Aug 14, 2008 by Naomi.

Except for marking a beat on a metal triangle in a second grade marching band, I never played a musical instrument. Yet no matter what thoughts wander through my mind certain images bring up a song and I burst out with the related lines. Remember these? There’s a tree in the meadow with a stream drifting by… Or mairzy doats and dozy doats and little lamsy divy… Or when you wish upon a star makes no difference where you are… Or a teaspoon of sugar makes the medicine go down… Or she wore an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini… Get the idea? If you never heard them, too bad, I didn’t make them up.

Sometimes when marking miles on a five-hour drive I challenge myself to sing songs that come to mind. No fair repeating the same song although I do allow as many verses as I can remember. Buffalo gals has lots. The Ole Chisholm Trail is good for many miles. And so is Where Have You Been Billy Boy, Billy Boy? The wear and tear on my throat brings singing to a halt after an hour or so.

Where did the music in my life come from? Music was a constant “noise” in my young years. In the evenings Dad strummed his guitar and sang softly those tunes from the old country. Mother hummed as she worked, pushing the treadle on her sewing machine, pulling milk from docile cows, chopping at the weeds in the bean patch, or washing dishes while I was underfoot so to speak. A song I thought was too sad to hear was “Can I Sleep In Your Barn, Tonight, Mister?” And another was When The Works All Done This Fall. After dark the powerful stations from Texas dominated the airwaves repeating old time country songs. At school seventy years ago singing was a classroom lesson taking an hour once a week. Recess was a time for song circle games like “Farmer In The Dell” and “Go In And Out The Window.”

Somewhere I read that artsy sorts of things are more prevalent in a dominate left brain. Whatever. It brightens my life.

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Aug 14, 2008 by Naomi.

A friend of mine wrote a glowing endorsement of the soon-to-be-replacement of one of the most hapless congressmen to represent my district. My friend was impressed with the new candidate because his message came out strongly as a campaign for our children, now and the generations to come. He indeed will work to make changes that will turn around the present farce we installed in the white house — twice mind you.

This will be no easy job, nor will it happen as easily or quickly as we would like. The reason is our economic system so erroneously called “free enterprise” is not free enterprise at all. Laws encourage Ann Rand’s deliberate misinterpretation of Darwin’s term “survival of the fittest” where it is imperative that dog eat dog.

The attitude appealed to entrepreneurship. Even more it appealed to companies that combined and dominated the markets. Psychologists write ads to sell frivolous products as absolute necessities.

We gave children more than we had because we could. Trouble is: the more an animal gets, the more it wants. I expect it will take a generation or two, maybe more, for normal human logic to kick in. It will or our species will lose to natural selection. How soon will society realize that we can not survive on greed alone? (or the adage: The one with the most toys wins.)

Most things are built an inch at a time so with thoughtful builders in place, it will happen. Getting people elected who have human needs in mind is a step in the right direction.

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