07/04/2026
On today's episode of My, How Times Have Changed, I remember being a little boy during the bicentennial of 76. In a moment that would spark the fire of my whole trajectory in life, I saw a patriotic puppet show at Busch Gardens. It's hard to believe we once had an amazing theme park, bird sanctuaries,and glorious, beautiful pavilions surrounded by tropical landscapes in the center of the San Fernando valley. What's more amazing is that I saw the legendary puppeteer performing the absolutely iconic puppets of Tony Urbano. My little tiny brain was forever changed. Before the pandemic I had the opportunity to see a few of those puppets once more in the collection of the Northwest Puppet Center. At the same time in history Disneyland created one of the best mechanical puppet marvels, America Sings. It was almost always the first attraction I would go on. So beloved were the characters that they found a second life in Splash Mountain. One of the lines from the America Sings show was given by Sam the Eagle when asked where the songs of America's music came from "why they were the tunes people brought from their native countries." A line delivered so flippantly as a matter of fact that it would be just accepted as who we were as a cultural melting pot of a country. Today white nationalists are marching thru the Capitol, unencumbered and not a peep about it from our government. I genuinely mourn the future we were promised and was stolen from us
