While watching the images of the uprisings in the Middle East I was struck by their similarity to the images from the civil rights struggles in the 60's. The situations are not the same but there are similarities. The current struggles are far more violent with more dire consequences. Then I wondered what happened to the promise of the 60's. How did we get off track? Certainly, the positive economics of the 80's contributed but what we really lost was our voice, or, more accurately, our voices. The 60`s were filled with poets, writers, musicians and even comedians who spoke eloquently and creatively about the issues. (Martin Luther King, Hunter Thompson, Ginsberg, Betty Friedan, Nikki Giovanni, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills & Nash, John Lennon. Woody and Arlo Guthrie, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and on, and on...) We don`t seem to have that anymore. Written thought is being reduced to 140 character twitter feeds, music is bland and Beiber, George Carlin became Jerry! Seinfeld. Watching reality TV as if it were real. Little is shared. For all the good the internet has brought, we have become isolated and fragmented. The coffee house poet, guitars in the park, gone. No doubt there are poets and writers emerging in the current uprising. I hope they don`t lose their way. The world is a small place and what happens in one place will be felt elsewhere and perhaps the civil rights struggles in the 60`s were evolutionary steps toward global cohesion. Perhaps I`ma dreamer
... 
