Flashbacks

 

Last month, I mentioned to several friends (in bcc'd email) that I had a 40 year flashback to the last few days of 1980. I was making a landing on the Cape Hope at the Southern tip of Chile on 12/30/80, after spending the previous three weeks expedition touring Antarctica. At midnight the following night [12/31/80-1/1/81], we were somewhere over the Caribbean Sea on the way to Miami.

I asked if anyone else had year-end memories from 40 or 50 or 17 or any years ago. I received some very interesting responses, I offer a selection here.

"Fifty-three years ago this week, sharing a very cheap hotel room in cold, rainy Rome."

" . . . a day off, vegging out at the apartment very likely watching a bowl game."

"Five years ago, I was on a dinner cruise of Lake Como, Italy; before heading to a wedding the Switzerland."

"I spent 1944 New Year's evening looking forward my marriage the following day."

"In recent years, I have come to like nothing better than to mark the midnight hour with a glass of champagne - in bed!"

"40 years ago we were just back from bicycling across North America, Vancouver to Boston."

"New Year's Day 30 years ago, taking my first husband to rehab; New Year's Eve 19 years ago, welcoming my first son with my second husband."

"A little over 40 years ago we lived on the cable car line and met you."

"40 years ago, I was -8 years old, living in the Great Before."

"I'm typically asleep to ring in the new year."

"On NYE, I was 11 months into being a widow, and very surprised to find myself leaving the year of my husband's death with great reluctance."

"Forty-seven years ago, newly married and moving to Rapid City, South Dakota."

"Pregnant and . . . well just about covers it."

and I got a photo from a friend of her with her father in Central Park, New York on New Year's Eve 50 years ago.

and and no, that picture above is not from Antarctica, but it is of another long ago memory . . . 

A Question (#1 in a series)

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” -- John Steinbeck

How do you, how does anyone defend the right of the 1% to be greedy, avaristic bastards?

I asked that question of a friend of a friend, a known moderate republican. Okay, so I might have softened the wording just a bit, but I got an immediate answer.

"I don't know why anyone begrudges another person the right to make a lot of money."

I let that sit for awhile and then followed up with this: "Don't you think someone who has become wealthy based in this system of free enterprise. Don't you think they owe something to country that gave them the freedom to make all that money?"

"What exactly did the government give them?"

I had to go with the obvious answer: "Well let's see. Roads and railways to transport their goods, the Internet to advertise and make sales. An educated workforce via the public school system. Tax breaks . . . shall I go on?"

"What do you think they should give back?"

"Well, first it would be nice if they paid taxes and didn't ship jobs out of the country."

"But both of those are legal."

"So, you're okay with someone dodging taxes using IRS loopholes, while you pay your fair share and you don't come home to a swimming pool, a vacation villa and half a dozen luxury cars?"

"I am perfectly find with it. It's called the American Dream."

Clearly, this lady and others like her have a very different Dream than I do. Though their view of fairness does remind me of what happens some  dark nights, only I call them -- nightmares.

art credit: timeline photos