I want to live to see the day when we make contact with beings from another planet, the day when we learn to communicate with whales, the day when renewable energy is the norm, the day when plastics are banned, the day when salmon return to the rivers on the East Coast, the day when governments work for the good of the planet, the day when men treat each other equally, the day when exploitation no longer exists, the day when train travel returns to small towns in the US, the day when I understand how the world works, the day when my niece graduates from high school, the day when my own child understands the ways of the world, the day when I accept myself for who I am.

Should I be living my life this way?
We have lost ourselves in the coulds and shoulds.
Asking distracts from what is, and we become irritable with the present.
This moment is a culmination of what has happened at the intersection of what will.
Should I be an artist?
Art, in its purity, is not something one should or should not do. It is creation coming from everything that is presently you. Everything else is immitation or failed attempts.

I must be a Democrat. Surely I must be. If I dream of one day reading a book while lounging back in my seat as I travel from one United States city to the next in a high speed train, then I must be a Democrat. Or would I simply be a human hoping for the sanity of when I don’t hop in my car, which costs me hundreds of dollars to maintain and insure every year, weave my way into a four-lane highway of traffic and nervously shark my way into an hour-long search for a parking spot? Please help me to understand were I fit in the political spectrum of ideas. I need to pick a side. November is just next month.
I’m being told of certain hopeful politicians blowing rhetorical smoke of “subsidizing” rail infrastructure, and how we can’t afford such a scheme, in hopes of striking a nerve in fear of “big government” and higher taxes. Don’t we, the tax payer, pay for the roads that grow wider with every American Recovery and Reinvestment dollar spent? Don’t we pay for the ring roads that circulate traffic around cities causing suburb ring, after suburb ring, after suburb ring…?
Ohio is being offered 8 billion dollars to connect the three C’s, Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, cities rotting from the core due to suburb growth. The politicians are divided down party lines as to whether or not the state should accept federal dollars for such an endeavor.
The third largest recipient of American Recovery and Reinvestment dollars in Ohio is American Electric Power (AEP), the single largest land owner in the state. They will receive over 300 million dollars to install pollution controls in their smokestacks (scrubbers). This is the equivalent of me getting a government grant to put a new exhaust pipe on my 1980 diesel Volkswagen. Ahh… ha! I’ll look into it.

Tractor trailor trucks crowd our highways and make one wonder what ever happened to trains and how can it be economical for all those big rigs to run all over the country.
But there is something I’ve been seeing a lot of on the back of these trucks that brings a smile to my face.
The wings of a windmill look small in the distance, but when an escorted wide-load passes you on an interstate with one wobbling on its extended trailer you’re humbled by the size and the knowledge that this is only one piece of a giant.