It is ironic that I chose this time to start a blog. I meant it to offer an opportunity to share some things I had long considered and maybe some new ones. I had no idea I might wind up starting at the time of a terrible world crisis. Here I am all the same

Recently I got into my car and started out somewhere and tuned into one of my favorite Sirius Radio stations. I hit Edie Gorme doing “Blame It On the Bosa Nova” from 1963. It was a favorite of mine then as a youth and still is as an elder There is–or was-a small bar near the University of Minnesota where my girlfriend(now wife)and I used to dance to it. I have no idea what its name was or if it’s still there. But the place and the music and the feeling of it all still sticks in my mind like a memory of a movie or a dream.

Music has a way of transporting us to another time and place, real or imaginary and “Bosa Nova” did so. It took me back to a time when Edie and her husband, Steve Lawrence, were the epitome of sophisticated chic in American pop music.(There was still an American pop with real sophisticated chic then ) It also reminded me of the past-my own, my country’s, the world’s–and when you think this way you can see or at least feel the time passing. You may measure it in Presidential Administrations or in pop songs or in favorite movies or–well, nearly anything I guess. Anyhow, I thought of all that had come and gone since 1963 in my life and the world’s. I thought of the many changes and how today’s world would look to some if we could pluck them out of 1963 America and bring them here.

The one thing that would strike them first, would likely be change, great change. But In a very serious way we are still much the same country and I am, I maintain, still the same person, completed and I hope rounded out a bit, but still the same “I” that had thoughts in the JFK Administration and ever since.(“After changes we are more or less the same.”-Paul Simon) My idea of starting a blog was to reflect upon the past(among other things)and to ask some questions and maybe, humbly, to suggest some answers. I had no idea what would be going on when I started it and though circumstances may change my feelings a bit they will not change my mind.

I will not start now, but, I hope to, fairly soon. I intend to begin by reflecting upon the USA, more specifically on its manner of choosing Presidential candidates, and on that leading American art form, the movies, and how they have changed over the years, partly because of what they are and are not allowed to put on the screen. In each case I plan to ask what the effects of the changes were and to look at what was and what is and perhaps draw some careful and always tenuous conclusions. As a former history teacher I have to say I always liked compare and contrast questions. So here is another chance. Please join me.