Saturday, March 30, 2013

Generations

My uncle Deacon Jaime Baca had a good time with the youngest Baca on Saturday.  We had our Easter Feast a day early since all the kids are leaving on Sunday.

Jaime is 90 years old.  Grandson Simon is 29 months old. There is a lot of time between their births.  But only in some ways.  As my wife Bobbi was mentioning last night, this country will be celebrating its 240th anniversary soon.  When you stop and think that my uncle has been alive for almost 40% of the time that the United States has existed then we don't seem to be such a long time world power.  Even at my age of almost 68 I have been around for over one quarter of the USA's history.

So, one should not feel that this country is necessarily a long term success yet.  If we don't curb the power of corporate America it is doubtful the Union can stand.  But there is time to remedy that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And you've got your touch back with the camera, I've noticed the last few posts. Well, I don't know, you didn't post many pictures over the winter, but there are some really nice ones from the past week or so, especially at the zoo where your visual aesthetic is at work, and now this.

I had wondered. Most people don't realize it but the knees are critical when it comes to handling a camera.


That is an interesting perspective, on the age of the country. As I've been learning about New Mexico I sometimes think about the fact that there are people around who were here before it was a state, and I can see much of the infrastructure that was here then, the remnants of the old roads and the layouts of the towns, things that shaped peoples' lives, and there are many more people, like your uncle, even you and your generation who are of the people and the ways that were here before it was a state.

What does it mean? I heard a few days ago a Black woman lamenting that some young Blacks now are not aware of slavery and Jim Crow and the Civil Rights struggles and what their people had to go through.

If our pasts are buried under the information flow or are just another folder to click on, who then are we?