November 16th - Red sky at night, sailors delight

...thats what I was thinking as I drove home from bowling tonight. 

Except that it was nine thirty, and the sun had set around five pm - so the pink and purple sky I was looking at came from the lights of suburbia bouncing off the clouds.  And it's steadiy drizzling so it is definitely not delightful sailing weather.

That got me thinking about how much we've changed the world around us in a relatively short time.  I drive home on Tuesdays on I-495 (we refer to it as the Beltway)....a highway that actually younger than I am with the first section opening in 1961.  Then I turn off onto I-95 which goes from Florida to Maine, I think...and I've driven just about all of it one time or another.

And I remember when our section of I-95 was opened back in the 1970s - there was pretty much farmland and a couple of small towns along the route between Washington and Baltimore......and now there are housing developments all along the route - many of them backing right up to the highway.

I live a bit more than a mile from the highway myself but if I listen I can hear the traffic....and of course its never really dark around here anymore because of the streetlights and the businesses and such.

Mind you, I'm not wishing we would go back to the "good old days" which really weren't that good for a lot of people....women had limited opportunities besides birthing babies, plenty of folks died a lot sooner than should have because we didn't have nearly the medical knowledge that we have today....and my particular passion - travel, was difficult and expensive.

And although I might not have a jet black sky with stars twinkling above, we've become smart enough to protect some places that do.  Granted we probably don't do all that we could, or from some people's perspective not all that we shoud....but we've come a long way since those European explorers destroyed Mayan books and carved graffiti into the pillars of Egyptian temples.....now we recognize the importance of everyone's past - not just our own.

There really isn't a point to this rambling, except maybe to give mankind credit for at least trying to honor and learn from our past.