December 2018 Blog
I have lived for three-quarters of a
century. I have seen some marvelous things—and some things not so marvelous. The
fact that I have lived so long as to see mankind regress is mind-numbing.
Human Rights: A Haiku
by Ann Wilmer-Lasky
Three-quarters
of a
Century
lived and yet so
Little
progress made.
I don’t go back quite as far as the horse and buggy days.
(Although my children used to ask me what the dinosaurs were like). But I do remember a time before jet
airplanes, and computers didn’t exist when I went to school.
I was a young wife with two little children when Neil
Armstrong landed on the moon. Now I am
an old, old lady and my grandchildren have children.
I remember when oleo first came on the market. It came in a
plastic pouch, and it was white (so it wouldn’t be confused with butter.) It
had a little blob of yellow dye in a packet that you could squeeze and make the
oleo yellow yourself so it was more palatable and didn’t look like you were
spreading Crisco on your bread.
When I was little, cars were big and bulky and made out of
steel. They had stick shifts and most had throttles you had to pull out and
pump before you turned the key to start the engine.
My mother had a wringer washer that we kept in the basement
laundry room. You had to run the wet clothes from the washer through the
wringer into a wash tub of hot water to rinse and then through the wringer
again into another tub of hot water to make sure you got all the suds out. Then
you carted the laundry basket out to the yard and actually hung the laundry up
on a clothesline made of cord or wire with wooden clothespins and let Mother
Nature dry them.
When the clothes were dry, you took them down and folded the
socks and underwear. The rest of the clothes were sprinkled with water (we
actually had a bottle with a sprinkler top on it) and put in a laundry bag
until you could get out the iron (not the steam iron) and iron them.
I started learning on the pillowcases and dish towels, then
graduated to sheets and then shirts. Then I could do the heavy stuff like pants
and skirts. I was always proud of my creases.
I was born as World War II came to an end, so I’m even older
than the baby boomers. It was a happy time. We looked forward to a bright
future.
In fact, most of my school years were spent looking forward.
There were advances in everything: in medicine, in technology and in the way
people treated each other.
It seemed that each generation could look forward to a
better life and that happiness would never end. We had integration. We had
acceptance and tolerance. And we had the flower children, and free love
reigned. I looked forward to getting married and raising my husband’s children.
We struggled to maintain a middle class existence, but we were happy.
I’m not sure when it all changed. I think it was in the
Nixon years that things went to hell. Prices sky-rocketed. Gas was practically
rationed. And we learned not to trust—not in our leaders, not in our future. We
learned that politicians could be dishonest, and wars and rumors of wars filled
the news. And each succeeding year was not necessarily brighter than the last.
But we got through it. We adjusted, we adapted, and we
survived. Always hoping for the best and better.
Now? I’m not so sure.
I guess my son saw it first. He always said he didn’t want to bring a child
into this world the way things were going. Now I believe he was right. I
certainly wouldn’t want to raise a child now. To guide one through the labyrinth of drugs and
violence and crime nowadays would be a gargantuan task.
And we are losing ground rapidly. The quality of life is
deteriorating even as we speak. I heard just yesterday that life expectancy has
declined in America for the third year in a row. Even the doomsday clock is
inching ever closer to midnight and disaster.
Don’t even get me started on “Climate Change”! How can
deniers deny what is in front of their faces? Perhaps I have the advantage
here. I have lived long enough to actually realize there is such a thing as
global warming.
I have experienced cycles and ups and downs of weather, but
the overall trend over three-quarters of a century is not to the good or even a
status quo.
Weather is changing. The highs are higher. The lows are
lower and the storm of the century is happening every year.
We no longer have the luxury of saying “well, maybe in a
thousand years or so we may have a problem.” The problem is now. The problem
will affect our children’s children if we don’t
do something about it now.
But now, we are too busy lining the pockets of the oil
industry and big pharma and politicians to even consider the welfare of future
generations.
Our schools are failing, our children are failing, and we
are failing our children.
We have become (for the most part) a world of intolerance
and indifference. We would rather tune in to our own indulgences than consider
the consequences of our own inactions.
In what is left of my lifetime, I would like to see some
change. I would like to see the progress we have made in human dignity and
acceptance (which are in jeopardy right now) cast in concrete.
I would love to see our human rights not held at the mercy
of regime change, even in our own country.
I would love to see a healthy respect for science and our
scientists and a healthy respect for the only world capable of sustaining our
life as we know it.
I would love to spend the rest of my days thinking and
writing about happy thoughts. As it stands, my next Haiku chapbook will be called
“Global Warning” and I will continue to write Horror, because that is what I
understand.
On the lighter side: There is no point in telling me
anything is bad for me at this stage. So I’ll add this Haiku:
Benefits: A Haiku
by Ann Wilmer-Lasky
I
have lived so long,
I can
do, say and eat as
I
please. Pass the cake.
Until next year – keep the faith and keep writing (or at
least reading). Hopefully, I’ll see you then with more updates from the garret.
Until that time, I welcome your reactions and responses to
any of my blogs. I love to hear from my readers. Also, here are links to my Twitter
and Facebook accounts, if you care to share your thoughts with me there:
I’m also including a link to my Amazon’s Author’s page. Feel
free to visit me there also:
All of my books are available on Amazon.
December’s featured novel is my Middle Grade sci-fi offering:
“The Aurora UFO Incident -
A Novel” https://tinyurl.com/yb875xw4
This month’s featured poetry
chapbook is again “Life's Lemons and Lemonade: A
Collection of Haiku: Volume One: One for the Book” http://tinyurl.com/zuayqu8
