A old friend recently asked me to "spill my guts," and offer up something that people don't really know about me. I admitted to being a classical music affectionado, although everyone who knows me thinks I am a classic rock-guy. I also admitted to attending a dozen (at least) symphony concerts before ever going to a rock show, and that is true.
My parents bought their first house in 1957 for something like $8,500. It was a "3BR/2BA, Ranch," located at the top of a small hill, on a circle in Vallejo. At the time, Vallejo had a fair symphony orchestra, and they would have a "concert season," during which they would perform at the Hogan Junior High Theater, every other week, doing Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and my favorite, Motzart. My parents bought season tickets for both the symphony seasons and the play season put on by the local players. I was too young to be left in the care of my 14 and 10 year old sisters, so I had to get dressed up; sports coat, slacks, white shirt and tie, to go with my folks to the symphony and the theater. Six years old.
That's how people appeared in public back then. Look at some of the old live-audience shows back in the late '50's and early '60's, all the men have ties, all the women have their hair done, and are wearing nice dresses. One simply did not appear in public unless properly attired. I blame my generation for the changes that followed.
Yeah, the graduates of the late 1960's and early 1970's. We are the ones who fought all the battles, and never got credit for making a change. Worse yet, by the time the changes got enacted, we were all 21, so it didn't matter to us. We fought the fights; we did the civil disobedience thing and got arrested; we took the backlash of a society that feared change worse than anything, and we got nothing. Yes, we got the voting age lowered, we got out of a war we never belonged in, we got society to go beyond conformity and the associated "-isms" that accompany that line of thinking, and to start looking at the value of "different," rather than to what harm it could bring. So what came next, logically, was all our fault.
It seemed to center around "different," and the argument that different wasn't a moral judgement... it was just... different. Pretty soon, we have casinos in California, and cities that can no longer protect the lives of its citizens. OK, neither has anything do do with each other, but that's the situation out here in the West. Just over in Dodge City... oops, I mean Stockton... there was a double homicide on Sunday, bringing the number of murders in the city to 53, 55 if the ones in critical condition fail to improve. People are not even safe in their own homes in Stockton. It's a war, and the "good guys" are losing. Losing badly.
I hope people are watching Stockton. The city's decent into Hell is a forecast of the future in California. Our governor want us to raise our own taxes. He's so convinced that we'll do it, he's put it to a vote. Spending in the Golden State is out of control. The Governor and Legislature keep writing checks for money we don't have. What happens when the one-time "fourth largest economy" goes bankrupt? The international effects will be devastating, and it will cripple any economic recovery in the US. Proposition 30, the "I want to raise my own taxes so the government can say they didn't do it" Act. I already pay the highest over-all taxes in the Nation, I don't think I'll choose to raise taxes with my vote. Of course, this is California: Land of Fruits and Nuts... I can only pray that there are enough people who tell the State "NO!"
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