Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone
While, for the past month, my mother’s been hearing old Polish songs that she insists some neighbor keeps playing just about 24/7 (right!), for the past several days, I keep hearing the Amy Grant version of “Big Yellow Taxi” played on my radio.
Every once in a while in my life those two lines from the song pop up in my head. I never knew what the title of the song was until I started noticing it aired and announced recently.
The point here is that so much is going, going, soon to be gone — Big Picture and little picture. Some of it’s invevitable. The slow erosion of time’s flow. My mom’s vision and hearing. My teeth. (And now I’ve got some sort of “foot flop,” and I’m going tomorrow to get an MRI to try to find out what’s going on — or rather going — in my spine and/or knee.) That’s the little picture that, when we’re young, we don’t want to look at. That’s why it’s important to enjoy what you have while you have it.
In the Big Picture, the Bush administration is doing its best to metaphorically turn every possible paradise into a parking lot.
OK, America, all together now, let’s sing:
Oh, now, tHEy paved paradise and tHEy put up a parking lot
Shoo-bop-bop-bop-bop
Hey, steam rolled paradise and put up a parking lot
Shoo-bop-bop-bop-bop
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
Shoo-bop-bop-bop-bop
On the other hand, in the “Hi and Lois” cartoon in today’s paper, their son Chip observes “Life is like drivin’ down a highway full of potholes, looking in a rose-colored rear-view mirror.” While that probably is true in many circumstances — especially little picture ones, it’s definitely not true of the nature of our Big Picture natural environment.
And, while I’m pointing to today’s local paper, you’ve got to take a look at Diane Cameron’s column, in which she fashions a political metaphor out of one of my favorite personal icons: shoes — ending her pointed analogy with:
My husband and I were in Canada last week. Walking through the high-end shops on Toronto’s Bloor Street, I explained to him about women’s footwear; how some shoes are stylish to wear while others are beautiful simply as objects. The difference between craft and art. But some times you find a shoe that is both beautiful and comfortable.
Isn’t that what we want in a leader? Someone who can shape the materials of economic reality, compromise, geopolitics and culture to make not just a functional system — like the ignoble Birkenstock — but something that makes being part of civic life a pleasure.
Are the Democrats out of step? They might take a lesson from Prince Charming; it is about the shoes. But keep in mind: You can’t kick a cowboy very far if you’re wearing sandals.
On Wild Card last night, insurance fraud investigator Zoe Busiek (Joely Fisher), after spiking an attacker with a strategically placed karate kick, smiles to her partner and says something like “Now you know why I wear high heels.”
So, my fellow American females, let’s get out our metaphorical spike heeled boots and start walkin’ over that paradise-paving president of ours!!