The Flag Lowered Again

One of my duties at the college where I work is the lowering and raising of the flag. It is an honor to raise the colors to full glory and the rays of sunshine lighting the flag up. However, in recent times, somber occasions require me to lower the flag to half staff, much of those instances due to mass shootings. It is a constant and increasing chore that has become far too much commonplace. It has gotton to the point I have lost track on when the flag has to be raised again, pending the next violent deaths that shook our nation again. I have the feeling that it should be a white flag instead, of truce or surrender (I wish I knew which).

An Old Book Revisited

While rummaging through a library where I work doing security, I cam across an a book entitled "Working" by Studs Terkel in 1973. In it he interviwed an array of people about their occupations, from jockey to actor, hotel clerk to bookbinder and so forth. It gives an insight to those working in fields about their frustrations, lost hopes, and getting by in a job that some don't like, fell into, and pending retirement amidst lost dreams that wer not fulfilled. It was this particular book I read numerous times in high school in 1984. A time for big dreams, ambition, and a world that was going to be taken on by all of us graduates.I couldn't wait to get out in the real world and find my place: a builder of skyscrapers and bridges, an artistof beautiful pictures, or a reporter writing about the issues of our day in a national news magazine. Alas, it was not meant to be, I bounced around from one job to another, and struggled to finish my college degree when others had already established their careers, Reading the book again has becoome bittersweet nostalgia: what I thought what might have been but was never meant to be in the first place. I like to pick that book up and reread the stories of those people incareers I thought I could participate in but never could for one reason or another. I see a young sixteen year old whith high ideals and big plans reading in a high school library, and me now reading the same book in a college library where I work, and wonder whatever happened to that young man, and not only am I a bit humbled, but I also miss him and wonder whatever happened.