I remember when I was a child, I lived on a farm about 3 miles from Plains, and we didn’t have electricity or running water. We lived on the railroad - Seaboard Coastline Railroad. Like all farm boys, I had a flip, a slingshot. They had stabilized the railroad bed with little white round rocks, which I used for ammunition. I would go out frequently to the railroad and gather the most perfectly shaped rocks of proper size. I always had a few in my pockets, and I had others cached away around the farm, so that they would be convenient if I ran out of my pocket supply.

One day I was leaving the railroad track with my pockets full of rocks and hands full of rocks, and my mother came out on the front porch - this is not a very interesting story but it illustrates a point - and she had in her hands a plate full of cookies that she had just baked for me. She called me - I am sure with love in her heart - and said, “Jimmy, I’ve baked some cookies for you.” I remember very distinctly walking up to her and standing there for 15 or 20 seconds in honest doubt about whether I should drop those rocks which were worthless and take the cookies that my mother had prepared for me, which between her and me were very valuable.

Quite often, we have the same inclination in our everyday lives. We don’t recognize that change can sometimes be very beneficial, although we fear it. Anyone who lives in the South looks back on the last 15 to 20 years with some degree of embarrassment, including myself. To think about going back to a county units system, which deliberately cheated for generations certain white voters of this state, is almost inconceivable. To revert back or to forego the one man, one vote principle we would now consider to be a horrible violation of the basic principles of justice and equality and fairness and equity.

NYTimes: here

a mentally ill patient’s response to disrupted government cutbacks, leading to early discharges and unfulfilled hopes. More at NYTimes.