April is the cruelest month (T.S.Eliot said) as the crocuses and daffodils poke through the gritty garden. The hillsides are shifting from brown to red and soon to the delicate blond-green of first blooming. The nights are still cold, but days are deceptively 80-ish. It's a promise, but not one to count on as we in New England know how reversable the Spring can be. To add to the skepticism, the land of America is bending hard against payback from years of denial and delusion. Asia is rising, SA is prospering, and the Middle East is creating high level bliss in Dubai. We've wanted too much and tried to pay for it without the old fashioned force of work. Play now, pay later as long as the Equity Loan would cover credit card dept. But housing is shot as a hedge, and only the most daring are still speculating. The point is, we've banked on the old myths of American prosperity and power to carry us along when we really need ingenuity, new approaches to new problems. It may be that politicians are no longer capable of addressing the social complex. It's too variegated, to tangled with the world at large to be solved by the Daddies of government. Other strategies of engagement are needed, reaching into spheres of cultural difference. The old hierarchies are unstable now.
So we Americans (and that means anyone caught up in the dream or the stream) need to rethink our desires, go on a diet of sustainability sweetened by the fruits of the land on which we live. Down home!