That was then, this is now....... again.

"There are people out there who buy things. Like you and me. Then something happened. Something terrible. And the way that they saw themselves is gone. And nobody understands that. But you do. And that's very valuable. With or without you, I'm moving on. And I don't know if I can do it alone. Will you help me?"

Season three of Mad Men has come and gone.. and left more than a little carnage in its wake, just like where the country was in December of 1963. Torn down, but ready to rebuild, to the moon.. and all that.

" What are they going to do, put up a picture of L.B.J. ?"

I am not of a generation.

A year ago.. well, now a going on almost two years, when all the talk was of " the new generation of activists" and " passing torches , yet again" , I drifted off into way too much typing and thought over who is what and where they fit in. I am too young to be a Boomer and to old in so many ways to be an "X-er". My parents were the same , too young to be of the Greatest generation, but too old to be Boomers. OY!, All these names.......

People, people...are always getting the SIXTIES wrong. Say the word and it's a bad high school production of HAIR with that one hallowed fringe vest ( which I had one , AND suede American Flag shoes, I was all radical there in third grade - but it was the 70's) Mad Men is sort of changing this.. at least showing a little bit more of Camelot and less of the tie dye years. In my world view the whole Boomer generation gets a bad rap ( such hip lingo!) #1, because unlike the rest of the known universe, I am not a fan of their music, and #2, they are the root of all our problems today, It's almost like selfishness was invented for the Woodstock generation, funny, since they were all about the free love, etc.

Now, as much as I have in my own mind cursed the bubble that preceded me, they did do a better job at " rising from the ashes" in '63, than we have post 9-11. The world was put into a rock tumbler there for almost a decade, and still held together. Women, African-Americans, Gays, all out marching, one leader after another gunned down, instantly reported on television. A real war being waged.. not some pretend war with no exit strategy. All of this going on , and for the most part there was still an "American Conscience" There was still an American ideal for Don and Peggy to push underarm deodorant on.

Can we in late 2009 say that? Are we , here and now, ONE NATION , liberty and justice for all ....? Post 9-11 while the flags were still all out and every fire station inundated with cookies and banana bread, we almost had a hint of what it could be, I don't think it even lasted out the year. Maybe that is a reason that Mad Men has struck such a cord with people. Don Draper, taking his punches and coming back strong with the new Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Kennedy, dead in Dallas, Neil Armstrong, on the moon.

NOT that times really were more simple them, and goodness knows there was A LOT wrong with 1963 America, but it seemed that there were some common goals out there. Do we even have that now? Now , in the time of " I've got my good health care, you die in the streets" ? We have been a Nation at war with itself before , survived the real Civil War only to dominate the next century. Do we have the will now , the common goals now? Can you be One Nation, under God or not, when your focus is internal, all i-poded and i-phoned, looking always inward? For the first time really, marching to a drum beat that only you can hear?