It is raining outside, and I will have to wait to post this Blog. Why? Because the internet is down because of the weather. Yet there is something that only my mother and I love about rainwater—even at times like this, when it is inconvenient. If a person stays inside, listening to the raindrops falling and the crashing lightening is like music. Yes, if only I could write with the eloquence of rainwater pouring on the earth.
Meanwhile I am listening to Harry James—a Jazz bandleader from the 1930’s and 1940’s. Mom just came back from visiting Uncle Charlie. I wish Uncle Charlie was happier. He is mentally impaired and because of that, COVID-19 hit him particularly hard. He does not understand what is going on around him. He had COVID-19 himself for a while. It affected how well he could speak.
Despite the grimness of Charlie’s condition, I feel that happy days are around the corner. We all know we have the cure for COVID-19. Someday I shall fix Charlie a cherry pie again. I believe that we will come out in Ukraine in foreign politics—that Vladimir Zelensky shall come out on top, and Vladimir Putin will, if not be deposed, suffer immensely in terms of his credibility with the Russian people. I believe the government will come up with some cure to our problems with inflation.
Yet we must not assume the struggle is over yet. We need guns to go to Ukraine, and gun laws be passed in America. As a wealthy country with the medicine to cure COVID-19, we must go to third world countries, like Brazil and India, to vaccinate the population against the virus. More, we must take the vaccine to places like Africa—any place where the cure is needed.
I personally believe that we should also plan a new Marshall Plan for both Central Europe and for when Russia deposes Vladmir Putin. How? I know this will sound a little crazy: why not build an eco-friendly version of railroads uniting the coasts on Russia to places like Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine. Then why not send American grain. (The government could pay farmers to grow grain on land they are paid to let lay fallow; I know American farmers prefer to grow crops rather than simply take money for land they don’t farm.) That American grain (and possibly European grain) should be given along with an allotment of land to every Russian or native of Russia who wants it. Half of the grain will be to eat, while the other half will be to grow and sell. Eventually, Russia could be a breadbasket. And merchants could be encouraged to do what they did in the New Economic Plan in Russia before Stalin collectivized the serf: begin to create an industrial class which benefits all Russians. Today’s Russia only benefits the oligarchy at the top—and Putin himself. This new dream of hope needs to sew—and make good—on the Russian heart. Then they will give up their dream of controlling Central Europe and Central Asia.
All this dreaming—whether it be reality or pipe dreams—brings me to believe their could be a rainbow in the sky. Perhaps I will go out and check.