You've got to start somewhere

I just watched the 1984 film version of the movie "1984" on the Atlas Shrugged web site. In the film, Winston Smith, the protagonist, begins a journal of his account of the Age of New Speak, the Age of Big Brother, the Age of the Dead. Given the uncanny and numerous parallels between Orwell's distopian vision and today's actual situation, I am inspired to do the same as Smith.

I've made many abortive attempts at handwritten journals in the past, but early on, I lost the motivation to keep it going. It's hard to predict the fate of this online attempt. If history bears out, it won't last long. On the other hand, I may find the motivation within myself or in the outrageous events in the world around me to keep me going.

As a personal introduction, let me say I am a Cancer, astrologically, having been born on 14 July 1950. While I am not a follower of any daily, computer-generated Horoscopes, I have done just enough research into the subject to be aware that we are affected by relationships of the stars and planets. Most of the character traits listed for Cancer men apply to me. That's why I mention it. Having been born midway through the last century, most of my values are reflective of a world vastly foreign to this one. I was born and raised in a small town in North Central Indiana and was the 2nd born of seven children to a couple who remained married to one another until Dad died. Dad was a school teacher and Mom stayed at home raising all those kids until the first four (boys) moved out. She then became a nurse and worked until she retired due to Dad's declining health.

As a child, I played outside, riding bikes and trading comic books and baseball cards with my brothers and buddies in the neighborhood. Everyone around us worked for a living and came home at the end of the day or night. Most went to church on Sundays or thought they probably should. Kids went to school and said the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the day, standing, hands over their hearts. A prayer followed the Pledge, all heads bowed. Teachers were absolute authorities over their classrooms and their was no talking back. Order was taken for granted. It was a rare and weak teacher with a doomed career who couldn't keep absolute command over his or her classroom.This was PUBLIC SCHOOL .

Families stayed in touch and took care of one another. Neighbors mostly spoke over the back fence or at the small Mom & Pop shops which were still everywhere. Men talked politics at the barber shop or at the hardware store or sitting around a potbelly stove at the shoe repair shop where the cobbler, Karl Stenzel, smoked cigars behind the counter.

There were no cell phones, computers, or GPS devices. Television was in its infancy and a lot of phone service was party line, on which many people shared the same line. Each household on a party line had a distinctive ring pattern so they'd know if the call was for them. You might pick up the phone to make a call and find another conversation in progress. You politely and quietly hung up.

Like I say, it was a different world, a safer world, a saner world, one to which I can compare this one. I'm sorry for the young today who never knew such a world. They may believe the world they've been born into is the only one possible, just as I did. Oh, sure my Grandparents were around, and they described a world which was technologically different from mine, but people were much the same and their dreams weren't so different from my generation's. I would listen to their stories and feel the nostalgia in their hearts and I could feel my world as a continuation of theirs. I don't feel this one as a continuation of mine. Values and priorities are completely different. Such traits as honor and nobility of character are obsolete. Ethics are entirely situational. Politicians have always been liars, but dissimulation and obfuscation on such a grand scale as today and as readily regurgitated by main stream media and believed by the masses leaves me shaking my head in sadness and wonder.

I've said enough for now, but my comments and observations as time moves on will help you to get to know me. Good health to ready readers.