Author: tk131@yahoo.com

I believe the mainstream media has mastered the dark skill of creating hysteria. Hysteria you can hug everyday, as the media outlets ration out on a daily basis opposing explosive views. No escape except to shut off the flat screen, and read a book written a couple of centuries ago or millennia if necessary. You then remember, with a little mental time travel, that hysteria never solved all that much.

One day after the fall equinox, summer is sneaking away from us. We wish summer would stay, but that specific time on that certain date is the turning point. I will have to adjust my wishing.

Madonna said the other day, “All music today sounds the same.”  I agree. At work, the other workers play today’s popular music, whether it be rap, pop, or dance. All of the music terribly repetitious. Most primarily demeaning towards women. Men come across as simply angry about most everything. Hard to fit that word “love” in with all that misogyny and malice. There is no “feeling” to the music, that ability to stop you in your tracks and grab you.  In today’s world, the endless opportunities to distract ourselves with phones and tablets and laptops prevent us from taking the time to really, closely listen anyway.  The people producing the music today already know that. Our feelings are lost. There is no need to press for music trying to find them.

I find it amazing that the opioid epidemic we are experiencing is somehow a new phenomenon. The poppy has been used medicinally for thousands of years. Morphine, the active ingredient, was isolated from the poppy around 1804. Merck began commercial marketing of morphine in 1827. Opioids derived from opium such as heroin followed and semisynthetic and synthetic later. From the start, the addictive qualities of these opioids was known to all, especially the medical community. How the hell did all these prescriptions get written and filled?

This morning leaving Mass, I saw a young couple walking to their car. They had been sitting many rows ahead of me in church, and I did not see them walk to the altar to receive the eucharist. Now I saw them in the parking lot, and she was holding on to his arm, taking short, slow steps. He was watching her face and guiding her to the car. I wondered if she was at mass to give thanks for recovery from some illness or operation, though progressing slowly. I then wondered if she was at mass for solace and support as she battled the unknown or had accepted a sad end to her life.  The noon sun was fire-hot on my head. I got in my car, started it and turned on my air-conditioning. I drove away with an image I can’t shake.

Yesterday, would have been Jerry Garcia’s seventy-sixth birthday. He died at the age of fifty-three. He was one of the great masters of melody of any age. He then sang those melodies with feeling and spirit. He left behind enough recordings of musical performances for nine lifetimes. Still here, still grateful.