Change

As Mama used to say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

As witnessed in the past week, cities across the United States are again going up in smoke with protesters marching in the streets for the same reason as 52 years ago in 1968, another senseless killing.

“If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you are doomed to repeat them.”

Centennial Park in downtown Atlanta has been the hot spot for gatherings this time and also in 1996 during the 100th Olympiad as thousands gathered including a crazed man who decided to kill and maim.

In 1864, downtown Atlanta abandoned, barren to the ground, 70,000 dead soldiers, unknown citizens, the heart of the Confederacy cut out, and today, the metro city population is nearly six million.

History repeats itself. Some 102 years ago, Georgia was suffering from a pandemic, an estimated five million would die world wide.

Businesses, schools, churches closed, people wore masks, advised to wash their hands. No vaccine was ever developed. The virus became less deadly with time, but left lasting effects, economically and physically.

This day, June 5th, 76 years ago, 156,000 American, British and Canadian troops crossed the English Channel to start the end of World War II, known as D Day. Nearly a year later, the Nazi Third Reich that was to never end, ended, when Allies marched into a destroyed Berlin. (see this week’s, “What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? a story about my father from 1940 to 1945).

In summation, John Steinbeck’s book, East of Eden, so eloquently yet simply puts it, we all have choices and what we do with these choices is left up to us.

So, Hello, Monticello, and welcome to a new day.