest male in the family bloodline and with the happy exception of my Aunt Irene, simply the oldest.

Time is a funny thing, there is no control, it moves both quickly and slowly depending upon what is going on at THAT time. As I sit here to write, I am waiting for someone to come and do something at the house and the waiting is making time seem to drag incredibly slowly, yet the simple thought that I am about to reflect on 70 past years makes it seem like it was truly the “blink of an eye” speed.

I have been gifted with mentions, calls, visits and items over the past week each one with a very special tugging of my heartstrings and too numerous to detail. There was one, though, in particular, that really through gas on this reflection fire: A book of front pages from the NYTimes each August 14th for the past 70 years from two very dear friends:

The realization from simply scanning through the book (a deeper dive will be forthcoming), is how very little, if anything, has actually changed in these past 70 years. Progress that was seemingly made, changes that were made, seem to have been, at best, temporary, many of the changes that seemed to be positive have either disappeared into the ether, or worse, have regressed to being worse than before the changes were made.

The quest for power, to keep the masses under thumbs, to restrict access, to dictate thoughts, to “legislate” not freedoms, but restrictions. The proliferation of false information to rile up those who simply take the loudest voices to mean that “they know what they speak of” is no different in 2022, than it was in 1952. The scary part is that today, with access to platforms that have no balances, folks like Sen. McCarthy would likely be surging in popularity, ala Emperor DeSantis (are they really any different?) The even scarier part is that voices speaking the truth, loaded with verifiable facts are simply ignored. If Edward R. Murrow were around reporting today and was speaking about someone like DeSantis, as he did McCarthy, would he even be listened to? When Sen. Howard Baker asked, during the Watergate Hearings: “What did the President know, and when did he know it”, that created an upsurge in those, previously “loyal” to RM Nixon, to actually think about the problem and to take the right path. Today, when Liz Cheney asks essentially the same questions, she is shunned and ostracized by her very own compatriots.

But it’s not just political, it’s the feelings that have resurfaced, “you must believe in what I believe in, or your belief is simply wrong”, “you must love as I love because only I know what love means and how it looks”, “you cannot read items x, y and z because I’m worried you might actually think for yourself, instead of thinking they way I’m telling you to think” and on and on and on…

I have never been a big history buff, in high school, most of my history teachers (so old it was not called “social studies” back then, were also football coaches who were more interested in talking sports than actual history. During my undergrad years, the two history courses I was required to take were taught by gentlemen who hated teaching “required” courses and would simply read back to you what you had been assigned to read. However now, actually having a “history” I have become more interested in seeing what the one decent HS history teacher actually kept saying…”the only thing we learn from history is that we learn NOTHING from history”: Gabe Benisheck, Cardinal Spellman HS, 1969 [I know it’s a well worn phrase, but he was the first person I heard it from, along with another of his favorites…”I’m going to read to you from the NYTimes all the news that’s fit to tint” that should tell you something about HIS leanings….but he was free to express himself to us back then, all the while allowing and in fact, encouraging discussion with different viewpoints as long as we could back it up with facts, and I feel soooo lucky to have been educated by folks like that and in a system that allowed for that, even though it was a Catholic School…way different from the way they operate now in the same places as I grew up].

I now look back, not only on the past 70 years, but much, much further to see how the “elite” have always tried to keep the other 99% subjugated in one form or another. I spend more time shaking my head side to side than I do up and down.

I also have a legacy history now, kids and grandkids and would really like to think that I have done something to leave them in a better situation when the train rolls into the station “When all is said and done”….it’s upsetting that it seems to have regressed and not moved forward in so many ways…yet there is always hope and always the chance to keep working to make things better…

Time….Time…..Time….it’s what you make it I guess….