I Took a nap around 5:30. Since then I have been watching shows on You Tube, mostly The Daily Woo, produced by a engaging fellow with multiple tattoos and a tongue stud who calls himself Adam The Woo. He has a feeling for the quirky and off-beat in America, a nation, at the level of the small town, that has been decimated by . Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Target, the Internet and Amazon.

Tbere is error, of course, in his highly subjective perspective. But that doesn’t mean his perspective is devoid of truth. I remember, back in the Eighties, as I made business insurance sales calls in rural Virginia, that the world was changing, as it always is. Tobacco barns were in disrepair, replaced by curing sheds made of prefabricated sheet metal with propane heaters, rather than wood fires, doing the curing. One could find disused railroad beds, devoid of track and ties, a poignant lost world. Some became hiking and biking Trails.

The impermanence of the world hits me hard. It is something I should accept, but I don’t. I am as shocked today about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s divorce, as I was in the Fifties. The Dodgers and Giants moving to the West Coast still shatter my sense of security. Security,for me, was a bedtime story, then being rocked and sung to sleep by my father, The Marine . I suppose because, at some level there is a little child in me who wants to feel protected; that Grandma and Mom and Dad will always be here.

But no. We are like Charles Foster Kane, of Citizen Kane, whose last word on his lips, “Rosebud” was from the world he lost.

“Remember that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return”.– From the Traditional Ash Wednesday Liturgy.