As it has always been.

     I’m a night-shift worker so I get up in the afternoon, start the coffee, pack my lunch and get ready for work.   As the day comes to a close for most people mine is just starting.  I have a five mile drive to work down country roads past the corn and bean fields, past the dairy farms.  Down the same roads day in and day out the view is the same with only subtle changes, hardly noticeable from one day to the next.  On my drive I could easily be lulled into thinking everything is normal, everything is as it has always been. 

    Then it comes to me, it’s not the same.  The combines are starting to pull into the fields to harvest, while not so many months back the farmers were tilling the fields and laying the seeds for this year’s crop.  The late winter rains and warm spring soon produced sprouts in the fields with the hopes of a bumper crop.  All looked to be going in the farmers favor, that is until the heat of summer rolled in and the rain stopped.  The once lush green fields began to yellow as the corn and beans started to wither and die. 

     I pulled to the side of the road and stopped along side a field of corn today. As I stepped from the car I could see the stunted ears on the brown lifeless stalks.  The field that once held so much promise and hope has now dwindled to a harvest of desperation.  There has been change.  What I looked at day in, day out and came to accept as normal is nothing short of a disaster.  The field will be harvested and the grain that can be salvaged will be but, is this to become the accepted norm?  Is this harvest going to be the benchmark to strive for in the future? 

    As I think about the field I widen my view and wonder, what else has become the new normal?  What else have I (and those around me) seen day in and day out till we think of it as the way it’s always been?  Do we find ourselves wishing gasoline was back to $3.58 a gallon instead of $3.98 or more? (It was $1.86)  We casually carry on with our daily routines as the announcements of coal industry layoffs continue, just this week 1,200 miners were told they will be losing their jobs due to the administrations war on coal (1,200 is not just a number, its families and communities).  Are we now thankful for 8.2% unemployment (actual is 16.1%) and a loss of 5,000,000 people who are no longer participating in the workforce?  Is the thought of having 4 trillion dollars added to the national debt and another 5 trillion projected something we just shrug our collective shoulders at?  Instead of celebrating achievement and success the new normal is to berate it.  Our embassies are being sacked around the world and diplomatic staff members have been wounded and murdered, is it now the accepted norm to respond to these attacks with apologies and appeasement to those who would attack us? 

Is what we are seeing day in and day out our new benchmark?

Something to strive for?

Is it, as it has always been…?

The TOMCAT