Easy To Be Hard

"How can people be so heartless? " I woke up this morning with that song lyric stuck in my head. Funny since I haven't thought of the rock musical "Hair" for decades. Yes, it's funny but rather apt in light of the current political scene. If you can gauge anything from a Facebook newsfeed, it seems a lot of folks are perplexed and dismayed by what is going on with the current presidential campaign. Such nastiness and so little civility makes you wonder "[h]ow can people be so cruel".

What I wonder is where are all the Baby Boomers. What has happened to us, the peace, love, dove generation? Shouldn't we be calling the shots? Aren't there more of us demographically? Well, not anymore actually. According to the Pew Research Center, the Millenials were projected to surpass us sometime in 2015. I think they did since an recent article in CNN Money claimed the most common age in America last year was 22. As a group we Boomers are losing our grip and perhaps our perspective. 

C'mon, there are still well more than 60 million of us and we know kindness. We know love. We know how to make our voices heard. So let's say something. Let's try to do something. 

Find your inner Woodstock. Dig out your Army Surplus clothing. Put on your Birkenstocks and wear some flowers in you hair.  Well, in all seriousness, at least speak up! 

With thanks to Galt MacDermot, James Rado, and Gerome Ragni, I will leave you with some  additional lyrics -

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold

How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend ...

Another Day with the Gov'ner

This one has been in the draft stages since the first week in December  I wanted to calm down a bit before launching into a political  rant, but time hasn't done much to heal this wound. It's also very difficult to write calmly about this guy's antics.



Paul R. LePage is my governor and I couldn't be more embarrassed by that fact. Perhaps you've heard of him. He has brought a lot of publicity to the great State of Maine and most,  if not all, of it has been negative. He campaigned on the promise of telling the president to go to hell. As soon as he "won" the election with a paltry 38% of the total vote, he gave his 22 year old daughter the high-paying job of  assistant chief of staff. Then there was the Martin Luther King Day snub where he said the NAACP could kiss his ass. And who can forget the  the women with little beards statement?  Then, let's see.  Hmm. There was the Department of Labor mural removal debacle. And? I'm sure I must be forgetting a few more gems, but that was just in his first year.

His second year has had it's crazy moments, too, but the point of this post is not to list all of the Gov'ner's failings and flubs as fun, yet incredibly time-consuming, as that might be. Fast forward to December 5, 2012, when I was a guest at the Swearing-In Ceremonies for the 126th Maine Senate.  It was Opening Day for the new legislature, a day typically filled with great anticipation, hope, pride and camaraderie   The program included a notice  of  a quorum to the governor and the house , remarks by the governor, administering of oaths, some ceremonial stoking of the fire (I didn't exactly get that part), and other fun stuff. It's important to note that families and friends were in attendance. It wasn't your typical state house work day and it should have been free of political bile. Someone should have told LePage that.

Oh, did I mention the part about the "stalker"? What stalker you ask. Well, the alleged stalker, spy, paparazzi, what have you that our governor believed was being paid by his opponents (think enemies) to dog  him. Remember this was the first day for the governor to welcome and look ahead to working with the newly constituted senate. Remember that family and friends were present and happy to share in a memorable moment. What did he say? Well, he didn't exactly say congratulations. He basically said call off this guy. You are being disrespectful. That's ironic. Oh, a picture is worth a thousand words. Here's the the video -

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What did you think of that? I hope you could hear him over the crying baby. Remember family and friends were present. It was a ceremonial event. Talk about disrespect. That old pot kettle thing. Man, we the people of this great state are in big trouble and, yes, we all need a helmet.