What’s this country coming to? What’s this world coming to? Terrorism, suicide bombers, crazy people with guns, people shooting police and vice versa. Senseless, random murder of innocent people. And if that isn’t enough, now we got to worry about the Zika virus!

Don’t know about you, but all this is making me long for a safer, simpler, more peaceful era. Ah, but if we could only go back in time, say, just 100 years. Life would be so wonderful …

Uh-oh, wait a minute now, that would put us smack dab in the middle of the worst battle of World War I, the Somme. Millions were being slaughtered each year. And if that wasn’t enough, the Spanish flu morphed from the trenches of war to wipe out 50 million people worldwide. All the while, as the remaining embers of the Great War continued to smolder into the next decade, many of the worlds economies became mired in the Depression. Barely a generation later, those embers would erupt once again into World War II. Between the genocides and slaughter, 100 million more would die.

Well, now, in this day and age, if you take the time to look at the whole picture, maybe things just aren’t quite as bad as they seem. I think I’ll be sticking around the present, after all!

Bill Stressenger

Cape Elizabeth