After reading your pieces on the decades from the 60s to the 90s, I realized more glaringly that with each passing year, decade, century, and millenium, life gets blurrier. I am in my early fourties, so I don't pretend to know all there is to know; but, in looking back at the evolution of man I notice that people with substantial wealth are still able to manipulate the masses.

We saw it with the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, and how they used the common people to build their monuments to themselves; then, we observed how the ancient Chinese emperors forced the workers there to make thousands of statutes of clay soldiers to protect them even in death, while others put workers to the task of building "The Great Wall".

Today, we see the cities being built up around us, without our input. Workers who once found jobs within reach of their homes and families, now have to travel, and some willingly, a hundred miles or more to and from their places of employment. Shopping malls with gigantic superstores displaced the momma/poppa stores that so conveniently served the neighborhood.

Instead of going to a hardware store, today I go to Home Depot; Pathmarks wiped out neighborhood grocery stores, and Costcos are nearly eliminating them. Barnes and Nobles and Border bookstores have chased the neighborhood bookseller off the block. Wealth creates more wealth, and the poor working man and woman are sadly displaced.

Remember Breyers ice cream. Well, I lived across the street from a huge factory, where many people along Ferry Street, in the Ironbound section of Newark, New Jersey, worked. People sent their children to local schools, and we had some descent teachers working there, too. Since they closed their factory, and moved (possibly out of the country where labor is cheaper) the community where I grew up has been nearly wiped out.

At least, that is, for the Black people. Of course, as you've probably heard, the Portuguese have immigrated to the U.S., Ironbound, and put up shop. Why couldn't Blacks had done the same? Money!!! The banks closed their doors to Black people seeking business loans - bad risks. The wealthy let us see what they want us to see, hear what they want us to hear, go only where they say we can go, and do what they tell us to do in this matchbox they call democracy.

Unfortunately, I don't see any way out of this situation that we find ourselves. Unfortunate, because it seems as though the older we get, the less objective, or idealist; each generation passes this venom onto the next. So, we look to what is conveniently termed the "new millenium" with some hope that life will be better for common people; but, let's face it - unless there is a change in the economic structure, it's a shame, but life will be the same.