For those of us who lived through the seventies, we might want to take a collective moment and remember how dark that decade actually was. It was like the wheels fell off the USA. There was plenty of news to make us feel badly; Watergate, Kent State, the oil embargo, stagflation, Nixon’s resignation, and the Iranian hostage crisis just to name a few examples. The ‘generation gap’ was a real thing, and now that I am old enough to have perspective, I understand why war veterans and others of their generation were upset with the way of the world at that time. The Sex Pistols were snarling, ‘I am an Antichrist
I am an anarchist’.

The eighties brought the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. Continuing into the nineties, there was steady progress in civil rights movements, including LGBTQ+ rights and disability rights. New Wave music helped lighten the mood. By 1991 we had R.E.M. singing ‘Shiny Happy People’.  

So far in 2024 on the Billboard charts, Shaboozey’s ‘A Bar Song’ is the longest running number one song of the year and tied for the longest running number one song of the decade with sixteen weeks atop the chart so far. The opening verse refers to the high price of groceries and gasoline. The rest of the song is about doing double shots and getting tipsy. Is that irony or coincidence or advice? I can’t tell.

The positivity of the eighties and nineties seems all for naught as we process the U.S. election results. It feels like the dark side is winning again. But–everything has a cycle. Trust we will come out the other side.

I leave you with a poem;

The Uses of Sorrow | Mary Oliver

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Keep your joy.

Anne Milne is an every Sunday blogger, unless it’s a holiday weekend. Or summertime. Facebook or sign up for delivery to your email.