THE LEMMNGS ARE US

SATURDAY MORNING'S
MOLTEN DAWN

GRAY ON GRAY...VIEW OF MADELINE ISLAND FROM THE BEACH ON FRIDAY

LEMMING OLYMPICS

Saturday, 8:30 AM.  20 degrees F, wind WNW, calm to light .  The sky is cloudless, the humidity 78% and the barometer is still rising, currently at 30.66".
   It was a gray day yesterday until the sun won out later in the afternoon; until then,  Madeline Island was a featureless gray mass on the horizon, as viewed from the Sioux River beach.  Ice fishing tents have begun to sprout just south of Washburn, but there is no ice in sight a few miles to the north.
   Current events are weirdly similar to the 1960's, and it makes me wonder whether human society and its history are not ruled by cycles and principles we cannot comprehend, nor even recognize.
   Look at the similarities:  we are again in an era of very rapid technological change, actually anticipating a manned mission to Mars (back then it was the moon);  the world situation is extremely volatile with continual wars and terrorism (then it was Vietnam and the Cold War);  there is great civil unrest and protest, currently centered on police issues (then it was the civil rights movement);  there is a similar  spate of disintegration of the family, established religion, and political parties.
   Then as now, there is alienation between age groups, ethnic groups and social classes, high inflation and general economic chaos, and a similar distrust of government and a drift toward anarchy.  Representative government, reason and logic were, and are, being abandoned to the passions of the mob.The only good thing I can say about the present is that we survived the last cycle, which gives me hope that we will survive this one.
   But it often seems to me that our species has no greater degree of free will than the lemmings of the tundra which, legend has it, with predictable regularity cast themselves into the icy arctic sea to drown.