The headline on the story from which I appropriated the above image reads: "My Birthday Cake Candles Almost Started A Forest Fire." That headline seems kind of applicable, to me, today. I am happy to report, though, that my birthday celebration, to be held this evening, will not be taking place in a forested environment, and that a fire department substation is only a couple of blocks away from my home! Thank goodness for that!
I was born on December 26, 1943, so that makes me eighty-two years old, today. There are too many candles to count on that birthday cake I have pictured, and I am hoping that any festivities held on my behalf, this evening, will not involve an effort to deliver me a cake with one candle for every year I have already burned. Were that to occur, the result would almost certainly be an unintended test of our home smoke alarm system. Eighty-two candles just might, indeed, set that smoke alarm off.
I am not feeling too bad about getting so "old," since I have, for a number of years, been engaging in that "Memento Mori" discipline that I am advocating for us all. I have long ago discarded the thought that I am, in any way, entitled to be alive - and particularly to be alive forever; therefore, I am able to feel celebratory about every day that I do continue to be able to walk around the town, meet and greet friends and others, glory in the ocean, and the forests, and in the city streets, and read about what's going on. Since January 1, 2010, I have been writing out a daily blog posting (this one is an example), "thinking" about what I am seeing and experiencing myself, and reflecting on what is happening, as revealed in the daily newspapers and in the other sources of information that provide me with access to "the latest."
I usually quote Bob Dylan, when a musical reference appears in my brain, but when I think about what the newspapers tell me - what they are telling me about "the latest" - I must confess that it's a Beatles' song that springs first to my mind. Here's the lyric to which I am alluding:
If you click that link above, you can read the lyrics to "A Day In The Life," while being assaulted by a video that could well be intended to replicate some kind of drug-induced vision of our contemporary reality. The "drug induced" part is outside of any personal experience of my own, and I may be wrong about that, but the video does illuminate the chaotic nature of the realities that accost us from outside.
For myself, I am less concerned about what is already out there, trying to bewilder and discourage me (Oh, boy!). What I am most focused on is what I (what "we") can do to change that world which we inhabit together, particularly when the world starts looking like something that would find a proper place in the video I have just linked.
I do want to claim some experience with "changing the world" during my eighty-two years - admittedly in the rather "small space" that is known as Santa Cruz County, California. Small or not, I am personally convinced that the exciting life I have experienced has come from working together with small groups of people to transform reality into something that we have thought would be better - and that I truly believe has been better. What I have been able to participate in, here in Santa Cruz County, can be achieved anywhere in the United States. I believe that, too!
We (all of us, together, those who became personally engaged in "politics" in Santa Cruz County, way back in that 20th Century time when I served on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors) were able to "Save" Lighthouse Field; we were able to change our county's budget priorities and fund scores of community-based nonprofit organizations that have dealt directly with some of the nation's most pressing social and economic problems. We were also able to provide enduring protection to our farmlands, and to contain the kind of urban sprawl that has consumed our neighboring county across the hill. We mandated that new developments provide truly affordable housing, and housing that would remain affordable in perpetuity. Our local efforts impacted national policy, too, probably most notably by stopping offshore oil drilling along the entire California coast, and achieving a 20-year offshore oil moratorium that has preserved the coastline and ocean waters of every coastal area in the nation which was not already committed to offshore oil drilling. This is definitely only a partial list of our local political accomplishments!
What we have done, politically, in this small county (the smallest county in the state of California, when that different governmental animal, the "City and County" of San Francisco is properly excluded) has been truly inspiring. And it should inspire us to do even more, because ("Oh, boy!") there is a lot more to do!
I am not dead yet, and so I plan to continue to do what I can to participate in and to stimulate effective political action - action that makes the promise of American self-government into a reality. I hope you, whoever might be reading this, and wherever and whenever that is, will be doing the same.
The news today? "Oh, boy!" is exactly the response I feel. What a tumult of catastrophe, and self-caused horror, here in the United States of America! We seem to be - we could be - right on the point of losing the system of self-government that has been so impressive in achieving some wonderful things (while, of course, not doing some other things that absolutely need to be done). Human beings are becoming an endangered species, too; we shouldn't forget that, and we need to remember that we are the cause of our own problems - problems that impact others, and the Earth itself, visible right in our own bathroom mirrors (to reference another non-Bob Dylan song).
Read the lyrics of that Michael Jackson musical prayer that you can listen to by clicking on that last link. What do those lyrics say? Read the lyrics! Make a change! That's what they say.
Our "Oh, Boy!" political realities aren't going to change until we change them. And we can. But that does require us to change our own lives, first and foremost. It requires us to change how we allocate our time, and to decide that working "together," as opposed to acting "individually," for self-advancement, is our main task in life.
We have now arrived at the end of my birthday message. And I hope, when your own "special day" comes along, that you'll have thought about how your life - the time you have left - can be deployed to change the world for the better. To change "the news." Oh, boy!
Oh, boy, do we need to change the world!
Image Credit:
https://smdp.com/opinion/my-birthday-cake-candles-almost-started-a-forest-fire/
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