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I found the worry stone image particularly poignant on new reading--I took the old story out and let the words wash over me, a much needed soothing balm. We have come close to shutting down more times than we can count; we have had to fend off developers, pushy insufferable people, zealous and misguided regulators...and of course the banks, the feds and the other wolves at the door. All just to keep doing what we do. It's hard, or seems a bit pollyanna-ish, to take pride in treading water, to count still being here after almost 30 years as a great achievement in itself. But Kipling was probably right--"if you can keep your head while all about you/are losing theirs and blaming it on you..."
I lost my Dad in the intervening years; Miriam lost her husband and her brother. Julia and I have been together almost since I first wrote, my mom's 70th birthday (which Miriam and her mom attended) gave way to her 80th, still alive and kicking. But more broadly, the intransigence to the plight of the poor in L.A. now seems like child's play, replaced by unspeakable horrors we could not even have imagined. In its place as arisen a virtual as well as real explosion of ruthlessness and terror, with a full-scale warehousing of the world's poor as a sort of surplus humanity from New Orleans to Gaza and beyond. Ruling elites increasingly speak with one voice as the wealth gap grows exponentially, with no end in sight and no real hope for substantial change from show elections starring pretty people with boatloads of corporate cash.
It's almost too much to bear, until I find this old worry stone, a comfort even if I feel like the deluded captain in The Cain Mutiny, showing my craziness by rolling it back and forth in open court. Keep this job? I guess so. Still crazy? Quite possibly. But more important, as banal as it sounds, Still Here After All These Years....
© 2008 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to http://danielpwelch.com. Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School (http://www.greenhouseschool.org) and run workshops and seminars on music and history. Translations of articles are available in over two dozen languages. Links to the website are appreciated at danielpwelch.com. New CD available through the website at http://danielpwelch.com/dansshop.htm#CD: Let It Snow
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