PERSISTENT, SUSTAINED, AND GROWING

There was an acronym I used in my teaching many years ago:

PERSIA.
The letters stood for political, economic, religious, social, intellectual, and artistic realities of any society we were studying.
Each general area was further subdivided for purposes of study.

It was a helpful way to learn about how people were doing in whatever period we were studying.

This morning, after a few coffees and toast and fruit and the like, I started to apply this old template to what is apparent about the current realities of our nation and the world in this year of 2012.

Dear Wife is away on her annual trip to family in Florida.
The house was quiet and Sophie did not mind if I spent some extra time with the computer and the piles of books and papers.
When Herself’s away, the mice will play, as it were.

I listed and subdivided and ate lunch and brewed tea and consumed tobacco and wrote and thought and wrote some more….

And the result was a list of concerns which would challenge the optimism of a very optimistic old gentleman, let alone this author who is often less than optimistic.

The descriptive terms that come most to mind as I write this brief account are erosion; degradation; irrelevance; ignorance; and other such terms and phrases.

A balanced approach, of course, would require a consideration of compensating factors, hopes for revitalization and renewal and so on.

And they too exist.
But my goodness, the assaults on the persia categories are significant, sustained, and growing.

Would that the remedies were also significant, sustained, and growing.