I've been travelling in the regions of South Australia these last few days. Some of the landscape outside of Adelaide (see panaroma) looked like this:

David Plowden, Fergus County, Montana, 1971
Other parts were like this:

David Plowden, LTVB Corp., Indiana Harbor Works, East Chicago, Indiana, 1980
The trip was like a going back in historical time:

David Plowden, Signs on fence, Watrous, New Mexico, 1968
It was stepping into another time:

David Plowden, Mayetta, Kansas, 1991
The old folks feared the future. They were being forgotten and pushed into the shadows.
The kids stood on the threshold of the digital age. They desired something new. But they too were fearful. The schools had failed them. They had not been skilled to cope with the digitial age. They had no confidence in themselves.
They too were being forgotten and pushed into the shadows.
Neither group connected to this world or talked about these things.
But they knew that the social democratic state had given them the flick, let them in the shadowlands of poverty and forgotten about them.
After travelling the country I end with this emotion expressed thus:

David Plowden, Funeral parlor, Prairie Home, Missouri, 1974
I despaired because I knew that the new modernized social democrats would do little to enable these people to live more flourishing lives.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at September 23, 2004 10:18 PM | TrackBack