Miss Bronstein was a regular substitute teacher in my high school. Trotsky’s niece, a short, stout, stern woman, she wore long print dresses that covered her from her collarbone to the tops of her high-topped black shoes. She appeared to have a built-in bustle. One day as she sat in the teacher’s swivel chair it rolled right out from under her. Dickie Nelson jumped up to her aid: “Ms. Bronstein! Are you wounded?” She rose and dusting off her derriere, said, “Only in the dignity.”
I wounded my dignity a few daze ago, when I slipped on slick porch boards after one of them all-day rains. Just like in a Disney cartoon, my feet flew up and hung in the air for two or three seconds before I landed right on my tailbone. No apparent brain damage. It wouldn’t hurt so bad if I hadn’t been enduring sciatica for the past year, occasional arthritis, tendonitis, bursitis and other glorious -itises we earn after a lifetime of work and play.
My wife recalls in youth being bored when old folks compared their maladies and discomforts, for young people imagine they are invincible. But when we visit with friends now, they talk about knee surgery, hip replacement, cataract repairs, false teeth, hearing aids, strokes, etc.
Most people get a new car every few years. We refinish furniture, refurbish the gardens, replace fixtures, patch a leaky roof – why should not our bodies wear out? It bothers me when someone 30-something says they had a senior moment.
Now we are at a crossroads where we wonder if our society has worn out, or on a larger, scarier scale, if our planet is wearing out. The ills we face – pollution, sea level rise, raging wildfires, slow-moving land-devouring hurricanes, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, cross-generational conflicts, theocratic hatreds, unchecked national debt – these are not new. Most can be found in the Old Testament, and as far as I know, the creation stories and antediluvian texts of other religions.
I read many online commentaries that analyze our current malaise from various perspectives; one the other day said boomers made this mess, and now they are looking at septuagenarians to fix it – the top three Democratic contenders are in their seventies, hoping to displace the 73-year old current president.
First: I have never liked that term “boomer” – except when used as the name of a crazy mutt we picked up in New Mexico. I understand the concept; my parents married in 1948 and by 1960 birthed five kids as their distinct contribution to the post-war baby boom. Yet it is flat-out wrong to apply generalizations to any generation. I also bristle when people poo-poo the so-called millennials; my three children paid their way through university and are fine hard-working citizens.
The blame game does not work for climate change; science tells us these trends began with the Industrial Revolution nearly two centuries ago. Nor does it work for racial, religious, ethnic, sexual hatreds. Slavery, genocide, slaughter, terror, and persecution have always existed on every continent except Antarctica – we just get to see them in real time now via the magic of the Internet. For most of my life the Republican Party claimed to be the champions of economic discretion. They blew that out the window with their 2017 tax bill. No one cares about the debt.
We have serious problems, systemic problems, global problems. We cannot hide behind a wall on our southern border, nor along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts to keep the oceans out.
These 70-year olds, for all their life experience and passion for politics and economics, ain’t going to fix it. As ancient as our troubles are, they have intensified in recent decades, and require new ways of thinking, analysis, and especially, action.
The “boomers” didn’t make the mess, but they/we have stirred it up to a boiling point. As younger people see with new vision, it is their destiny to lower all kinds of temperatures, human and global, with dignity intact.
Kirk Ashworth
Thank You Kirk.