I think it's time we stop children what's that sound? Everyone look what's going down

Lately I've tried to be positive. This has not been easy.Lately everything seems out of whack, and sometimes I wonder um, does anyone notice what's going on? Or is it just me?

Tuesday I went to see my friend Lilly Marie at her apartment in Berkeley. She's settled in pretty well and she likes her roomates, but she was also frustrated. Because the state didn't pass their budget for three months, she has gone without income coming in. But I just bet you the govenor and all the politicans on the aisle-including Democrats, got paid. Yes sirree, they don't go without a paycheck.

The same day I went to see Lilly Marie, Red Room author Susan Browne came to her house and found it broken into. Gone were a TV set, a camera, computers. Her doors were destroyed, so she and her husband had to spend the night without a door. I don't know what is worse, the fact that someone was desperate enough to steal, or that someone could steal from a teacher. That's right up there from stealing from a church, a school bake sale, or from a library book sale. How low can you go? How bad can it get?

Then I see this link: http://welovesoaps.blogspot.com/2008/10/judi-evans-selling-cemetery-plots.html

For those of you who don't know about Judi Evans, let met tell you about her: She made her debut on Guiding Light twenty-five years ago as Beth Raines, a girl who falls in love with rich boy Phillip Spaulding. It was so Romeo and Juliet, but Beth also had her stepfather Bradley, who one night in a drunken rage beat her up and raped her on the living room floor. Evans did such an amazing job that year-including one scene where she had no dialogue, simply picking out stuffing from a teddy bear-she was one of the youngest women ever to win a emmy. Her performance on that show helped many girls and women when later Beth pressed charges against Bradley and he went to prison. She stayed with GL for two years, then worked continunally for twenty years, taking time off to raise her son. However, because of soaps becoming more "economical" or to be blunt "crappy" Evans can't find an acting job. So right now she sells burial plots. One of the best actresses in television, selling burial plots.

Now Evans is a trooper, and the interview shows she is a classy woman, by God. She knows the artist's life is a hard knock one. I know she's grateful that she can put food on the table and clothes on her back and on her son's back. She also admits that she made a choice in 1983 when she went on GL rather than continue with her college degree that maybe it wasn't a smart thing to do. However, what do we have on TV right now? We have Playboy bunnies hanging out with Hef at his house. We have survivors voting each other off. We have gossip girls being mean to each other. We have hours and hours of junk and there's not much room for quality, intelligence, or anything for people to simply enjoy.

And what do we get from politicans? We get the media obsessed with pigs and lipstick, and Sunday talking heads (on one show, all white middle aged men) saying that hey, the economy is bad but people aren't in despair! That's just depressing talk! Stop that!

I was raised to be an optimist. I was raised to believe that hey, today might be dark, but there's always tomorrow! I was raised on Annie and Shirley Temple movies. Yet sometimes I feel so discoraged and scared, that we're never going to recover.

Yet I know that somehow, you must keep on. This is one of those times I wish my grandparents were alive, because I want to ask them how they survived the Depression. Somehow they did it, they managed. Yet did they ever feel scared? Did they ever feel defeated and frightened by it all? Because right now, I sure do.

There's something happening here,
What it is ain't exactly clear.
There's a man with a gun over there,
Telling me I've got to beware.

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down.

Stephen Stills