A review of Bob McNeil’s big little book

Bob, thank you for this collection of essays, illustrations, poems, and short stories. They are a timely antidote to the widespread lack of compassion, here, there, and everywhere, in these United States of America. I am afraid the nightmare to which Stevie Wonder alluded in his 1970 recording titled “Never Had a Dream Come True”, has become real life. Since the COVID-19 epidemic and the January 6, 2021 uprising in the District of Columbia, the American democratic promise has gone undeniably and indisputably belly-up.

Compassion is in need of compassion today. The exercise of laws in the Nation that once safeguarded our human rights—and protected us from the malfeasance of overzealous governmental officials—are routinely flouted in the twenty-fifth year of the Twenty-first Century. The calamities that every citizen faces here and now, threaten to turn the world upside down in a way that defies comprehension. The haves (rich, powerful individuals) are valorized, and their wealth is highly praised. The have nots (poor and less fortunate individuals) are criminalized. They are treated like alien undesirables, although their lot in this collapsing American Empire is not entirely their own fault. They are not fully responsible for their misfortune, and the rest of we the people are likewise not responsible for what is happening to us, as a result of the Nation’s decline. Today, wealth is a social and political requirement; might is right generally speaking; and that much sought after mean green still is God Almighty and the national religion. Love, brotherhood, sisterhood, and the fragility and preciousness of human life seemingly are irrelevant ideals in the New Millennium.

The beauty and power of your little big book inspires hope in me. It is good medicine; one that alleviates the particular spiritual darkness and psychological pain produced by these hardhearted and uncertain present times. Each essay, illustration, poem, and short story brings to mind the vision that defined the optimistic, breakaway years of our youth: those gone days when advocating for peace, love, and harmony across the Nation was the zeitgeist, during the 60s and 70s. Each skillfully written offering is a testament of love; a paean to the ideals of brotherhood, sisterhood, the emotionally responsive heart, and to breathing in and breathing out. Compositions On Compassion And Other Emotions is a welcomed verbal and graphic expression that indicates you are one of the diehard standard bearers of the love/compassion persuasion.

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