I've taken to listening to Bing Crosby singing "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" on the way to work. It's on this great compilation of old music called "The Best of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour" that I got for Xmas.

Anyway, the song is so poignant, and it also makes me feel better about the shaky feeling of our country today. The song is about feeling sort of betrayed because the singer did all these things to build America, and now he's standing on a bread line. But despite how wrenching and scary that must have been, the country came back stronger than ever. So even though the song doesn't have a happy ending, the real story got better.

But I'm also always struck when I listen to it because it's mostly about sacrifice and service to the country, not about the things he lost. He talks about building a railroad, building a skyscraper, and fighting in WWI. He talks about how "we were building a dream." I think the "we" would change to "I" in the modern incarnation of this song.

I do hear tragic stories about people who worked hard and got it all taken away this time around too, but more often the story is "I got all this easy credit and this awesome ARM and got to buy a ginormous house and all these cool gadgets and clothes and stuff. And then when I got laid off I tried to live the same lifestyle as before but now my cards and my HELOC are maxed out, but I can't sell my widescreen TV or downsize my home--that would be barbaric."

It's still a tragic story, just a different kind--one of greed, ignorance and false prosperity. There's more culpability this time around, from people, companies and the government. Or maybe I just never heard that part of the Depression story--I'm not sure.

Anyway, I'm not getting on any kind of high horse, because you have only to look at my sidebar to see the part I took in all of this. It's just something that runs through my head some mornings when I'm listening to that song.