The Times They Are A-Changin' and Historical Perspective

I have a dental checkup on Monday and yesterday they sent me an emailed form that I need to fill out for them. They need it ASAP (of course), and I was hopping with customers all day while DH was down in the warehouse dealing with rewiring the light fixtures (which took him all day, quite literally. He was putting the final plates back into position when I was locking up.) So I didn't get a chance to fill the forms out. BUT, I also probably don't have all of the information readily at hand any more. So, I'm tempted to do the best I can today and tell them to look up the previous forms for the details I'm missing. Can you tell I'm just a little crabby today? LOL

This kid looks wonderfully crabby. What 
a great expression! LOL

All of these extra hoops we have to jump through these days to get our health care is more than annoying, and it all is placed totally on the threshold of COVID. Before the epidemic we were actually able to get access to our physicians without running through the gamut of a billion questions and more people. We were able to get into our dentists (with whom, in this instance, we've been patients for more than 30 years), without having to try and remember when we had our immunization and booster shots. We were able to travel on public transportation without wearing a mask. All of that seems like a distant memory, now. 

This is a VERY young Bob Dylan. The album was 
released in 1964 and was a standard for those 
already protesting the war. (That escalated and 
crested in 1968-1972.) 

When I was a young hippie, there was a song by Bob Dylan called "The Times They Are A-Changin'". (Here's a link to the original song on You Tube as sung by Bob Dylan.) It was a protest song - an early Bob Dylan in the times of Joan Baez and others becoming the popular music. We sang it loud and proud, happy to be that generation - the one that would change everything for the better. And we tried, and then we aged and the younger generation picked up the torch, changed the path's directions, and we were off again, and again, and yet again. Now it is my generation who are "behind the times" and "standing in the way" and the younger generation who seem to be looking for conservative security, new causes and a rash of new demigods to be thrown down by their own children in another 10-20 years. 

Every generation gets an opportunity to carry the 
torch for a short time, and then must pass it on to 
the next generation waiting in the wings. Although 
each generation starts out with great intentions, 
more often than not, they fall flat and fail because of 
the weight of what needs to be changed, and the 
intransigence they butt up against. 

The times have a-changed. When historians look back at these days from the far future, what will they see? What will the tinted glass of time smooth over in their analysis, and what will stick out clearly? What will be that rock in the middle of the raging river of time that was pivotal to all except those of us living through it.? I wonder what the generations of 100 years from now will think about us. That's a massive gap of time. Think back to 1922 - the end of World War I (the war to end all wars ... the joke was on us). The flu epidemic was winding down, the economy was going great guns for another seven years and industrialization was starting to grip the nation's factories, but we were a bit less than a decade away from the Great Depression. Isn't it interesting how history can bring perspective? 

Historical perspective has always been of interest to 
me, since history is usually written by the victors of 
any battle. Those battles don't just have to be in war, 
they can also be in economy, culture, religion or 
other things that impact multitudes of people. 

On that note, I'm out of here. I guess I'd better try to fill that silly form out and send it on it's electronic way. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I'll be back on Monday.