The Life and Times...

I wrote this post quite a while ago, but never posted it. So I am posting it now, with some few edits from when I wrote it, but mostly in the state I found it in when I rediscovered it--

Sometimes I feel like one of the ladies of Cranford, just waiting for the rail road to come to town.

OK, for those not familiar with fairly obscure British mini-series, that reference will mean very little. But I just finished watching it, and then proceeded to come to my computer and watch this preview for the documentary Crude (as in oil). It sort of dovetailed things in my mind to come to this thought.

What thing is in my life now that is like the railroad was to them? Scary, big, unstoppable, will change everything, but in the end will become a normal part of life, bringing good as well as bad.

You see, in the movie Cranford, the rail road IS coming. It is hacking its way through the hills and fields. With it will come scary people who can simply hop on a train and within hours be within the town limits of Cranford. Crime will spike, and the masses will become educated. And this is to be feared by the gentility, because they know what happened in France when the masses were educated and decided to demand more. "Off with their heads!" was the hew and cry.

But Mrs. Gaskins, the authoress, (yes, she went by that moniker, including the "Mrs.") was very forward looking for her time. She wrote these stories in the 1840's and yet the education of the masses and of women were both themes supported in her book. She clearly illustrated that life did not have to be as it always was in order to be good.

So it got me to thinking, what things are going on now, in this day, that I fear may change, when in reality, those things should change.

Here is where the the movie preview comes in. You see I proceeded to watch this video, and I broke into tears just at the preview. Here is the summary of the movie that I obtained from http://www.imdb.com/:

"One of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet. An inside look at the infamous $27 billion "Amazon Chernobyl" case, CRUDE is a real-life high stakes legal drama set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film examines a complicated situation from several angles while bringing a story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus"

How can we live in a world where one persons weath is provided through such injustice. And before you think I have gone socialist, it is not capitalism that is to blame here. It is the ability to leave the land of accountability (the US) and go to a place whose government can be bought or bullied into doing what you want. It is the lack of consequences that allows things like this to happen. If they had to dump their sludge in America, we would have changed things long ago. In fact we have. Remember the Love canal? But instead of finding a way not to have sludge, we are just making it someone else's problem.

We as people have to start making change! I want to be one of the ones who is making these changes before her time. Like educating a woman or a slave in the 1840s, or maybe throwing my corset in the lake at the turn of the century, or perhaps wearing pants in the 50's. (I'll keep my bra, but more power to those who burned them in the 70's!)

So what will it be? Driving less, eating less meat (or none), having a smaller house, dumping debt, working from home? Or something we haven't thought of yet. But it has to be something. And it may be something that seems scary. Like the railroad coming to Cranford. But those paradox shifts bring good and bad and, simply put, a new way of life.

I hope I am always far sighted enough to see the change coming and flexible enough to be part of it, instead of fighting against it.

Unless of course the change involves evil Teddy Bears that come out of the ground. We must fight those, of course! :)