Personal / Housekeeping 04 Sep 2009 11:07 pm
I took a wrong turn…
It’s been a bad day and tonight in the dark, I took a wrong turn on the way home from Rock Falls. I tried to mitigate the damage by getting off I-80 just into Iowa turning onto HWY 67 – I know that road…
Guessing which way to turn, I quickly second guessed my decision as I drove through the dark farmland – !Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! there should be city here – where is it? Soon, I see a sign 67 SOUTH so I should be ok, but I don’t know where I am and I should… Finally a sign – Pleasant Valley, yes ok ALCOA – hmmm wonder if Liz lives over there a bit and yes, Scott Community College – I didn’t know it was over here… coming into Bettendorf… nothing looks familiar and it should.
As I pull through stoplight after stoplight and pull up to the pulse of music next to me I lock my doors. This is Bettendorf, what’s wrong with me; the wrong turn has shaken me silly.
Looking down at my clock, only 10 minutes has passed and it seemed like an hour of driving. I hit the lights of Davenport, and remember how it used to look on the River – now Las Vegas like with the glitz and glare of the lit over pass and Casino blinking lights – I think back to a video story I wrote for a class at MCC 35 years ago… Sleek lines, future shock, beautiful people and I wander through what I remember of that story of people hurrying by with no recognition of good or bad, right or wrong, up or down…
I’m snapped back to reality continuing on HWY 61, now remembering the cemetery on the side of the road heading south out of Davenport. Everything looks familiar now and I relax a bit.
I start to think of this wrong turn as a metaphor of the last years… wrong turns are normal… but today up is down, good seems bad and right seems wrong anymore. I feel like some momentous decision needs to be made and don’t know what the question is…
Over the last several days there has been a “status statement” going around Facebook that reads:
No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
This totally inane statement seems to have been written by someone who makes me want to scream “what does this even mean?”. I would beg the author to put this in context of a rational thought, question or statement – not some drivel that makes the poster feel better about themselves and I can only assume – anger toward someone else.
I can guess it’s about the Health Care debate going on in the USA today – and I’m organized in body and mind enough to say this about the FB Status…. 1) isn’t that sweet and 2) go back and give me an attainable goal please.
Let’s view the history of plans such as these in the world today and fix only what’s broken. There is no historical evidence that 17% of our economy can be fixed by Government bureaucracy; Trust in God, everyone else needs to bring data. We have the time to do this right.
We need to work together to find solutions, not posture one side against the other. If we can’t have real debates about real issues, we’re lost as a country. Too many wrong turns have tossed us round the bend, and I think there are limited chances to regain balance. Pray for this country, pray for us all.
