losing my religion

summer...supposed to be a time of long days at the beach...sweet tea on the porch...ice cream melting in your hands...and catching fireflies in mason jars...but this summer all is chaos...and although the temperature is somewhat tepid here...the world is burning...for long islanders, body parts on lawns in hempstead...machetes...planes landing on roadways, and more...but it distracts from the real inferno...the world...a second malaysian airline catastrophe...and not one nation can seem to get past ukrainian rebels to bring those bodies home...i watched one dutch mother's anguish on tv and had to look away...and i avoid the most painful...israel...hamas has brilliantly created a cesspool of epic proportions that i fear israel can never crawl out of...without shit on their hands...and the world responds...a synagogue filled with worshippers stoned in paris...and not the first time...it goes on...if you think all of this doesn't strike every jew...the most observant to the most self-proclaimed "casual" one to the core...well...makes me think of the southern expression...losing my religion...losing one's civility...at the end of one's rope...sometimes i put that silver peace symbol on in the morning (one that i'd been searching for and found a few weeks ago in a little shop in port jefferson.)..sometimes i just put that on like a wreath of garlic against the vampires...and i pray when i turn that phone on...and scan the news...that this world will be metered some measure of peace

ain't nothing but a dream...

richie havens is following me this week...or i should say his beautiful "follow" is...the radio...there again, wonderfully used in two movies i caught on tv...having seen both so many times..."coming home"..."a walk on the moon"...two stories about women finding their identity in fast changing times...and i mull over all of it...world anguish in the middle east now, far east then...this being july...later this month it will be the 45th anniversary of the infamous walk on the moon...when you look back and put that in the context of the tumult that was the sixties...and the violence of the later sixties...you've got to shake your head and think what a gift that moment was for this nation...to allow everyone to get lost in space for a few minutes...i sit here and wonder...will there be relief from the incessant body count...when do we get to turn down the noise we've created and embrace something collectively...where is our walk on the moon...because if you sing it softly and with purpose...we surely will follow..