OpEdNews.com
POSTED ON JANUARY 11, 2016 UPDATED ON JANUARY 11, 2016
Every time we drop the ball on the old year, the old Christmas tree, old fashions & devices, old ways of thinking, and the grand old party, we resolve to balance life’s comedies and tragedies — for the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die –maybe.
Free Will Grand Juries kill any indictment of uniformed killers in Baltimore and Cleveland; A freak storm kills frigid North Pole by fifty degrees and Mississippi tributaries become killer rivers. Maybe, whoever troubles his own planet, will inherit the wind.
And yet, while The Fourth Estate drowns itself fishing for ratings in a political cesspool, NASA rediscovers Pluto, more than 200 nations reach first Global Climate Change agreement and Same Sex Marriage is proclaimed a supreme American right.
Yes, lies abound even in the search for truth about life as we know it, knocking at the door of extinction. Still it’s not Einstein’s bees, but Corporatism insuring death by a thousand cuts for earth and earthlings: Bard Medical knowingly replaced bad Recovery filter spikes with the bad G2 Series — and Americans died. Bard’s FDA approved filter spikes fail patients so often, Stanford Health Care, Dr. William T. Kuo specializes in removing them.
Resolved: choose carefully in whom we entrust our parents, children & planet; reject vague vulgarities as presidential candidate policy statements; admit all our institutions are only as humane as the humans running them.
Beyond the rapture of rupturing constitutional truth and electoral process to make a point, our Golden Rule remnants remain infrastructure of our survival. Happily, most Americans are not supremely racist nor fearfully duped – but beware, like BP Gulf Spill, SoCal Methane Gas leaks from one year to the next.
Although guns, bullies and all forms of violence rob us of Parisian lives, the pen remains mightier than the ISIL, and shooting Cecil the lion, reveals our top of the food chain position is as fragile as a two-year-old Syrian refugee’s body washed ashore.
Yet, each year-end brings a new year to count our blessings for having shared earth with people like Natalie Cole, Maureen O’Hara, Anne Meara and Elizabeth Fort Hood Hug LadyLaird.
Perhaps a Syrian refugee holding his sleeping daughter in his arms while selling pens is needed beacon: This father used donations received through social media to start three businesses, employ sixteen Syrian refugees and send $25,000 to his family still trapped in Syria.
Resolved: Giving is our best way out of the fog of war.
From womb to tomb, life is a balancing act between half-full or half-empty; Agony and Ecstasy — Yogi Barra, Leonard Nimoy, Mario Cuomo, Fred Thompson, Robert Loggia, the beautiful mind of John Ford Dash, B. B. King, The Godfather’s Mo Green, West Wing’s Roger Reese, Rod Taylor and Christopher Lee.
Especially painful for me: the Braveheart of a Titanic composer, James Horner, America’s soulmate Julian Bond, my Zhivago look-a-like Omar Sharif and my only sports hero, basketball’s Laura Hiram.
Gone too, Cronkite’s principled news media, replaced by extreme measures:
- Religious freedom permits Mosque vandalism
- NRA Open Carry gun lies we tell ourselves
- Environment destroying corporations intimidating participation at Paris Climate Change Summit
- Oil prices so low Congress ends ban on oil exports, enabling gas price hikes for constituents
- Conspiracy or Coincidence: Electric streetcars disappeared by Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, GM and Mack Truck
I bow to the great Dames, Maggie Smith & Judi Dench and all living examples of human achievement — Meryl Streep, Oprah, Julianne Moore’s Still Alice, Spielberg, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, Jerry Stiller and police officers who buy hot pink car seats.
My favorite 2015 moments: Aretha Franklin moving both King and President to tears of joy at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Obama finally in the driver’s seat of gun safety and, a 1963 Chevy Corvette Stingray!
Resolved: Happy New Year America, if you can keep it.
