2006

The year of the war. The year of the immigrant. The year of protest. It's a year that will go down in history as a year of bad decisions and worse consequences.

The war (police action again?) continues. Is history repeating itself? Did we not learn from the mistakes of Vietnam? Will there be a "fall of Bahgdad" one of these days? Who knows. The pain of 9/11 is still with us, and we're taking it out by staging another another crusade. With the fundamentalists on both sides, it will take only one push of the button to "cleanse" the entire Middle East. Will it be Iran or some other militant faction using God or Jehovah or Mohammid or whoever/whatever, who does the deed? Bleak thoughts.

The laws regarding immigration, legal, illegal, real, or imagined, are changing. May Day brought out millions to protest the Bush Administration and his/their laws regarding the alien faction. Street were closed, and traffic was backed up for miles, unable to get into cities. My own town of Santa Cruz was essentially shut down for several hours. I understand the issues, and I sympathize with them. I know most "illegals" are trying to make better lives for themselves and their families. Unfortunately, not everyone feels that way.

I get the feeling that most of the intelligent people were doing their non-violent thing, or pursuing silent protests in homes and businesses, but I overheard some hot-headed youth yelling f*** this and f***that about the Mexicans, etc., etc., and etc. I could only wonder how many years of schooling it took for one "white" boy to be able to use the "f" word in every sentence. And this guy is a UCSC college student! His main gripe was that he couldn't get across town because of the demonstration. Excuse me, he couldn't f***in' get across the f***in' town because of the f***in' demonstration. He felt "Mexicans" made him get stuck in traffic.

What's to come of all this? I'm trying to figure it out myself, and all I can come up with is questions. More? The feds want to open up more Arctic drilling, so we don't have to depend on foreign oil so much. They want to go into the very delicate ecological areas that were set aside as preserves. Why? One error will wipe out whole ecosystems. Why not spend the taxpayers money on more fuel alternatives instead of drilling for more oil?

There's a lot of other questions, and I could write on for page after page, but time is short--and maybe shorter than many realize--and I've got to do my thing to keep art and music alive in or society. These helped me in my quest for life's meaning, and they could help others--if only it could still be taught in our schools. But... that's another issue.

Onward through the fog.