How Beautiful We Were

I love lists. American Digest contains "a short list, in no particular order" that serves as a bittersweet summary of the American experience, or at least how some Americans percieve it. As George Harrison observed, "All things must pass".

And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.

- Carl Sandburg