Ann, when I walk down your streets all your smart, beautiful children make me feel dumb and raggedy. They all walk the same way. They take long, healthy strides with their arms swinging in carefree motion. Their faces are upturned and they have the slight smile and bright eyes of optimists.

And why shouldn't they, Ann? You surround them with the best of everything. You have beautiful, old buildings and traditions that bring a sense of precedence and stability. You have fresh, exhilirating ideas about art and culture. You have the space and freedom to explore pleasures of the body. You have the most talented atheletes from around the world. You have the finest schools in the nation for science and medicine. Okay, you have the finest schools in the midwest. Well, definitely you have the finest schools in Michigan.

Ann, your children are bopping around your pedestrian friendly streets with their shopping bags full of urban coolness utterly in love with the world.

Oh, the places they could go! All the ideas in the world are at their fingertips. Nothing is hidden from them. They can go to lectures about the cosmos, about the future of technology, or about the path to spiritual enlightnenment. And if something is unknown, they may find themselves the very visionaries to discover it. The future is inches away from their faces, like a ripe fruit ready to fall off the branch.

Ann, you're beautiful. John Lennon thought so. Allen Ginsberg did too. Many of my friends do too. And, reluctantly, I say you are beautiful, too (though I'm not one of your children).

So, Ann, I'm waiting. We're all waiting. When is your Unified Field Theory of Life going to be published? You've had the wealth and prestige for well over a hundred years. When will you perfect the balance of mind, body, and spirit? Isn't that what you're after?

I'm afraid for those hopeful children. When they leave your breast, Ann, they'll find out that this world is designed to hammer all that peace, love and understanding bullcrap right out of them. I hope they don't look back on their days laying under your shade trees and think they lost something. Because I know, and someday you'll know, that you never had it and you never will. There's another city coming that is illuminated by the light of the Messiah, where true peace and wisdom will reign.