SMOG
Subtle Changes
This is what I wrote the other
day. It reflects the changes in the air quality from 1960 to the year 2001.
The changes are for the better.
This reflects the influence of people wanting the world to be a better
place.
Good changes have happened. There
is more to do and it will happen.
We are evolving, we are here. We
suspend wars on Holidays, let everyday be a Holiday.
Smog:
I was listening to the Prairie
Home Companion the other day where Garrison Keillor
talked about the movement of people
to Pasadena from Minnesota in the early part of this century.
They spoke of it as being very
clear and beautiful in this city at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
I see movies and film of Los Angeles
today in the year of 2001 and see the area as being clear with
a beautiful view of the mountains.
Let me say that this was not always the case.
While growing up in Pasadena in
the late forties and through the fifties the mountains were
not visible due to the heavy smog.
On rare occasions the mountains
were visible and when they did they rose up quite dramatically.
I was raised in the San Gabriel
Valley and I lived in the smog. I thought this was normal.
I now realize today that my body
at that time was being abused by the air quality until I was seventeen.
They told me while I was in the
Navy that I was sick. I had bronchitis that I was not aware of;
for I thought this was normal in
my life style.
I only realized how bad the Los
Angeles smog was when I returned from Hawaii and had to breathe and see
through it.
The smog burned my eyes in 1962
when I was discharged from the service and
I moved to San Jose to get away
from it.
So those of you that sees the beauty
of the California Mountains be happy that you can.
I was not so lucky.
***
Back in those times spoken above
there was a very real nuclear threat.
We knew we were all going to die
because of the nuclear threat that covered the earth like the smog in Los
Angeles.
It seeped into our very pores from
the bantering, finger pointing and the propaganda that
covered the earth like amber molasses.
We had no choice, in our minds we were all doomed to die.
There was no flowery bouquet in
our future.
There was only the fire and the
smoking brimstone of total destruction to darken our world.
People did scream for the nuclear
threat to stop. I was lost. I had no future. Why?
Times did change.
So now people hate.
I am not lost anymore,
I am just a little disgusted at
the attitudes that are here at the moment.
There is no reason for any conflict.
There is no excuse.
That is why I say. We are evolving,
we are here.
We suspend wars on Holidays, let
everyday be a Holiday.
