Foreboding of Trouble

Perhaps it is because I have been sharing with my daughter two works of art, each set at the beginning of a violent era, but I am sensing doom at the moment. I have a gloomy side, but I am sunshiny most of the time. The last time I felt more gloomy was in the fall after September 11, 2001. At that time I read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Return of the King.

This month I have been reading The Fellowship of the Ring to my daughter. Frodo and his companions have left the Shire under pursuit of the Black Riders. We just finished the part in which they leave the Prancing Pony Inn led by Strider (Aragorn) and seek to find Galdolph at Weathertop. Evil is everywhere, and men and elves are fleeing the coming troubles.

Over the weekend, I went to Birmingham and took my daughter, wife, and mother to see The Sound of Music at the beautiful and grand old Alabama Theatre. Baron George von Trapp had to face the tyranny of the National Socialists after the Anschluss in 1938. As joyful as the movie is, its joy is in contrast to the horrors about to engulf Europe.

Tonight I write with a sense of foreboding. The mad North Koreans almost caused a world war in 1950, and here they are again trying to make more trouble, even provoke a war. I am not confident in our nation's leadership, which is trying to raise taxes and trample international trade during a recession.

[Above: George Ritter von Trapp.]