posted July 20, 2005

File this under the category of ?¢‚Ǩ?ìYou gotta love this place.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù

I'm sitting in Central Park in Corvallis, across the street from the library (I love our library, but that's another day's story). There are several hundred other people here, most of them in lawn chairs of some kind. I'm sitting on the grass, which feels great. The sun will be down soon. The air couldn't be more perfect, just those few degrees cool enough to sit and feel absolutely wonderful about sitting in the grass.

I am sitting in the grass as the sun goes down and I am listening to the Corvallis Community Band. I I have no idea who the Corvallis Community Band is. It looks like people who just get together and play in a symphonic band because they enjoy it. Right now they're doing a Gershwin medley, and you really can't do better than George Gershwin when you're sitting in the grass in the park on an almost perfect evening in a small town that is almost too perfect on evenings like this.

This, of course, is what America should be like every night of the year. We should be gathered together in some special place to enjoy each other and share our gifts with one another. We should all be able to come together, in small groups and large, maybe to listen to music, maybe to talk about our lives, maybe to do something important or silly or necessary. This is what America should be, and I can't express how angry it makes me that instead most people, most of the time, seem to be alone, alienated and incapable of even imagining doing this: being together with others. We live in a culture soaked in fear and otherness....

The Gershwin piece ended. This band has a really good sound; these people clearly enjoy what they are doing because the sound so good doing it.

There are three little girls running in circles and dancing little girl dances. They are so cute it's almost painful. Blonde-haired little sweeties, and I can imagine little kids of all colors and sizes running around this same park having the same amount of fun if they had the chance. Why are we not giving them that chance? I would be completely disheartened if I wasn't aware of how many are fighting that fight, struggling for exactly this end. What is so sad, what makes me so angry, though, is how little these kids matter in the overall scheme of things. Profit and power are the most important resources to those who control our institutions (and ohmygosh, that little girl loves this so much, she has no choice but to run at full speed and screech her joy, and no one seems to mind at all because we all want to be that happy).

Like I said, it just doesn't getter much better than this. For a few hours, and a few people, we have a taste of a perfect life. Now if we can just spread it farther.