Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the flowers gone?
The girls have picked them every one.
Oh, When will you ever learn?
Oh, When will you ever learn? (‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’/Pete Seeger)
I was a counselor at a camp called Emma Farm, located near the small town of Harmony PA, really close to two other small towns called Freedom, and Mars PA. (I mention the names, because way back then while we were at camp all of us sought harmony and freedom and considered life back in Pittsburgh as living on Mars!) It was the late sixties, and all around me were Hippies, Protests, Fighting for Fairness, and Equality of every sort, we wore bell-bottomed jeans, the wider the cooler, tie-dyed T-shirts, facial hair for the guys, and for the really hard-core feminists, underarm hair! This was the culture we thrived upon. Working at this resident camp for 8 weeks during the summer, the apparel also consisted of work boots or sandals, macramé jewelry, hand-cut denim shorts made from your second most favorite pair of Levi’s (the first most favorite pair were worn on Saturday nights, sitting around d the campfire, after all the campers were in bed), and the really, REALLY coolest of all Camp Staff, were the one or two kids who could play the guitar, and immediately pick up any song and play as if he or she had known this music forever! We were into Creedence Clearwater/The Who/Crosby Stills Nash and Young, but there was ALWAYS room for some Peter Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Pete Seeger. The lyrics to the song ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone,’ to this day, so simple as to almost just ignore them and tap your toe to the melody, I find simple and sad, precise, and damn too predictable, as to how too many of us live our lives, OBLIVIOUS TO THE OBVIOUS!
I read three stories online regarding COVID/American Extremists/Climate Change, today, and ALL THREE TOPICS are neither new and hauntingly as horrible as when we heard about them for the first time. There are answers for all three topics, but it seems even sadder that no one is asking the questions, RATHER, just regurgitating the situation…you know as in WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?
……The US Department of Education sent letters Friday to the Republican governors of Texas and Florida, as well as Florida school administrators, amid an escalating battle between the White House and state officials over school mask guidance as the Delta variant surges…'Your child will wait for another child to die.' Amid Covid-19 surge, Dallas County has no pediatric ICU beds left, county judge says. (CNN Politics)…….. Online extremist rhetoric is strikingly similar to the buildup to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, with increasing calls for violence linked to conspiracy theories and false narratives, Homeland Security Intelligence chief. (CNN Politics) ……We just experienced the hottest month, as a planet, in any of our lifetimes — and we saw the weather extremes that resulted from. (CNN Politics)
