Charles Dickens’ introductory sentence in The Tale of Two Cities keeps bubbling around in my brain. Bob Dylan’s 1964 song, “The Times They Are A-Changing” keeps reverberating in my head. Despicable news, flooding the media each and every day, swirls in and rankles my inner spirit.
Is our time the best of times, or is it the worst? Is today an age of wisdom, or of absolute foolishness? Is it the epoch of belief, or is it the epoch of incredulity? Is it a season of light, or a season of darkness? Is it the spring of hope, or is it the winter of despair?
How do we know? How can we tell? If we know nothing about what has gone on before our time, how can we grasp or begin to understand what is happening now?
How does one do that? Read books, don’t ban them. Read. Read. Read. Think. Think. Think. Here are a few you might want to try: The Night Trilogy (Night, Dawn, Day), Elie Wiesel; Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (I used an Audio App to help me with this one); Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck; The Little Liar, Mitch Albom; Democracy Awakening, Heather Cox Richardson. Know what has gone on in the past to understand what is going on now.
No comments:
Post a Comment