For what it’s worth …

 

For what it’s worth …

I heard this group in person in the early 70s in Denver when I was working for the American Friends Service Committee helping war resistors … it is my theme song I guess …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY

I now minimize my time listening to the news … so much worse than my memories of the Vietnam war era and my time as an Air Force Intelligence Officer … I was once charged with writing highly classified war briefs for B-52 pilots armed with nuclear weapons in case things got worse … glad they did not … my directions to the pilot headed for Hanoi was to drop his bombs in the Gulf of Tonkin and turn around … fortunately no one read our highly classified briefings for the pilots … I wrote Senator Gore (Senior) and thanked him for getting me out of the Air Force early and expressing my deep distrust and disappointment with the USA … he responded with a short note encouraging me to not give up hope for better times … I am now on the brink of giving up …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdWGp3HQVjU

I do not think I can do anything to make things better and it seems pointless to take Tolstoy’s advice related in a bable in Confessions … see his recounting a fable in chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/confessions-tolstoy.pdf … I know … too many sidetracks …  that is life … a series of accidental sidetracks … “little we see in nature that is ours” … https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-too-much-with-us ... Stop it already … I keep revisiting things I read long ago … quite by happenstance and not as assignments … I avoided assignments … life is essentially discovery  learning …

I do listen to upbeat songs such as Judy Collins’ Simple Gifts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnpwiMTVkxI

But then Birmingham Sunday creeps in knowing my older brother left home to join the bus boycotts … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ0y-vO9QLE … my brother had more courage than me … I miss him …

And I sometimes read … not learning technology texts but random things like this – “I am Waiting” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42869/i-am-waiting-56d22183d718a ... STILL WAITING …

“I grow old … I shall wear my trousers rolled” … see “The Love Song …” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42869/i-am-waiting-56d22183d718a

What do I know? What can I teach others? …. At a loss for words … Mike Spector