"The Sound Track of my Youth"

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - from Woodstock on - they were one of my favorite groups. I have a Hospice volunteer, Dr. Ricki Lewis, who is helping me complete what l call "my memoirs"

which I'm compiling for my kids. She's a professional writer and has helped me alot. She's a geneticist by education and writes amazingly readable genetics and life science texts. Since much of my youth is the 60's, we've talked alot about that time and what it represented to us.

Ricki shared an essay she authored for a local paper where she discussed how Springsteen has been able to create new art successfully and how through her personal experience she's found that C,S & N have gone Hollywood.(please notice Neil Young is not included - he still rocks)

This essay took my thoughts in a couple different directions.

First of all, I always look at the past using the same criteria I use when reading a book. You take out of a book in direct corelation to what experiences you bring into a book. For instance, I read Robinson Caruso when I was 10 years old. I loved it and got lost in, what I thought was a great adventure. Being a child I saw it as fantasy and adventure - different from my normal day. When I reread it in college as an adult, I had a different take. My experience base was now wider and I could now bring the necessary emotions with me to fully understand the whole message of the book.

The past is the same. I naturally look at CSN&Y as men as well as musicians. Having watched and listened to them as young men, from their concert audience and reading Rollingstone and eventually their books. We bring experience with us to the table. My kids hear their music and may have read about them, but Ricki and I were there - we felt the "time a chang'in" right along with them. Many of our generation had a vision to make a difference in the world.

I chose "........ teach your children well, their father's hell did slowly go by...." but many of our generation, and I think Ricki would argue CS&N, went the way of the dollar! Look at people my age and try to figure how their life affected others in a positive way. Yeah - not a hell of alot of them is there?

These were the same people who 35 - 40 years ago sat around smoking dope, drinking Boone's Farm wine and bragging about how they would change the world. Soon, when we're gone the measure will be made. I'm not saying that you had to live poor to reach the goal but most everyone lost the idea of doing for others. They did for themselves.

This idea of my generation being measured took my thoughts to politics.

I have another friend, Susan Schlossberg, who sends me political e-mails. Fortunately, I agree with most of the propaganda. I say that because isn't that what most political writing is? Propaganda?

Politics = frustration. Locally - statewide - federal - all the same. The people who yell the loudest do the least. Our ancestors set up a form of government for the people. A system, well thought out, to speak the voice of America. But most American's remain mute by not voting.
So politicians rule.

How did I get here from CSN&Y? The mutes are the same people that were going to change the world.

COME ON GUYS - GET OFF YOUR DEAD ASSES AND LET THAT FREAK FLAG FLY!
IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE!