August 2, 2025

I’d been somewhat consumed with matters the past few days, but I woke up this morning determined to put a new spin on things. It had been a good sized mope, so I didn’t expect it would step aside easily. It didn’t, but I was determined. I’m staring at 85, and life’s just too damned short for horseshit, which most matters are. What helped was the fret free, innocent face of my grandson, aged six, sleeping beside me. He’d been with us the past few days, and still sleeps with one of us each night. Say what you will, that’s the way it is. We miss each other - Jamie and I - odd man out sleeps in the guest room - yet cuddling with a six year old is a delightful way to end the day.

And to start the day.

He spends much of his time here so it’s good he feels so safe. I’m glad I can help to keep him so but I know I can’t keep him so forever. A friend of mine, now departed (as are so many), used to say, “It’s a good life if you don’t weaken.” How to keep him strong when my own strength is waning? He is entering a world much tougher than mine. I came of political age in the sixties during the civil rights movement. At the end of a day in which there had been some action, some meeting, some movement forward, we’d form a circle with our arms around each others shoulders and sing, “We Shall Overcome.” And we believed it! We had hope, the belief that things could change. Were we naive? My son’s generation thinks so. Maybe we were, but things happened for the better, didn’t they? And now?

These days I walk around with a feeling I’ve never had before in my life, a kind of dis-ease that invades my thoughts and gnaws away, a dismay that my grandson will not grow up in the America I did, an America where things were wrong but folks sought to make them right and sometimes did. That America is being destroyed daily, right before my eyes, like an iceberg calving and crashing into the sea. Try and stop it.

This morning, as I pretty much do every morning, I checked my bank account. Right at the top of my statement, right where you can’t miss them, are the words “backed by the full faith and credit of the government of the United States”. For the first time ever I wondered if this were true? We are told to believe the most outrageous lies daily, and our country’s credit rating has dropped. Full faith? Full credit? Where?