Both sides now

Judy Collins in the Sixties sang about her quest of finding out about clouds, love and life, concluding that, after having seen both sides now, it was only the illusion that made any lasting impression.

In her song, she declared she knew nothing about life at all. May we not apply her own confusion to our own current dilemma over an economy gone south? Here is why. Each and every day we are battered with purveyors of gloom who reiterate statistics from dawn to the late night comics on TV, with less emphasis from the print media. These announcements are made in voices attuned to the seriousness of a major battle --- or battery. We are advised that a million and a half jobs have been lost, that AIG needs further infusions of billions of dollars, that GM is about to go bankrupt; the "DOW" crashes about in search of new lows, and the unemployed level has approached 8.1 percent. Alarming, but only to the point that we tend to go numb after being told how many times we are approaching the brink of doom.

We flounder about, wondering whether to heed the president's reassurance that the "stimulus package" ought to produce jobs, more money to the banks and taxpayers or to join the doomsayers and protest in tight resistance to allowing our anxiety to stay under our control.

Looking at both sides now, would it not be just as appropriate to remark that employment is 91.9 percent. We must learn to stop what fear we may have developed because of the bad news all the time, tending to ignore folk who remain optimistic. We must learn to remind ourselves of the resiliency the American people have shown throughout their history and overcoming everything from fire, flood, hellinahandbasket and hateful war. We even sailed throughout the worse depression the world has ever known and were made whole. Let's try to look at both sides now.