It's Friday morning. I'm sitting and staring at the keyboard wondering what to write about.

I've already put the bird feeder out on the little slab of concrete, hoping my little friends will jar some inspiration. I do this every morning to thwart the racoon that makes nightly visits to feast on the black sunflower seeds. I put the feeder securely away at night and bring it back out in the morning, it's one of those little things one learns to cope with existing conditions. I think that's one of the secrets of life, learning how to cope with every day problems, how to adjust and make the best of things, especially under adverse conditions.

That's probably even more important in this present day as the world seems like it's trying to invert itself. Life's always had its positive and negative aspects, yin and yang if you will. It's a balancing act that's as old as time. Light and dark, day and night, good and bad. Sometimes those dichotomies tend to flip on themselves. I think civilization may presently be at one of those turning points. There's always been that opposition of states, or countries, or land masses, or whatever, they can be thought of as "good" states and "bad" states. We've always been taught that the West is the "good" state. Maybe so, I guess that depends on one's relative position. But now, it seems like, to me anyway, that the West is devolving into a dark future and what we've been taught as the "bad" states are moving in the opposite direction.

The West for centuries has been touted as a beacon of light that's lead humankind out of the darkness of the Middle Ages and into the brilliance of modern life. Some would argue that point as they look about at what we've become. We've made huge strides in the quality of life since the Enlightenment, physically that is, mentally maybe not so much, although I do have to admit this has to be an improvement from the demon infested psychological norms of the thousand years from the end of the Roman Empire to the brighter days of the late 1600's to the early 1700's.

But, modern life certainly has its drawbacks as well. Just take a look around, notice how detached most people seem to be? I think that may be a natural process that began millennia ago when we disconnected ourselves from Mother Nature. The price we paid for that is self evident in society today as people turn inward toward a life of emptiness and loneliness and away from the things that really matter. The little things. Like a bird feeder.

As we move ever closer to an uncertain future I like to remind myself about the little pleasures in life, remember those? There really is a lot of beauty and kindness out there, if we seek it out. There are forces at work that wish us away from that direction, into a world of hopelessness and despair. To herd us into mental stockades, to bend our wills in their favor. Theirs is a selfish act of greed and avarice, of power and control. We can counter that by not bending to the those forces, to remember what it means to be human, to not lose contact with the goodness within.

It's still there. Detach from the bleakness and embrace the grace and decency, it continues to exist, if you let it.

I had on of those little pleasures in life last night when the youtube algorithms in the right hand column lead me to this band. It's a band of all family members except for the dobro player who is a good friend to the rest of the group.

I think this song, originally done by The Eagles can be thought of as descriptive of what the West has become, especially the United States.