65 years ago; What's better? What's worse?

I was born on May 1, 1958. Or, so they say. I can’t quite remember it.

What’s better about our world now? And what’s worse?

Well, it’s obviously better that countless citizens are not forcibly segregated by color, race, or ethnicity anymore. And I don’t hear the despicable “n” word nearly so often as I did growing up. Not around my friends, at least.

It’s better that child abuse/neglect are now both far more out in the open. Child protection laws are much stronger. And the investigative process much more thorough. (Yes, such terrible things happened when I was a child. But back then people could more easily just hide them under a rug.)

It’s worse that kids don’t get outside nearly as much. Many children today scarcely ever enter nature at all. When I got home from school (actually I often ran home from school through the woods and fields) I immediately met my friends to play outside ‘til supper or dark, whichever came first.  Few kids get outside in nature as much now. The souls of today’s children are deeply poverty stricken, malnourished from not receiving the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the feel of nature … artificially separated from so much of that which makes us all truly human.