Henrietta Hay's Column

I've been thinking about "Change" -- with a capital C. I even thought, naively, that I could write about it. But after some serious consideration I realize that this project is not unlike that undertaken by one of my sons many years ago. He came home from school and announced that he was going to write a theme on -- "The Universe." There are some things that are just a shade too large to handle in a few hundred words, although a number of years later while in Law School he wrote a scholarly paper on "The International Law of Space, or Who Owns the Moon?" This, I might add, was a number of years before anybody put footprints on it. With this example maybe I can at least think about "Change."

To keep it in some sort of perspective, I consulted Mr. Webster. He used more than his usual number of words to define it. As either a verb or a noun it can mean all sorts of things - like changing your clothes or the baby, the stuff rattling in your wallet that you put in parking meters, changing tires or trains, or change meaning something new or fresh. It's the last one that was in my mind when this whole thing started, something new or fresh and the effect it has on people.

Is this change necessary? Is it change for the sake of change or is it really important? John Dewey, tended to be a little stuffy but he really made his point clear when he said, "Change as change is mere flux and lapse; it insults intelligence. Genuinely to know is to grasp a permanent end that realizes itself through changes." Maybe he figured he was the only person "genuinely to know" which is which. Most of us don't.

If young people fight against change, they are labeled brave or foolish depending on the issue, but when old people object they are automatically called old fogys. There is a suspicion in some quarters that age atrophies the brain and intelligent decisions are no longer possible. We elder citizens know, of course, that this is not true, but we have to be especially careful of our image. In general we agree with Luther Burbank, himself no spring chicken when he said, "It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally to keep them clean."

But social change always arouses emotion. The pain involved probably has little to do with value of the change. Recently I listened to two women discussing the fact that the venerable Presbyterian Church here in Grand Junction is about to be replaced by a parking lot while its members move to a brand new home. My friends understood very well the need for the move and were in complete agreement with it, but they were nearly in tears at its emotional impact. One said that she grew up in that church, went to it as a child. Her head told her one thing, her heart another.

So it is with so many things we watch disappear in one place and re-appear in another. Denver is in turmoil over a new airport. Do they need it? Can they afford it? Is the location right? Can they sell the bonds? Not many of us can look on Stapleton with great affection, but it is familiar. It is established and it is understood. Must they move it? I don't know.

There is plenty of examples right here in our own hometown of the emotional impact of change. Look at KPRN, at the Museum of Western Colorado, at the Western Colorado for the Arts, at the Mesa County Public Library.

I should have stuck to my original hunch and stayed away from "Change." because I do not know the answers. What I do know is that over the years I have found that I want to know "Why" the change is proposed before I decide whether to support it or be an old fogy. I want "genuinely to know."

One of my favorite sixties songs is "Turn, Turn, Turn - To ev'rything there is a season - And a time for ev'ry purpose under heaven...." I just want to know which season it is.