Reaffirmation
For those of you who are frequent travelers, these observations may seem banal or even ridiculous, but this trip to the East Coast has been pretty much a lark. I've eschewed the mainstream protocol, skipping the direct flights to save more than half the normal tariff, I'm making this journey off-season, and it's after the crash. But or and, all of the outgoing connections were on time on time, the roads haven't been crowded, and I don't feel like either a tourist or an amateur.
For those of you who think it's wiser to stay at home, on the ground, not opening your mail, um, you may be smarter 'n me, but you're missing some fine opportunities. There are cheap seats and lotsa deals on rooms in a lotta places where normally it would be more expensive to go and to stay. Also, and this has nothing to do with our post-terrorism era, I had a quite decent meal on the plane coming out, which is not a reason to take a trip certainly, but might pry open a rusty corner of the mind. Plus, United Airlines is now serving Starbucks coffee instead of that obscenely thin gruel that tasted worse than diluted bathwater.
I don't suggest that the end of Western civilization has been canceled, but perhaps it is postponed. Actually, I feel rather optimistic. Perhaps it is the great delight I have experienced in seeing four of my nephews growing through childhood to become full-fledged people of the finest caliber, in the spirit of their parents. Like nephew Henry, who won't be eighteen until February, and may have been accepted early admission at Harvard by then, and who chats enthusiastically about Graham Greene; whose first name was also Henry, by the way, and who knew that? How could this be the end when a 17-year-old who likes girls, sports, and jazz is already so richly alive?
After dim sum with Hank's family, I drove to the southern arm of Cape Cod, west of the elbow, and trod the sands of an Atlantic beach for the first time in a number of years. The sun was out, and the temperatures unseasonably mild; a jacket was too much. The beach was empty, it being October, and the normal weekender detachment from Boston was already heading home. The delicious smells of the ocean mixed with the scrub pines and the profound passing we call autumn provide additional assurance that not all is lost.
On a blacker note, we are four billion over-populated so there is considerable margin for error. Or as George Carlin noted, the human factor in the future of the Earth is negligible. Whatever horrendous mistakes we might make, the Earth will survive. Eternity is a long time. I'd rather think that whatever is the outcome of the next few years we may come out on top and in better shape. I would like to think that it will not be by fortune or a benevolent god bailing us out, again, but because we have learned enough to take the reins ourselves and get it right this time.
If I'm right, I will reprise my prognostication that we are, indeed, now living on the cusp of a transformation. I will quietly and continuously trumpet my forecast that by 2004 we will have started to turn the corner. What's in the future that I predict with little more than hazy speculation and dynamic hope? Cleaning up our messes, relating with purposeful goodwill, and more time walking the beaches.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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