IT’S A RAINY DAY

It’s a rainy day in England after over a week of gorgeous sunny weather with the temperature ranging from 75F to 82F. It is reasonably rare to have over a week without rain here in Old Blighty, but now we’re getting a few days of miserable rainy and cool weather to teach us not to get complacent.

It’s a rainy day, a day to stay in and think about the miseries in the world.
Anywhere you go today, you are faced with malaise and pessimism about our lives. Ranging from Somalia and the Sudan suffering from severe famine and a mounting death toll, especially among the young, to the Arab spring-now-summer and the problems in Libya and Syria, to the usual standoff between Israel and the Palestinians, to the Eurozone debt crisis and the precarious state of the Euro and the possibility of more European nations in crisis, like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland, to even the Chinese economy slowing down, to Japan’s radiation and clean-up problems to the recent soap opera in America with the battle of the debt limit increase---the world has the blues; it’s not just the U.S. A. hurting, it’s all over.

It's a rainy day. We are all so interrelated and interdependent today in this global village that if America coughs, Europe sneezes, Africa has a headache and Asia takes an aspirin. Headlines today in the Business section of The Daily Telegraph read: ”U.S. Recession Fears Hit Europe”. Stock markets around the world are nose diving at the news yesterday that the U.S. economy’s growth has slowed to a standstill.

It's a rainy day. I can’t tell you how many articles or radio/television comments I’ve heard during and after the debt standoff in America, shocked at the confrontation of the two parties and the inability to compromise and reach an agreement until the eleventh hour and fifty-nine minutes. Let me tell you, that display did not add stars to our crown. A few talking heads are wondering if this was the outward and visible sign of the beginning of the Decline of the American Empire. I must admit, the thought has entered my mind as I have witnessed from afar this ridiculous game of chicken.

it's a rainy day. So much constructive time to deal with our major problems has been wasted on this confrontation, time that should have been spent considering, analyzing and seeking solutions to our recession: time to study the Medicare and Health Insurance dilemma, the problems of our infastructure’s deterioration, the Income Tax reform, Social Security, unemployment---add your own pet peeve to the list. We seriously need to address the issues. This is doubtless a pipe dream as the extreme partisans of right and left want to slug it out some more in the 2012 elections.

It’s a rainy day, and, as William Wordsworth said, “The world is too much with me./Getting and spending we lay waste our time.” I’m tired of the waste.