Hey again. This started as a letter to a friend of mine who will be headed this way in a few weeks …

I was about to call it a night and a mash of things took place. I was brushing my teeth and thinking; “when he arrives, should I tell him that the evening news is downloaded and watched at 9:30pm, the living room lights go off at 9:45pm, video streaming and computers start to shut off at 10pm, the hallway lights comes at 9:55pm and off by 10:15pm and then things start up automatically again in the morning with the computers waking up at 6am, the lights in the bedroom by 6:20 and in the office at 6:45am so on”. Then there is the fact that the drafty old farmhouse thermostat is set at 62 because much more is like watching money fly out the windows.

In the midst of all of this, something else hit me, a Beatles tune. I couldn’t even figure out which one. So I scrolled through the few Beatles songs on the iPod …because it’s obviously after 10pm and the majority of computer systems have already shut down. I didn’t find the one that I was thinking of but I hit “Dear Prudence” followed by “Eleanor Rigby”, “I am the Walrus”, and so on. It was cool.

Are we getting old ?

My routine is more routine and yet I don’t really mind it. My taste in music may be all over the map and yet I have discovered that the music of the 60’s was actually pretty good and there are even a bunch of stuff from the 70’s to discover. (I am still sane enough to not talk about the 80’s). Freddy Mercury was talented. Early Stones had less wrinkles. Frank actually could sing before he got the aura of a high class mob king pin.

Houses were stamped from cookies cutters. Fences where white. and streets were safe for playing stick ball and riding bikes. The president got in trouble. NASA went up in flames. Peace was in jeopardy. Politics became a chess (or pawn) game. Gas prices went through the roof. The war was unpopular. Japanese cars were king. The divide grew between the haves and the have nots. New drugs were highly desirable and the makers were criminal. TV was flexing its control over the ever more malliable consumer. There was talk of [the] U2 . The power of equality was spoken of in small towns across America.

They say everything that is old is new again. Are we getting old ? You tell me. I’m having a senior moment and don’t really care.

In 1967 we were introduced to “Hair” by James Rado and Gerome Ragni, and music by Galt MacDermot. Music and theater was a way of saying what was controversial. For many, the arts were the only way of expressing what they were feeling. They feared speaking out. They feared the government. And they feared being ignored and marginalized. That time in America’s past is historical for many reasons.

It’s now 40 years later and for some, there is fear of speaking out; fear of the government; and fear of being ignored and marginalized – how things have changed. It’s almost as if we need “Hair” to make a comeback. Perhaps it has with “Across the Universe“.

The music of the Beatles with it’s modern renditions and stunning cinematography tell the same story of the Vietnam war. Analogies to current events are inevitable and likely warranted.

If you have 2 hours and a bit more to sit, listen, and think, then perhaps you will discover this film. I rediscovered what I felt the first time I saw “Hair”. With “Across the Universe” I discovered what I feel about war and what I fear about where things are headed. Will there be a SkyNet ? Will there be another Ice Age ? Is there a chance ?

I’ve seen a number of dud movies over the past couple of months. Thankfully, perseverance has paid off. I’m not inclined to make a significant political post. Rather, this is meant more as a supportive movie review. I’ll let the viewer decide what to make of it. Watch the movie is you can “spare a little change”.

This is my “war post”. If you don’t want to have anything to do with it, do not read further and just wait for my next post.

“History ignored, repeats.” … While profound, the title of this blog is evidenced and true. “History”, if ignored, is destined to repeat. Put another way, if you do not learn from your mistakes, you are often to make them again.

So, what does this have to do with the price of beans ? Not much but it has a lot to do with the price of oil and 65 years ago the price of oil, sugar, produce, meat and all sorts of items that were rationed because of the war. In the early 1940’s every American was intimately affected by the war. Everyone was involved. Everyone was away of their own sacrifice *and* that of the men and women serving over seas or in the factories.

I was digging through a couple of folders a few days ago looking for some bit of insignificance when I stumbled across a few old news paper clippings and my grandfather’s war rations coupon book.

I sat there for a while just looking at it. I had no idea how I came to possess this bit of old stained and warn paper. However, the real ponderence was “what was life like, at that time in America, knowing that, while you might have money to buy food items, you were restricted in doing so?” “The reality you must conserve food for the war effort.”

It is a very foreign notion for most of today’s citizens of the United States under the age of 70. So foreign that some might even dismiss it as folklore along with the “walking 5 miles through the snow up hill each way to get to school”. *Obviously* it must be an exaggeration.

But, in the early 1940’s – in the midst of a world war – food rationing was the norm in the United States. It was not so much a matter of money. It was a way of leveling the playing field and making each family sacrifice equally for the war.

If we forget what has taken place in the past, then we are doomed to repeat.

I remember a story told by my mother who was a young girl at this period in our history. She remembers vividly the day that sugar rationing was lifted. Her mother took her strait to the grocery store and they bought to bags of sugar. They rushed home and made fudge. It was a true luxury.

Correction from the source…

We did not drive to the village (gas rationing) . We rode our one speed bicycles the 2 miles over on hot dry dusty washboard roads to get sugar and back and then cooked it on a wood stove.

If you look closely at the remaining coupon pages, there are only two sugar rations remaining.