TAKING A SECOND LOOK, ON AUGUST 30

CHANGE....? WHO ME.....?

Wow, political pundits have discovered a great American secret -- Americans don't like change. And thus they tell us Obama's fall in the polls is because his aggressive agenda has violated this political reality. Oh yeah....?

It might be better to modify their uncommon discovery with a little common sense. This reluctance to change is no more unique to American politics than say the universal reluctance to eat broccoli or swallow medicine. To solemnly declare we are a middle-of-the-road electorate who always reject extremes is to suggest all extremes are unacceptable. Particularly, at this time, in the matter of health care.

But lets think about that. Would that include other one-time extremes....? Circumcision? inoculation? vaccination? pasteurization? government meat inspection? federal water standards? Some dogged libertarians out there might shout yes, but it's safe to assume most of us today accept these as standard.

And yet, none of these were standard at one time. They were all unwanted, radical changes. What made them radical, of course, was that by golly people just didn't want to undo what they were accustomed to doing.They stood up for their right to wrong. Only after these changes worked -- the ultimate American test of pragmatism -- did they enter the nation's great pantheon of Givens.

This is not to say all change is good. But it is to say what our astrophysicists remind us: "The only sure sign of life in the universe is change!"


THE DASH............!

Most of us weren't at the Kennedy funeral. But almost everyone of us has stood in a cemetery with the same thoughts. That he or she is not to be found here....!

There is no headstone or crypt or flame large enough to encompass the life of those we have lost. That life is to found in the loves and labors they have left behind. That dash between the dates on the stone is what matters -- what they did between the date of their birth and this the date of their death. That simple little dash is what this life was really all about.

That may be one of the reasons many of us don't visit cemeteries as much as did previous generations. Neither way is the better way, but neither way will find their lost ones among the markers out there. Instead we learn the ones we have lost are never farther away than our own heartbeat. And the heartbeat of all those other lives who were touched in ways we may never know.

Our species has been burying its dead for eons. With different ways, different words, different wisdoms. But there runs through them all this one common truth. While we are from dust and go to dust, there is a mist that rises up from the dust. It shimmers, spreads and lives as far and as long as there are memories.

Now everyone quotes either Shakespeare or the Bible. Lets quote both. "Out out brief candle, life is but a walking shadow..." Ahh, but then" "O death where is thy sting, O grave where is thy victory...?"