I hope all those who visited this blog, Dispatches from Aldeburgh, have enjoyed their time here—it's been fun for me, too. Of the 400-plus items I posted here from 2020 to 2024, I'm leaving up the most popular.
Update: January 2025. With the return of the Tangerine Palpatine to the White House, it seems appropriate to mourn the end of the good old USA as I knew it—in addition to my late blog.
© 2024 SummitCityScribe
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| Ice Age Earth footprint, Apollo 11 lunar footprint |
It's hard not to be discouraged living in a modern world still plagued by war, superstition, sexism, and bigotry.
That's why it helpful to step back occasionally and look at the big picture—to remember where humankind began and just how far we've come. The photo at the top of today's dispatch illustrates that concept quite literally.
On the left is a fossilized human footprint—said to be around 23,000 years old—found near a dry lakebed in New Mexico. Meanwhile, over on the right we have a boot print on the lunar surface, left by an Apollo astronaut in 1969.
Those Ice Age humans—who doubtlessly gazed up at the Moon each night—couldn't possibly conceive that their descendants would one day walk the lunar surface. In that same way, we modern humans have no idea what our forebears might accomplish in the future.
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| Lascaux cave painting, Van Gogh's Starry Night |
That's why it's good to remember that humans aren't always bent on finding new ways of hurting or killing each other. We're not always hateful, petty, or stupid. Sometimes we can do great things—inspiring things.
Here's to that next great thing.
©2024 SummitCityScribe
My mother was a good person: kind and loving. When I was a child, she encouraged me to be kind to others and to consider their feelings and not just my own. I can still remember the time she sat me down and played Joe South's 1970 song Walk a Mile in My Shoes to teach me about empathy. She also couldn't abide bigotry and racism and made sure I felt the same way. These were the most important lessons I ever learned from her.
My mother loved to read. She loved nothing more than to curl up with a good book. I saw her reading novels for pleasure regularly while I was growing up, and that influenced my own love of reading. Like a lot of moms, she also read People magazine and the occasional drugstore tabloid, but I remember her having a subscription to Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, too, which I thought was pretty cool.
My mother loved movies. When I was younger, we would watch them together on the living room couch. She especially loved a good thriller. Later, when I was a little older, we would visit one of our local cinemas nearly every Saturday afternoon to see a new movie. More often than not, it would be something that she wanted to see, so I ended up watching a lot more R-rated fare than any of my classmates at school. The first time I ever saw The Deerhunter, Midnight Express, Apocalypse Now, or Alien was in a movie theater with my mom.
My mother loved music. She had a special affection for Rhythm and Blues. When I was younger, I remember her playing records by B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, and Al Green around the house, and she practically wore out her 45 of Booker T. and the MGs Green Onions. I still remember finding the Isley Brothers blistering hit, Fight the Power, part 1 & 2, on her turntable one Saturday afternoon. I was impressed, thinking it was a pretty hip tune for a (then) 42-year-old white lady.
My mother was a proud union member. For many years she worked in a hot, noisy factory, testing motors for General Electric (a company that once employed 10,000 people in Fort Wayne).
My mother was all of these things I've listed here and much more. Besides being a great Mom, she was a good, decent human being who cared about the people she shared this planet with. I can trace all of the good qualities that (I hope) I possess straight back to her.
Thanks, Mom, for everything. I love you.
There's more to come in the next dispatch.
©2021 SummitCityScribe
