May 29, 2006

Remembering

It was over 2 years ago that I first started blogging in the current incarnation. After years of coming to terms with the physical absence of my loved ones, I began to feel and come to terms with the emotional depth of the void their absence left.

In that first post I honored my friends and thus embarked on the journey of my own emotional healing.

I still miss and love them and wish they were all here, but the painful grief has greatly subsided because I've been able to write/blog it out of me. The grief has been replaced with loving memories and a gratitude for their service and their loving caring friendship.

What preoccupies me today is emotionally supporting the families who have lost loved ones in combat and teaching my son the values he needs to learn. Values such as how to be a good caring citizen and the cost and value of freedom. On this Memorial Day when service to our country is equated with negatives, I counter with positives. I counter with celebrating our democratic principles and the men/women who have fought and died to preserve our way of life and share these principles with others around the world.

On this day I will honor those who lost their lives in pursuit and hope of sharing our values with others. They will always be heroes in my book!

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July 13, 2005

History Lost

When I was 14 years old I was having a hard time dealing with, and being in the middle of, two feuding divorcing parents.

My grandmother was my saving grace. I had stopped writing her letters and she decided to visit one weekend to see what was going on. While there she saw the kind of tension and bickering I was enduring and decided I was to return with her. It was the best thing she ever did for me that summer. It was the first summer ever where I truly tasted what being independent was all about.

Since she lived in the country all the commercial stores, what few they had, were very far away. Every evening she would come up with an errand for me to do after I finished my chores. As I was leaving, she would give me her blessing and tell me not to hurry back and to go out and have some adventures to tell her after dinner. My exploration of the countryside taught me how to love nature in it's unadulterated form.

On my expeditions I would bring a canvas military bag with a canteen of water, a pocket knife, a magnifying glass and a small pencil and notebook. While on my expedition I would pick deliciously ripe fruit (which was plentiful) and sit either by the river or on the side of the road to eat my bounty. Along the way I'd either sketch or write some fanciful story to share with my grandmother during our after dinner conversation, usually while she crocheted or did needle point. She didn't have a TV, she always said it stifled creativity and dulled the senses and the social graces. Now looking back and hearing how all my co-workers talk is some episode on a reality TV show, I see that she was right.
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July 04, 2005

A Unanimous Declaration

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776, The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

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May 31, 2005

Deep Throat's identitiy revealed!

The Washington Post has just identified, and Woodward and Bernstein have confirmed, that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was "Deep Throat.

I wonder if Nixon is turning over or groaning? I never would have guessed it was Felt. I wonder in today's world, how long that secret would have lasted.

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May 30, 2005

In Memorium

We make war that we may live in peace.
- Aristotle (325 B.C.)

Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
- George Orwell

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

- Gen. George S. Patton

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