Can't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow...

Following the injunction of Fleetwood Mac, I can't stop thinking about tomorrow. At my age, I should finally lighten up and take one day at a time, don't ya think? But yesterday, I read this article on the front page of the New York Times, and who in their right mind can ignore this?

The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia.

Close your eyes for a minute. Imagine waves lapping the shore of the NORTH POLE. Yes, I'm shouting. There are still dipshits out there who insist that it's no big deal, we're getting all 'exercised' over nothing. Like that guy who wrote this book. He's cute and all ...seductive and soothing and ..freakin' dangerous. The siren song of the 'skeptic': Won't it be great to plow ships through water and not ice? I mean, we'll be able to get all our precious trinkets so-o-o-o much faster! And maybe we'll grow tomatoes and corn and cows right outside Santa's workshop. How cool is that?

Seriously, when my heart isn't turning to ice in sympathy for the Arctic, I want to pummel someone. But it's hard to know who to beat. There are so many choices, so little time...and (here I'm gonna sound old) so few mechanisms for effectively ranting and raving. I miss the good old days -- a sure sign that I'm approaching senility. I remember when the University of Wisconsin had mock gravestones on the hill up to the main campus. When people boycotted classes, professors, stormed the streets. Do any of you remember that? What has happened to collective outrage?

Until we can muster up the courage, the time, the rage we had as youths, we're doomed. The only people who take to the streets are immigrants, who are promptly hosed, arrested, and dismissed.

I can't stop thinking about tomorrow though. About the world my children and grandchildren will face. We all have too much to lose to risk the streets and too high a price to pay to sit on our sofas, hoping Jon Stewart will do it for us.

Options? Well, voting isn't enough, as 2006 reminds us every day. It won't be enough in 2008 either. Interest groups send letters on our behalf but are too polite to kick some ass. Aren't young people supposed to do that stuff? Aren't they supposed to be the Idealists who shame the rest of us into action? They seem so passive ...waiting to inherit the future rather than forge it.

I guess we Boomers, who went from angry to self-involved, are going to have to risk our Golden Years. When they told me old age wasn't for sissies, is this what the hell they meant? Am I supposed to start yelling and throwing stuff again?

Yup. Seems so. Grab a rock.