Late at night, when the work in the studio is done and Aaron Copland is playing into my soul from the monitors, I let my mind and heart wander. Tonight, after a slug-fest with a song, in multiple time signatures, that shows real likelihood for kicking my too-creative-for-my-britches arse, I listen to THE AARON, and humbly feel the world around me here, near the base and in the shadow of Mt. Tom: Coyotes, sage, skunks, sleeping humans, a thin-but-bright autumn moon, the upper elevations on the Sierra Crest, a few miles away and ten thousand feet above, still being tickled by flurry-remnants of the early season system that moved out this morning. The stars… the amazing infinite.

And the shift in the political wind is as tangible as any other thing in the natural world around me.

I feel Boone, my beloved late mutt, decomposing in his beautiful grave a mile-point-five West-Northwest. That, I can understand. He talks to me from beyond the grave all the time, but not nearly as loudly as my Dad…

To put this piece in context, my Dad (capitalized as always) bears some explaining: Oklahoma dust-bowl Depression-era kid, one of nine kids in his generation on a failing, starving farm, to South Pacific Navy WW II vet, to doctor of public administration, to true community leader, progenitor of many sensible things around us, from the three-tiered higher educational system in California, put in place based on recommendations from the think tank he chaired at UCB, and which has been copied by many other states, to consulting with Truman about a socialized national health care system and (maybe, who knows) almost having had a hand in bringing it about, had Truman’s efforts not been thwarted (as were the Clintons’)… this was still early on in Dad’s career.

Later, in the sixties, angry at drug abuse due to the unintentional O.D. of one of his sons (not me and not fatal, thankfully), he put the might of his balls and brilliance to the task of creating a new paradigm for treating drug abuse, on the community level, the law-enforcement level, the family level, and of course on the medical level. Because he lived, countless Americans have educations; because he lived, countless in the East Bay Area survived drugs; because he lived, I’m a “poet.”

Poetry isn’t really my thing, of course; my thing is Music (also capitalized)—the better, the better. What I am conjuring is one of my favorite quotes, from John Adams, the paraphrasing of which I learned at my Dad’s knee fairly early on: “I was a soldier, so that my son could be a farmer, so that HIS son could be a poet.” My Dad, both soldier and farmer, was greatly imbued with that perspective, and fought his entire career for its realization, in every area his career could touch. There is so much of what America really is in that quote, and in the history of my Dad’s life…

This country, more so than any other, makes possible the “provisioning” from generation to generation, and from culture to culture, like putting so many layers of duff over rocks, so each new generation can be more focused upon creating things like better diplomatic ties, better civil rights, better education, better health care, or the poetry (read: ARTS) to which Adams refers, rather than protecting themselves against those dumb stones. Each generation and their culture builds on bedrock, duff and ashes laid down by the ones before; it’s always been so, in every human culture. Every generation’s broken bones become the soft, moldering tree-branches underneath, in the duff, for the next. If pressed to provide a poster child for this phenomenon, I have two: Barack Obama, and my Dad. In no specific order.

In recent decades our country, famously, has seen too much anti-leadership, too little inspired guidance from those who actually see the way ahead. Too many pretenders to the oval; too few of the real thing. In due testimony to the resilience of America, we’re still here… but really, looking just a few decades ahead through the lens of potential, only just by a fingernail.

Now, we have a leader at the helm who can move the tiller for our children, who can lead us away from the edge; who will take us in the right direction. You know, that direction we NEED to go in.

God damn it, Dad, I wish you could have lived to see this. I see so much of you in this man, and I hear so many of your perspectives, your wisdom and even your voice in his words. He’s the real thing, Dad. We have another chance; it could work this time, really. You belong in his administration.

I guess, though, if I give it a moment’s thought… really, you are.

Those of us old enough to have seen this before know it for what it is: The times, they are a-changin’. We smell it clearly: The laying-down of a NEW high-water mark.

To those of you who are young, but have good instincts and are well-nostrilled and can smell it on the wind; I assure you: You’re not making this up. It’s real. Our country is moving toward a change greater in magnitude than the Clinton era was after Reagan/Bush-the-first. Remember that wild swing of the pendulum, from hard right to “sort of left?” It felt like liberation for every living thing on the planet, which in fact it was. But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Anyway, I wish you were here Dad… but again, I guess if I give it a moment’s thought… really, you are.