MOTHER GOOSE

The song Mother Goose uses children's nursery rhyme characters to personalize its story.

The opening stanza finds Old Mother Hubbard in the same distress she has been in for as long as anyone can remember. It casts light once again on people in need of basics such as food and shelter at the same time it points a finger at those who have great financial ability to provide (who often are shouting the loudest about the issue) but who give less than 2 or 3 per cent of their income (if that much), let alone their net worth.

The appetite for 'stuff' is more cannibalistic than Hannibal Lecter, thus the fact of "socialist" politicians to have 4 or more houses while decrying the affordable housing crisis and claiming the need to take more from Little Jack Horner. "So sing a song of no pence, bottle full of rye, Four score and twenty - ain't it time to die?"

Yes, a reference to the Gettysburg address: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." And "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Mix that with a reference to the FOUR score clinical grading system of levels of consciousness and "20" being slang for a person's current location. So, the national government's level of consciousness. Where are we? "A tisket a tasket will put them in a casket while we just sit idly by. You're all talk! Put your money where your mouth is! What are you going to do about it?" (Not to mention 4:20 - So I snuck in an anti-legalization of marijuana jab. Sue me.)

"Most of us have been spared the fall." Though a true statement it should in no way be thought of as overlooking the poorest and most vulnerable among us. The setup in the phrase is to point out those who truly don't care but use the poor for their own gain. "And all the king's horses and all the king's men only give lip service to the plight. 'Til there's a photo opportunity but when it comes to unity Jack and Jill are nowhere in sight."

The next stanza finds ordinary people, the three men in the (sinking) tub as it were, cast onto a raging sea by the policies of those in the 'swamp, now a clearly solidified metaphor for congress if not all of the national government. Yet Americans tend to "vote their scarlet letter"

-a 'D' or and 'R' - and either think or hope that their responsibility ends there. We want to have as little involvement as possible. We want to dance and pay the fiddler, even if it is Nero. We're "all talk! Put your money where your mouth is! What are you going to do about it?"

The final verse is stated plainly: "We can't be sitting on the sidelines cut off by the yard lines thinking we can't get on the field. We've got to make hard choices, unify our voices. The game's rigged but we'll never yield We claim to see the urgency while clinging to our currency, let anti-social media lead the way. We can't be Miss Muffets, better get off of our tuffets, they're still blowing the Kurds away." (The problem is global.)