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Blogs by Leslie P Garcia
Headshakes and Handshakes. . . 6/30/2003 3:25:09 PM
Summer...leisurely and laid back, a time to dream and watch drifting clouds...no. Summer now is chaotic, the clouds, too often, are storm clouds. Where has summer gone, and why have these troubled times replaced that feeling of contentment and peace that summer once generated?
A news commentator I seldom watch made a point the other day about a man who led a Boy Scout troop. The Scouts were treated rudely at a financial workshop, and the leader's plea for courtesy and help for the youngsters was ignored. So the troop leader pulled his 12 million dollars in investments and went elsewhere--fitting punishment, I think, for the lack of a few smiles and handshakes for tomorrow's investors.
Headshakes...they hit me most every day now. The violence in the Mid East. The lack of responsibility and concern that can let a woman walk away from a man dying in her windshield. The clamor of criminal defense attorneys explaining how any criminal should be free of any charge if his or her lawyer does a decent job.
Headshakes, too, over equally bewildering, but more glorious triumphs. A theme park based on the Bible, rising from a flat piece of land in Texas--being built by a hand by a woman I know has little in the way of money.
Children in Iraq returning to school. A man who smashed an apartment window to save his dog from a fire--even at risk of being jailed. That reminds me, sadly, of the dog my daughter saw die in the street today on her way to college--of all the animals not wanted, not loved, not kept from harm. Circles...there are children leading lives not any less violent and impossible than the short live of a stray animal...how to save them all?
How to save one or two of them?
Growing up in the rural south, summer meant falling in the pond on the way home from school on that last day. Not being afraid to walk--no one, then, would hurt a child. At least, it seemed to. Dogs, cats--heck, I even had a duck--that tagged along.
Summer was handshakes when you met a neighbor, headshakes over the sorry way the Braves were playing back then. Handshakes meant much what they mean now, but were more freely given.
Headshakes then were given with smiles, wry amusement at some minor stumbling stone along life's soft clay road. Nothing so major it couldn't be borne, nothing followed by a sense of hopelessness over the world's affairs and disbelief at the state of "humankind"--a species less human and less kind by the day, it sometimes seems.
Ahhh, summer. Childhood then, hot, lazy days spent in safety--bring those back. We need the handshakes and headshakes of summers past, we need summers the world can enjoy again.
