It goes on all the time.  Sonia Sotomayor will become a member of the Supreme Court.  Edward Kennedy is again in the hospital, perhaps not to return.  It happens all the time.  The old depart, the new arrive.

It has been interesting to note that the number of women who are leaders in countries around the world has been increasing.  This may mean important changes are to be expected.  What of course will not be expected is the retiring of the male domination of the political and economic structures of even those countries with female leaders.

The old is not necessarily trashed and abandoned.  We see a lot of this in the decaying old neighborhoods in which some of us grew up being replaced by new, shiny and glass clad super buildings.  What was new is now old and this is not necessarily a thing to place an historical marker on and preserve it for its unique contribution to our growth as a civilized nation.  What is new is sometimes just a different way of seeing and using things just to shove the old off the scene.

There is a rhythm to the rise and fall of minor civilizations - like old neighborhoods that housed the newly arrived on our shores and the blocks and blocks of concrete and soulless towering neighborhoods that in some places today are blighted and empty. These were cheaply built and were, in most part, "low cost for low income" housing.  In many places we do not know how to manage change in such a way that those who live in these "minor civilizations" have no say in what goes and what stays.  We have yet to figure out what people want or hope for.

The sick, augmented by the wounded in war have yet to be seen as needy enough to have a minor civilization built to care for them humanely and quickly and affordable.  Our old and sick languish and are lamented but not helped.  That is too much to expect of those who are in the midst of building the new world that will replace the old. 

Even our democracy is old and creaky.  It has not solved the problems of the minor civilizations having problems that cause them to crash.  Our bankers find that old practices of rewarding servants with enormous end payments is not the way to improve banking services to the huge number of old investors.  The new way may not be any more democratic than the present way we do things.

The more things change the more they remain the same; there will always be entrances and exits and the old leaving us as the new arrives.