A Goodbye

My grandmother passed away today.

She was a milk and cookies kind of grandma…perfect for a boy. She was a second helping kind of grandma…perfect for a boy. She was a prim and proper kind of grandma yet with a scandalized laugh, as if you’d just said something slightly off-color, but it’s alright because it's funny…perfect for a boy. She was a “Born Free” kind of grandma who sat with you during daily screenings of the picture-about-the-lions while aboard the SS Lurline bound for Hawaii…perfect for a boy. She was an iced tea kind of grandma, making yard work at her house a kind of vacation…perfect for a boy. She was an attending kind of grandma, there at your major events, proud and present…perfect for a boy. She was slight but never weak, never wavering but never overbearing…perfect for a boy. She was enduring, looking to this and that for more than a century, caring for family and friends with an ever sharp, lucid mind…perfect for this boy, a yard stick for us all.

Dorthy Mabon b. 1905, d. 2009

What'chu talkin' 'bout Willis?

Is he talking about us? The United States Of America?

With the change from democracy to ochlocracy (government by the mob: mob rule) public life lost its dignity more and more, and the deterioration of morals struck still deeper into all the relations of family life.
The noble struggle…for freedom and fatherland had raised the [nation] both politically and morally; on the other hand, the…war…like some foul cancer, drew away the whole strength of the body, and finally led to its general dissolution. All feeling for true greatness and nobility was lost, and moral insensibility decked itself with their empty names. …Men's minds were filled with a restless desire and striving after novelty. The less the results of…politics came up to their conception of the greatness of sovereign [peoples], the more did men question the existing principles of public duty and morality, hitherto regarded as fundamental. A new age produced a new race, frivolous and artificial, without mental balance, doomed to intellectual blindness, and guided in its political aims by the most unreasoning selfishness. The more cultivated sort tried, by means of political trials, party strife, proscription of the rich, litigious wrangling and a truly democratic mistrust of all existing institutions, to stifle the inner unrest of their minds and to escape the dark influence of a period which was ever growing more gloomy. In this way they lost all capacity for simple pleasures; faith in [god] quickly vanished, and with it the moral significance of the religious myths. Its place was taken in some minds by a dreary superstition, in others by an unsound intellectualism.
Loss of faith in [god] involved a similar loss of faith in the divine in man; this was followed by a gross materialism, which found its greatest happiness in enjoyment, its greatest pain in self-denial. Family ties became laxer; loose connections tolerated, though not approved by public opinion, destroyed the sanctity of the marriage bond. All faith in woman's dignity and virtue disappeared, and men avenged, by hatred and scorn, the indignity they had themselves inflicted on the weaker sex.
A certain general culture, consisting mainly in mere cleverness of style and rhetoric…aggravated the universal confusion and instability of mind by the deceptive appearance of solidity. From these blighting influences even the better natures, men morally and mentally superior to their fellows, could not wholly escape.

Nope. He's talking about Greece during the Peloponnesian war (it's final period). A time when "liberty degenerated into license, and culture, spreading among a wider circle, soon became superficial."

Excerpted from The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol. 1. ed. Alfred Bates. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906. pp. 158-166.

1906!! Sounds soooooo familiar don't it?