This is Floyd Wynne with "The View from Here"

          What has happened to my world?

          Just before the last Century ended I sifted through a few years of my Views From Here and put them together in a volume titled:

Ramblings of an American Dinosaur”.    In the prologue I wrote: 

“The comments in Ramblings of an American Dinosaur are those of an elder American who was born near the beginning of the 20th Century when life was comparatively slow paced.  It was geared to a provincial outlook that took comparatively little notice of events in other portions of the world.  The first World War brought America out of its’ isolation and into the international arena.

          As America prospered and became not only a super-power, but perhaps the lone remaining super-power in the latter days of the 20th Century, it, too, was undergoing some dramatic and traumatic changes.

          The society that was once provincial now wakes up each day to a litany of the troubles of the world.  Television brings the daily list of disasters with graphic pictures from the four corners of the globe.

          The society that began the 20th Century no longer resembles the society now approaching the 21st.  Crime, drugs, immorality, wars and a burgeoning national debt all have taken on new meaning.

          The courts of the land have become governments unto themselves.  The national government appears unable to fashion workable solutions to most of the nation’s problems.

          I noted that the commentaries contained in the volume were really for my sons and my grandchildren on how America looks to an old dinosaur in his closing years.   I concluded:  The America that I once knew is disappearing in a somewhat ruthless, immoral abyss.  It may well be relegated also to the ashheap of prior civilizations.  Like the dinosaurs of old,  it too may well disappear.”

          The first commentary is dated July 8, 1983 and says, in part:

How nice it was in those old days when news didn’t travel quite that fast....nobody cared what they were doing in Banladesh or in Beirut...when Africa was a dark continent shrouded in mystery and peopled only by strange pygmies and exotic animals.

          The modern pace has also taken its toll on human nature.  Morals have seemingly touched new lows.  It’s common place for people to live together without benefit of marriage....children born without two parents.  In the old days we had laws about cohabitation.  The “gays” and Lesbians are now classed as communities, and they march openly, demanding recognition.  It seems everybody takes to the streets to protest virtually everything and anything.  “Tis a strange world that has unraveled over these eight plus decades. 

          I guess one is faced with two alternatives.....adapt or disappear.

          The America that I once knew has changed so much that I’m not certain that I can adapt to this day when everything Christian is under attack on all fronts.....our nation is almost split asunder politically....even marriage has become a question mark....nothing appears sacred anymore.

          I don’t think I’ll ever adapt to the America of today.

          I guess I’ll just tuck my memories of those “good old days” away in my scrap book, but, in all honesty...I have to admit that at times I know how those old dinosaurs must have felt when their world changed and they vanished.

This is Floyd Wynne and that's "The View from Here"