These days, perhaps more than any other time in my life, it's not unusual I feel shades of both hopefulness and hopelessness at the same time regarding the Big Picture future of America.

In general, I'm hopeful that everything is going to turn out OK. Admittedly, what we've seen in the last several years is not the future I had imagined in my childhood; I was kind of hoping for the scenario where we would all drive around in hovercars, live in self-cleaning houses, and enjoy an occasional lunch on the moon. Things didn't work out quite like I thought they would. But it's still OK.

I have learned many things in the last year I'm sure my mother would never have thought I would find necessary. She did, after all, raise her family in the 1960s, when automation was becoming king and when all things sleek, shiny and futuristic seemed possible.

I'm sure she hoped, for instance, that her daughter might never find it necessary to work a backyard vegetable garden, as she had done as a child, or end up standing over a boiling water-bath canner, learning the art of preserving the foods which came out of that garden. Or that there would ever be a need to wash cloth dinner napkins or kitchen towels, since recent inventions included disposable paper versions of both those things.

For my mother and many others of her generation who longed for freedom from the kitchen, there surely was no greater technological triumph to pass on to the next generation than an entire meal which came out of a box and would assume its final form after being placed in a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes. Could things get any more futuristic or modern? Could lunch on the moon be all that far off?

Circa 2009, things are different, but not in the way my mom expected. My "retro" backyard vegetable garden was created in response to the recession we're currently in, as well as the fact that I've realized vegetables grown under your own watchful eye rarely end up contaminated with salmonella, e-coli or Chinese melamine.

Canning and preserving our extra fruits and vegetables means we can continue to eat them out of season and know what we're eating hasn't been shipped here from another country. We've gone back to using both cloth napkins and kitchen towels because it saves money and resources. We recycle, re-use and re-purpose more than ever, because we now know there's only so many landfills we can fill before we run out of places to put our trash, unless we want to start building homes and schools atop our own garbage heaps.

And as for the dinner that comes out of the box, well, quite simply, it's just not as healthy (or tasty) as the one made right in my kitchen from fresh ingredients. So much for progress.

Yet those things make me hopeful, because I realize humans are ultimately, quite adaptable and can "learn a few new tricks" no matter what the circumstances.

So what makes me hopeless? The suspicion that neither my children nor my grandchildren will live the sci-fi dreams of driving hovercars and having lunch on the moon.

The fact that the skills I'm learning now -- recycling, preserving, growing food, etc. may be more in demand than moon lunches when it's all said and done.

It's hard to maintain hopefulness when there's the distinct possibility that there are not enough resources on the planet to support a human race who all want to live like Americans, and that huge, developing countries like China and India are wanting -- and attempting -- to do exactly that, and are using tons of resources to get there, just as we did.

(And let's face it, who are we to scold them for their polluting factories and increasingly car-gridlocked roads, in essence declaring the buffet table of massive waste and consumerism is only open to The Chosen Few and that that was us, not them?)

And I wonder about the skill sets my grandchildren may need to navigate a world running short of everything and a country drowning in national debt. How much will be much left on that buffet table for them and the generation that follows them?

I came of age in a world where dinner could come out of a box if you wanted it that way, and where everything was disposable and/or easily replaceable. I'm guessing my progeny will live in a far less pre-packaged and disposable world.

Right now I live a smaller, less disposable life by choice, but I wonder if my grandchildren will have that choice, of if the buffet table will be pretty picked over by that time and they'll need to make the most of everything they have.

I'm hopeful they'll have meaningful, happy lives, but sometimes I'm a little sad. While they may have backyard vegetable gardens and know how to can and make preserves, I'd kind of hoped for the whole lunch-on-the-moon thing for them.

Diane Sayre is a freelance writer living in Hanford. Her column appears weekly in the Sentinel. Readers can write to her at The Hanford Sentinel, P.O. Box 9, Hanford, CA 93232.

(Nov. 2, 2009)