Fifty years ago on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., joined a long list of other civil rights activists and celebrities in the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The date was Aug. 28, 1963. Were any of you there in D.C. that day? My excuse for not being there? I was living in Texas at the time, and had not yet found what it meant to live my values, except my values of motherhood.

Fifty years ago, who had heard about global warming and melting ice caps? Not me. I was reading Dr. Spock. I needed several volumes of that book there was always one by my bedside. And I lived in Texas where the Galveston Bay waters are like bath water. I would have said “halleluiah bring on those cold waters!”

Fifty years ago, who had heard about people going into schools and shooting innocent children and teachers? Well, I remember on Aug. 1, 1966, (let’s see that’s almost 50 years ago), Charles Whitman barricaded himself inside the observation deck under the clock towers at the University of Texas in Austin and, using several different weapons, killed sixteen people. That seemed bizarre at the time!

Fifty years ago, who ever heard of running out of energy? Not me. I was always hounding my husband (not Keith) to buy a big window air conditioner for our small house – all we had was an attic fan that only brought in the damp air that made the sheets feel like they had been taken off the line only damp-dry. It also brought in all the filth and smells from the paper mill and all the oil companies along the Houston Ship Channel. Those sneaky guys! They released all their most horrendous emissions during the night, so it crept up on us like soft cat feet while we were sleeping – me with one ear that never slept – listening for that cry of a child.

Fifty years ago, I only read at night. If I tried reading during the daytime, a child of mine would invariably be involved in a tussle with a neighborhood kid about who bit the dog or who bit the kid. So, one night, as I lay on the damp sheets, I remember reading a Time magazine article that asked the question, “What will the United States do when (not if) we run out of energy.” Yes, I took Time magazine during my years of social justice ignorance. What? Run out of energy? Whoever thought up that crazy idea? “Texas has all the oil the world could ever need,” I said to myself. Besides, my father-in-law was raking in big bucks from a producing double gas and oil well on his property. Who wants to stop that?

Friends, it is time to quit dreaming. The times “they are a changin’.”

People died 50 years ago to convince President Johnson to sign the Voters Right Act. And now, some southern states have gutted portions of it in order to restrict the black vote in their states. That just ain’t right.

The September 2013 issue of National Geographic is about Rising Seas. Get or borrow a copy and you will see that Windham might be waterfront property one day. Does your insurance policy have flood insurance that has that obscure clause about “natural disasters?”

Fifty years later, schoolhouse shootings no longer seem bizarre, but so commonplace that we expect it. No wonder. From a Brookings Research Institute report dated July 18, 2013, I have learned: “Americans have stockpiled almost half of the privately owned firearms in the world. The U.S. boasts 88 guns per 100 people, by far the highest rate of private gun ownership on earth. Next on the list is Yemen, with 55 guns per 100 people.” I don’t like having that distinction. Tom Tyler, I want to hear from YOU. Tom is my Republican State Representative (and a friend.) Give him a shout-out to let him know you feel about it.

Fifty years later, those oil refineries snuggled along the Houston Ship Channel have been forced to put in scrubbers to partially clean up the emissions, but they still have that inflexible focus on their five-year-plan bottom line. Unfortunately, they have their heads buried in the tar sands which must be plugging up their vision and their hearing. If we allow the Keystone XL pipeline to bring the corrosive tar-sands oil from Canada to those same refineries, well, friends, all I can say is, “350.org.” (Look it up!).

Time to stop dreaming, and get real.

Sally Breen lives in Windham.