I just finished a book by Jon Meacham, “Thomas Jefferson The Art of Power.”  It was a fascinating read, not for the historical facts, but to understand the essence of the man, Jefferson.  A man with faults like all of us, certainly, but a great man that linked the emergence of reason in the age of enlightenment with the need to deliver a new world a new form of government of the people and by the people.

He believed that with reason and with education (he founded the University of Virginia) and with thoughtful pursuit of science and learning (sponsored Lewis and Clark expedition and was consummately engaged in understanding science and discovery) that people would, could, and should throw off the yoke of dictatorial rule and replace it with rule of reason as represented by the democratic process.  As author of the Declaration of Independence he laid out with clarity and brevity: That…

“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…”

So too, Jefferson’s view of the Creator, and consequently religion and various religions, for which he studied was based on an application of reason, and a realization that religion was another source of power over people.  His religion, if he were to have one, would be one that would take the best of many religions and throw off the elements that are about the acceptance on basis of faith only, of direction and authority of leaders, as well as unreasoned adherence to such leadership and attendant ceremony.  Jefferson would say religion requires careful thought, not reflective acceptance. Specifically, a quote from Jefferson,  in a letter to his nephew:

“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”

Jefferson failed in many ways.  He failed to find a path toward ending slavery, which he viewed as an abominable institution.  He did not emancipate his own slaves in his lifetime, even though he could well had done so.  He was generous with family and friends, but left his family in deep and unrelenting debt.  He lived in different times and should be judged in the context of those times, but he also lacked the courage to overcome flaws that he knew were wrong in the eyes of any Creator, and future judgement, as he was always looking toward the future in his life.

During a difficult and nascent period in our country and government, he was singular in ensuring the survivability of a democratic republic at a time when it’s survivability was so immensely in doubt.  Furthermore, he envisioned and ensured that our country could grow to occupy the continent with the Louisiana Purchase.  He helped President Monroe with the declaration of the Monroe Doctrine, ensuring a sovereign message of preeminence of the USA in the Western Hemisphere to discourage adventurous behavior of European nations.  So much service to our country and our growth and future across the continent  throughout a 40-year history of public service.

Despite personal failures, he deserves our praise for advancing the cause of freedom of peoples over dictatorship and hereditary-based rule, through the design and survival of the grand experiment in democracy!  So too, he deserves our approbation for ensuring that education, continuous learning, and unrelenting reasoning are important elements of country!

A book well worth reading, and reasoning about!

 

In the Smallness of Time

 

Pushed, turned, blown to there

Leaves and flotsam everywhere

 

Dreams and ambitions cast aside

Small in schemes of our minds ride

 

Small moments of consequence

Of importance and preeminence

 

Magnifies the smallness of a time

Of a moment, of even this rhyme

 

Yet, small of many makes us complete

Beyond turbulence and troubles we meet

 

In smallness of time, a blink of a star

Be blessed in knowing…

In this moment, just who we are!

 

Irma Go Away!

 

Blowing, blustering, storming

Ugly middle eye painfully forming

 

Irma go away from here

Your menacing intent is clear

 

We build, prosper and grow

Then you come to wreck the show

 

Paradise of water and sun

Visitors come here for fun

 

You come here with evil and pain

You come with wind, surge and rain

 

You are not welcome here

We don’t want you anywhere near

 

Irma just go away from here

Let westerly winds tame you with shear

 

Let high pressure push you away

Whatever you do just stay away!

Football season has started… Ringing it in with a bang!  Dallas – FT. Worth AT&T Stadium is a marvel to the spectacle of sports!  What a venue!  What a fun game, University of Michigan (Go Blue!) beat University of Florida 33-17.   To all my Gator friends… sorry!

We had a great time admiring the venue, the game, and had loads of fun with family and friends!

 

Falls Coming!

 

Summer is tired and worn

Hot and humidity forlorn

 

Boring, little relief, rerun groans

Thankful for summer Game of Thrones

 

Our team’s boringly out of the race

Since All-star game, they’ve been off the pace

 

Football excitement coming soon

Weekends busy all thru an afternoon

 

Tired of wet and summer’s evergreen

Color our fall memories we have seen

 

Coolness and hopeful dry

With beautiful and clear sky

 

Come-on fall, drive away summer’s swoon

I’m sure we’ll call on spring sometime soon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I fear history will think of us as an aberration, as we lost opportunity to advance enlightenment ideals of our patriot fathers, of the republic that so many generations built, of the battle for civil rights, of the generations that fought to raise our country up to be the shining example on the hill, including the prior generation that fought and beat the fascist and racist ideals of Nazi Germany. Yet we have allowed as a generation to see a degradation of political and democratic ideals of compromise and progress. We have allowed through ignorance of history and poor judgement the election of a president that degrades our nation and ideals. What will history think of us? Sure, not all of us have voted for this president. Not all of us own the results of an unproductive congress for the last decade… or do we? We fail to communicate. We fail in our values, and we fail to counter in our communities, schools, and our society the uneducated, unenlightened and ignorant expressions and votes of our fellow citizens. How will history judge us?

Will we continue to rationalize, continue to apologize for hate and say its not us, when evidently it keeps rising to challenge the peace of our cities, and our society?  We cannot look to our president for moral authority, he doesn’t have it, so why do we look?   I submit we look for what he’ll say because it’s like watching a wreck on the highway.  We cannot help but look.  We allow those that express amoral and unenlightened views more air time than those that offer solutions. We need to change how we educate, how we speak to each other and we need to call out racism and hate with reason.   Think about this, no person is born as a racist or bigot, it must be a learned trait, and therefore it can be unlearned through education and reason.   Andrew Young, Civil rights leader, reminded us today that the civil rights movement did show that by addressing the priorities of war, racism and poverty in a peaceful, reasoned way could be successful, but it must be continued and not lost in message by all the noise that is Donald Trump, and his alignment with the Alt-Right!

How will history judge this generation, for what we have done, or what we have failed to do?

To be judged as we really wish to be judged,  we must change.  Its up to us to change the trajectory of our country and generation, we are responsible for knowing and learning the lessons of history, we are responsible for listening and believing when someone tells us who they are.  When a politician tells us with clarity that he is a racist and misogynist, we should accept him at his word and not expect his behavior will improve in power.  We need to stop making excuses for our generation, our fellow citizens, and our representatives in government.  We need to hold our leaders to the standard of enlightenment and reason, including: … “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.”

 

Off to School

 

Off to school when first you know

It’s beyond the home you really grow

 

A story has so many points of view

Every book and every chapter’s new

 

Each year a story is added for you

Maybe crayon in finger paint when two

 

Soon pages turn ever faster

As life stories and plots we master

 

We build the stories that we live

Learning, loving, taking and we give

 

A chapter turns, and our story is clearer

Career, college and tests are nearer

 

No longer does someone read to you

You are responsible for your own point of view

 

Into the next chapter future burning

Pages written and more rapidly turning

 

Careers and life and loves are like blowing winds

Driving where and how the next chapter begins

 

Your children off to school, at various ages

You find consuming story as you help turn their pages

 

Before too long you are reading grandkids stories

Your book, their book, in chapters you revel in all their glories

 

So, it’s back to school this time of year

So, write your grand story, bold, happy and without fear!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Next Day

 

It’s bright, it’s beautiful and clear

Tide is up, waves sending up a cheer

 

It was desolate just yesterday

It is nearly crowded today

 

Step is lighter and mood bright

Everything seems suddenly right

 

A difference a day can make

A difference a mind can’t shake

 

The foulest of gray thought of a day

The next day bright will wash it away

 

Loved ones in heart and mind

Fresh and bright with day aligned

 

A day like the next appreciated best

Like in life when compared with the rest

 

Let your every gray day end at night

There will be a next day shiny and bright

By the Long Island Sound

 

Yesterday’s sky was gloomy and gray

The ocean whipped by wind did spray

 

Birds treaded water in the sky

Screamed at the wind by and by

 

Walk was chilly, wind whipped my ears

Even my eyes bring some tears

 

Weather forcing some gloomy thought

Gray and foreboding ideas brought

 

Another soul on the beach, a photographer

Capturing birds on shore or floating in the air

 

At least it did seem someone else cared

For this morning and beach to be shared

 

Looking forward to vacation by the bay

Hope this works as a pleasant place to stay

 

Sure, it will clear up and happy we will be

For the next day, maybe brighter by the sea

We find ourselves in a digital age that includes the instantaneous capture of imagery and video in exquisite detail and clarity, in unprecedented quantities for ubiquitous viewing.  Remarkable.   In a not too distant past an artist would capture in pencil or paint images that would present a picture to a reader or if reprinted, maybe viewed by many others at a postal delivered date, or newspaper, and possibly for kept for posterity.  Images were for capturing a moment, capturing an idea and capturing a personality and they were precious to certainly a few, and in rare cases to the many.  Later with the advent of photography, we still relied on an artist to accomplish in less time than one could sketch or paint to capture imagery, but the intent was still to ensure the moment, the memory, and personalities were captured mostly for prosperity, possibly for communication, and even entertainment.  In most recent history, we were blessed with photography and cinematography that could be made available by both the professional as well as the amateur for the enjoyment and benefit of masses of people through replication, and through analog communication technologies, such as television.  Overall remarkable progress in less than 200 years.  However, in the last decade we’ve enjoyed digital cameras built into smart phones, we’ve seen digital storage means and social communication forums that extend not just the professional, but all amateurs, the right and privilege of mass communication.

Wonderful technology.  Grandparents can see distant grandchildren as they grow.  Ideas can be illustrated and communicated for the purpose of learning. Millions are entertained, with little effort, even going to the movies is not necessary, they come to you.  Distant relationships can be maintained, loved-ones are always virtually connected.  Yet do we value this technology and capability in the same way we did when it wasn’t so easy to wait for film to develop, when it meant something to see another’s photo album, when pictures in the mail were a special treat?

How about the joy of a postcard from faraway, with precious few handwritten words to read of some loved-one’s travels?  Some of you who read this won’t remember those days, and may never then appreciate the convenience of the technology at your figure-tips.  But then you will never have the same level of appreciation for how much effort others went through to capture images and thoughts, and ideas to share.   How much more intimate is a letter and a photograph in the mail versus a pic and a note on Facebook?  One took hours and some expense to express, the other a few seconds and much less than a penny.  Well then again maybe not.  Maybe because we now have hundreds, even thousands of pictures from our ever-present camera phones to sift through.  Consider the energy and time to pick the right ones for sharing. Consider the pressure of constant sharing, because it’s supposed to be easy is a similar expression of consideration and even love, but is it personal?  It seems quite anti-personal communication.   Yet us viewers have the social obligation to at least hit the “like” button!

Recently I was looking through some photos my Mom found in an old trunk she had.  That trunk may have been 200 years old, but the photos were of her, her Mom and Dad and other family members.  Beautiful to see perfect glossy, artful pictures of my grandparents when they were very young, and my Mom as a child.  Even a letter from my Grandfather to my Grandmother from 1944, during a period of separation.  Worry about her working in a munitions factory, missing her, encouraging her to get a new record by Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots, ‘I’m Making Believe’.  Interesting insights to the people they were, the times, with even a view to handwriting and evident emotions.  I wonder if someday in the future will it be possible to stumble on to the digital version of a trunk of pictures, of words, ideas and emotions.  Will it be possible to find in the billions of terabytes those insights, pictures, maybe even this blog?   Well at least if we can discover there is a reason for interest, we can even listen to Ella and the Ink Spots version of ‘I’m Making Believe’ from 1944 preserved digitally!  And we can even “Like” it!