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Marilyn Perry

This is the nerd age of humankind

The phrase, this is the nerd age of humankind, is actually a play upon words of a similar phrase spoken during the voice-over narration within the opening credits of each episode, of some of the seasons, of the science fiction television series Babylon Five some years ago. The episodes in which actor Bruce Boxleitner was the star and performed the voiceover were the most convincing in my opinion. Among what some people believe may be Babylon Five's various faults, the series' writers really should have known to use the term humankind instead of mankindto describe that fictional future era. Today though, whether some people realize it or not, humankind really is, still, at the dawn of an epic era of technological revolution, which despite being a few decades old, is only just beginning, and whose technological advancements seem likely to continue for quite some time to come.

Welcome to the nerd age of humankind.

Marilyn Perry's Cogitation About America, What Simon & Garfunkel were looking for ...

As Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has taken up the 1968 song  "America", by Simon & Garfunkel, as the slogan for his Presidential campaign • • •

That high taxation, heavy government regulation, administrative bureaucrats doling out "free stuff" paid for by a pixie dust magical wealthy "other", forced civilian disarmament, notion of the United States, is not the America I was thinking of when I first heard the song - America - by Simon & Garfunkel while I was still a child in 1968.

Hearing the lyrics, "to hitch-hike from Saginaw", while living not too far from Saginaw, and thinking about the lyric • • •

"They've all come to look for America"

was an America I thought I already had, and an America I dreamed back then was one that my childhood peers and I could and would nurture from the conceptions of fairness, equality, and most importantly of freedom, I thought we had in our visions of America's  future.

In 1968's "Age of Aquarius", I was hoping that my brother wouldn't get drafted and sent to Vietnam to possibly die for - I don't know what - with an M16 machine-gun in his hand. In 1968, I was being acculturated to believe that we wanted government out of our lives. In 1968 we wore peace symbols around our necks, spent our weekends at rock music concerts listening to political anthem songs about our ideals, and discussing the related issues of the day on our way home. In 1968, just as I hope I can today, I quite seriously thought I didn't have to "look for America". In 1968, I thought of great importance for our future was the protection of an America we already stood for back then and hopefully still believe in and stand for today.

In response to the Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign ad, Art Garfunkel has expressed a much more dystopian view, but a view in line with my own long term perceptions of his song. In response to the Sanders campaign ad Garfunkel said recently that, “We never knew who we were. We’re still working out what Alexander Hamilton was working out. How do we fuse in becoming United States of America and not southern planters who want states’ rights? In the very Constitution, we’re working out the fusion of the nation. We’re still doing it.”

No matter who takes the oath of office as U.S. President on January 20, 2017, I'll be wondering whether the rest of us Americans will have to squint to "look for America" as the "America" seems to be getting squeezed out of what remains of the fabric of the once supposedly inalienable rights, comprised of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, among other things, I already thought was, and is supposed to be, America.


Thank you for visiting this website, my Marilyn Perry personal website, and enjoying the information and content shared here at www.marilynperry.com. Marilyn Perry

Marilyn Perry About Having Seen A Rainbow

Marilyn Perry About Having Seen A Rainbow

I saw a rainbow this afternoon.
It was a huge rainbow.
The rainbow I saw was bright and wide, and very nearby.

On one side of the afternoon sky, a dark and swiftly moving cloud was approaching from the east. At the same time, the afternoon sun shown brightly across the sky, out of the west, from beneath the clouds. The sunbeams radiated across the sky from the west, at an angle that brightly lit the dark cloud above and the sky below it. Although the afternoon was sunny where I stood, the large rain droplets falling from the approaching cloud were clearly visible. There may have even been bits of sleet among the early winter day's raindrops.

As the sunlight created a prism against the falling rain in the not too far away distance, the sun’s rays produced a large, intense, rainbow with a wide rainbow stripe. The rainbow had perfect colors and perfectly even stripes. The outer edges of the rainbow were a glowing purple, as though the rainbow was on fire with a purple gas flame halo. A little later a brief winter shower arrived, as heavy raindrops fell at an angle against a breeze, accompanied by a mixture of melting sleet. The rain, the sleet, the breeze, and the sharply brisk seaside air, were just as bracing and invigorating as the sun and rain in the distance that created the rainbow to the afternoon sky just a little while before them.

Although the science of rainbows is quite simple, and easily replicated; seeing a huge rainbow in the sky is an experience that seems almost like a form of magic when observed. Happiness sustaining wonders like this rainbow await, within the moments of every day of every human life, available for free to anyone who takes the time to notice them.

learning … revelation … altruism … enlightenment


Thank you for visiting this website, my Marilyn Perry personal website, and enjoying the information and content shared here at www.marilynperry.com.

Marilyn Perry

Marilyn Perry About Life's Diversions and Distractions

Marilyn Perry - Life's Diversions and Distractions

The Grinding Gears of Life

More often that one might expect, as life's gears grind against each other, the age old adage, “the best laid plans …” applies quite directly to trying to live life as a human being on our planet earth, and more importantly to trying to make progress with work on one’s primary life aspirations. It often seems as though one’s very life plans must include provisions for the seemingly inevitable intrusions that nearly invariably arise to lead one’s plans astray. One can only hope as well that such distractions and diversions don’t also lead such aspirations asunder. There comes a threshold however, beyond which it becomes clear that life, and one’s associated time left to live this wonderful human life that we each have, are limited resources that must be marshaled expediently, before one’s passing decades expire.

Recently though, just when it seemed like the resources were in place for me to focus efforts on a major project, a set of immense, unexpected, diversions arose. Despite my every effort to minimize the extent of their impositions, these recent distractions have intruded formidably on my time and my attention. One of the few saving graces is that it has been possible, although at considerable expenditure of time and effort, to obtain reasonably beneficial outcomes with regard to disposing of at least some of these recent intrusions, at least thus far. However, as much as wishing otherwise would be wonderful, these distractions don’t appear as yet to have concluded their disconcerting intrusions. Thankfully, time will tell though, and with hoping for the best of hard won fortunes, the moments will arrive when all these recent distractions and diversions will have finally subsided. What these various recent diversions and distractions have brought forth as well, are reminders of the level of fortitude that is required: to refocus, to redouble, to constantly re-energize; and remain steadfast, no matter how tempestuous or torrential external disturbances might be or might become.

One source of strength though, are my many valued memories of times when it has been possible to focus on a major project with gratifying results. It is a joy to have times in life when life’s minuscule tasks can be completed without interfering with one primary aspirations, whether immediate aspirations or longer term aspirations. Sometimes though, constructing that sort of scaffolding to bolster day to day living requires an ethereal form of intangible wealth in and of itself.

With well crafted plans, with daily rhythms that encompass both the seeming mundane aspects of human life, task by task, and the loftiest of activities as well, it will hopefully be possible for milestones of accomplishment to approach at some soon to arrive juncture. Meanwhile, forging ahead daily has been an important watchword, helping me to raise the level of life’s music above the level of life’s background noises.


Thank you for visiting this website, my Marilyn Perry personal website, and enjoying the information and content shared here at www.marilynperry.com.

Marilyn Perry

A Summer’s End

Marilyn Perry - Golden Sunset

reflections on the looming equinox, the harbinger of gray skies

Some parts of America experience nearly endless summer, year in and year out, like southern California, southern Nevada, and Florida. However, it’s a remarkable experience as well, to live in a place where the unofficial end of summer is almost always accompanied by the arrival of seasonal transformations. Some years, including this one, nature’s clock seems to have uncanny accuracy.

This year, just as Labor Day weekend has arrived, the picture book clear blue skies that have provided magnificent backdrops for activities like outdoor photography this summer have been replaced, at least during the Labor Day weekend, by overcast gray skies, an occasional drizzle, and still enjoyable daytime temperatures in the lower seventies rather than the upper eighty degree days that preceded them in July and August. There is something almost comforting and cozy about the change though, even if the changing season means that plans for activities like some remaining summer photography projects will have to be squeezed into whatever sunny days nature has left in store before the equinox. It’s ironic that the relaxing sensation of the late summer’s drizzle is counterbalanced by a sense of urgency that there is limited time left to complete projects that are only possible beneath a searing summer sun and its accompanying cloudless deep blue skies.

In addition to the drizzle, it is intensely apparent that the sun isn’t rising as early in the morning and it isn’t setting as late in the evening anymore either. Even the angle of the sun, its compass direction at any given time of day, has begun to change rapidly each day, as the days grow shorter and shorter toward the solar equinox. The shortening days also give rise to surprise that summer has seemed to slip by in a flash, in between plans for activities that are impossible once the changing seasons have changed the weather with them.

It’s astonishing as well, that all these annual changes, the seasonal metamorphoses, are the product of divine astronomical forces of amazingly enormous proportion. It never ceases to be mindboggling that the very existence of the seasons is the product of the confluence of astronomical factors that took billions of years to evolve. In that context, just to be a human being, alive now, seems like divine provenance in and of itself.

Because of billions of years of universal evolution, humanity exists, riding on the giant spaceship known as earth, a huge water covered rock, hurtling through outer space at nearly 67,000 mph. Every living being on the planet travels 580 million miles every year, even if standing still, while a passenger on the orbiting spaceship that is earth. But spaceship earth isn’t quite upright as it simultaneously spins on its tilted axis, without which the seasons wouldn’t exist, as every living thing on earth experiences them. There is something truly astonishing that so many aspects of earth’s existence are necessary to make the miraculous result possible that every human being experiences and grows to know throughout a lifetime as the seasons.

It seems like one aspect of living well though, is working well with the ever changing phenomenal qualities of nature’s seasonal rhythms, as though dancing in step with the solar system’s subsonic music. But as summer quickly slips away for now, to be absent for months behind the clouds that accompany autumn and winter’s shorter days, the enjoyment of it, and of its end, certainly does seem worth taking the time to appreciate, at least in thought for a moment, as nature shifts the rhythm of its celestial music, before hurrying back to work on everything that needs completing before the many months of cooler rainy days arrive, and they bring with them their own wondrous but very different qualities too, along with anticipation of summer’s return next year.


Thank you for visiting this website, my Marilyn Perry personal website, and enjoying the information and content shared here at www.marilynperry.com.

Marilyn Perry

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