25 Today

Welcome to the wonderful world of

Mr. Alexander.

10/1/94

My Darling Daughter,

Well, let's see now......25 years ago to-day you weren't here yet,

although your prescence was most certainly felt.

They didn't have sonar back then

so we didn't even know what gender you were.

We didn't know you'd be cute and bubbly - we only knew that your mother was.

We didn't know then what the future was for any of us

and probably wouldn't have believed it if someone had told us.

Back then, the country was involved in sillyness both in small asian countries abroad

and in large ghetto cities at home.

People had dreams and hopes and children for the future.

We tried to believe in the powers of peace and love and harmony and music.

We clung to how much better off we were than our parents and how little they knew and understood about the astonishing whirlwind of a world in which we now found ourselves - foolishly believing that we had some power to control the dizzyness that life brought to us daily.

We were brave in those days. Standing chest to chest with the greater powers of brain dead governments and vowing that we would make it different when we were in charge.

In those days, no-one knew better than us how to make it safer and nicer and easier. We had no preview of ozone and rainforest problems, no guess about aids or crack or the homeless - (they were simply hobos in those days). The streets were/seemed safer in those days in small towns and big cities. The sides were more clearly drawn with hair length and clothing as very specific social parameters.

Just before you stuck your beautiful head out, there were no microwaves, or home computers, or cable tv. No walkmen or boomboxes, no cd's or even cassettes. No vcr's, no fax, no remote controls, no cruise control, no airbags. No rechargeable batteries, no flavoured/textured condoms, we were beginning to hear about the birth control pill

and fm radio was mostly talk and weather.

There were barely perceptable rights for women and blacks, no multiplex movie theaters, no automatic sprinklers or coffee makers. The big new kitchen appliance was the toaster oven. There were no digital watches or digital anything for that matter. No nintendo or sega...not even pong. We had no cb radios NO TOUCH TONE PHONES...Home air conditioners, where available, hung precariously from window ledges. We hadn't found tanning booths, saunas or hot tubs. We were being introduced to STEREO and eight tracks and outdoor baby rock festivals.

We had inflateable furniture and underground press. We witnessed the death of the "let's do the show right here" attitude and the birth of corporate rock. Natural childbirth was done only in rice paddies and white trash hillbilly shacklands.

We were giddy with relief at the defeat of polio and stunned with terror at the inpending doom of nuclear weaponry.

Jack and Bobby and Martin were snatched evilly from us as their gentleness threatened the balance of powers on a paranoid planet.

We were caught between the Beatles in the studio and the Dead live, between boone's farm apple wine and high quality smoke.

We were beads and flowers and sds and lsd, khaftans and bell bottoms, lava lights and black lights.

Gee I'm glad that we didn't have those weird 3D pictures that I can never see anything in...

We were one small step away from

the one giant step for mankind.

Our heroes were not cowboys but dreamers,

men who reached for the heavens in every sense of the words.

Men (and some women) with stars in their eyes and not on their sleeves or on their chests.

We didn't understood as we both slept fitfully waiting for THE TIME, what we know today,

that peace is in your heart but never in the streets, that love is only magic if you let it be,

that children never really grow up but just get bigger.

It is only now that we know that fear is not a problem but a motivator,

that the species is not doomed - but is perpetually precarious.

That when all is said and done, all we have is ourselves and those around us, that the shopworn cliches of our grandparents are just that because they are, in fact, truisms.

AND SO, WHAT, ON YOUR BIRTHDAY,

CAN WE LEARN FROM ALL THIS!!

only that some things never change

some things get better - some get worse....

all we can do is love one another

and cherish one another

and hope we don't get too badly screwed

in the meantime.

and that twenty five years isn't anywhere near as long as it seems.

after all these years,

my darling child

I only love you more.