POTPOURRI II

          After last nite's wonderful show, the McCartney Years, I was going to use the title Good Morning Sunshine from one of the songs they performed. Indeed, the theater, unfortunately only a bit more than half full, rang with the sound of voices joining in, remembering their days of youth and the optimism we all had at that moment in our lives. We just KNEW that we were going to fix the world. All was possible, if only we wished and worked to make it so.
     How things have changed - and yet, how things have remained the same in many ways. Some of us still hang on to the perhaps naïve hope that we can still improve the situation, still make things better, like Jude in another song. Others are willing to just "let it be." And yet, as I look around today at our microcosmic world here in the Village and at the macrocosmic world at large, I know we must do something for if not, we resign ourselves to the acceptance of things as they should not be.
     There are things I will never understand and perhaps have given up trying. I do not understand why it is that someone thinks it is an original idea to just copy words and post them. Isn't it a better idea to make one's own words, express one's own thoughts and perhaps even take the bold step of discussing issues? But I cannot claim to understand all nor how to fix all, so some things we can just pity and move on.
     What is even more frightening are the events of the world. Today there is a scary video of a child, yes, a child, shooting a victim of ISIS and shouting the ever present Allahu Akbar, while an adult looks on approvingly. There are the scary stories out of our own colleges and universities of the increased presence of rape and violence against women, of the attempts of the administrations to cover it up, of sports scandals, and worse, of things like this - “Gas them, burn them and dismantle their power structure. Humanity cannot progress with the parasitic Jew.” This is not a line from a Goebbels film or Hitler’s Mein Kampf, but the University of Chicago's Yik Yak, an anonymous, local social media app.
     Yes, this is the same Yik Yak of which I wrote yesterday. You see, "progress" and advancements in the technological world are not always progress. One must be careful as to which door is being opened and which window is being cracked ajar.
     This week was International Women's Day and there were events all over the world and my response is big deal. All the hoopla and even supposed new laws being passed in unenlightened countries mean nothing, zip, if they are not enforced. When women and even girls, right out of their school dorm beds and classrooms, are kidnapped and held as sex slaves, as forced wives, and boys are taught to become killers at an age when they should be playing and studying, when kids are drugged to keep them in a state of compliance, when women are bereaved every day as their children are killed in front of their eyes, when honor killings are actually honored! - then a ceremony? That carries no lasting meaning.
     And let us not think that it is only in the backward countries that this happens. Female genital mutilation or FMG is growing right here in the USA. Imams stay quiet or encourage it, those opposed to it have a hard time making inroads and on it goes. Even here, today, all over the country, there are sects of groups that do not believe in educating their children, particularly their girls and they join the stream of countries that keep their women down by denying them rights - to study, to drive a car,  to walk alone in the streets,to live and breath freely as human beings with equal rights.
     When women are targets of scatological remarks, when men address them in sexual terms, or cannot raise their eyes above chest level, when misogynists are allowed in power - and yes, we have plenty of that right here in the Village - then needs must as needs be and we must not excuse nor accept it. Yes. There will slips of the tongue, particularly when spoken in anger, or when provoked, but with care, and with proper behavior and thought perhaps these situations can be avoided.
     Will it ever be perfect or ideal? No, for that is not the way of people. Remember, to err is human, it is said, but to forge on, to forgive, to struggle to improve - that is also part and parcel of the human situation and we must attempt to continue on. I ache at the sweetness and idealism of grandsons #1 and #2 as they are so heartbreakingly convinced that their generation will be the one to fix things up and while I gently try to inject some reality, some practicality, into the mixture, I cannot but be jealous as I remember my own idealism, my own certainty that WE would make the difference, that we would indeed change the world.
     But then again, the words good morning sunshine and make it better and yesterday, etc. ring in my head and I think that yes, like the little engine that could, the little engine that chugged, "I think I can, I think I can," can be us, at least for a bit more.