I quoted a lyric earlier and I think I will add a category with that as the title.
And here I am in my clean, white shirt,
With a little money in my pocket and a nice warm home.
I made some pasta tonight because I think the kids need to carb up. They have been doing tennis and swimming during the day and swimming at night. We ate well and I turned on the telly to catch a little news before we head out for the swim lessons. The news channels went into commercial break so I surfed a little. I knew that History Channel was running Band of Brothers and I wanted to see where they were.
It is the episode where Easy Company discovers a concentration camp. I turned it on just at the point where they find the camp and open it up. The inmates come toward them. One of them is carrying a dying man.
It hit me. I started to cry. “Never again” I said, as if I could somehow keep that kind of evil from happening. I started to sob. I felt hopeless when I thought about the evil that had swept across Europe in the Thirties. I kept saying “Never again”, but I also knew that there wasn’t a lot that I could do about it. I felt hopeless in a way that I haven’t felt for a long time.
Clean white shirt is about having a lot of needs met and looking around to see what there is that I can do in the world. Darfur? Out of reach.
You drive three miles from all this prosperity
Down across the river and you see a ghetto there
And we got children walking around with guns
And they got knives and drugs and pain to spare
And here I am in my clean white shirt
With a little money in my pocket and a nice warm home
And we got teenagers walkin’ around in a culture of darkness
Livin’ together alone.
And I can’t explain it and I can’t understand
But I’ll come down and get my hands dirty and together we’ll make a stand.
Make a stand is how I feel right now. Yackers yacking on the telly, trying to make people mad. I’ve had enough of that crap.
I may have a clean white shirt, but I’m going to get it dirty.