They Seeded Our Future

Then the rains blew through but not for us

The earth cracked and paled and loosened

We waited, watched and figured unjust

The winds came and lifted the dirt

The sky was dark the sun didn’t show

The air was thick and stinging it hurt

The tenuous hold of prosperity our land

Banks know but not care of soil no longer

Time to leave and escape this desert sand

In bucking junk of a truck, lucky ones leave

Others walk or hitch or rail must ride

To a paradise, a promised land of lush and leaf

The road is hard, some will fail, others die

There is no certainty only hope to drive us on

No one looks back just move, shrug and sigh

Millions of others too demand a chance

Just like we, need a place to work and earn

A place to teach, learn and even to dance

But sorrow and difficulty like never before

The fields are controlled and pay is meager

We buy what we can from company store

Hunger is everyday, this migrant life of hell

Organize for safety and wages if you can

Survive beatings, floods and keep children well

We are needed soon, a call to action bell doth toll

We will rise up above for a world’s higher cause

We will feed each other, give sustenance to the soul

We are a precursor to a fairer world, a better life

One which we and our children must earn

With blood, sweat, incredible toil and strife

Inspired by the Grapes of Wrath

Riding high

Chancing extraordinary

Such fine and fickle winds

Suffering first occasioned loss

Lifted spirit flying

Rounding once again

Tenuous the line and hold

A slight movement 

Exaggerated response

Down is up, up is down

Yet higher and beyond

Hearts do sing 

With lines release

Seeking stability 

Pulled even higher

Chasing extraordinary

I read three articles this morning by three authors that are black americans.  All deploring the tragic deaths in Dallas, as well as the tragic deaths of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota this week.  One of the articles by Michael Dyson,  a professor of Sociology at George Town University called “Lament of a black American” was remarkable because it addresses America’s culture of divide, our “whiteness” ensuring that we see our way past the grievances and legitimate threats to black Americans as we our protected and cocooned in our social and economic opportunities.  A quote from the article is haunting… “You cannot know how we secretly curse the cowardice of whites who know what I write is true, but dare not say it. Neither your smug insistence that you are different — not like that ocean of unenlightened whites — satisfy us any longer. It makes the killings worse to know your disapproval of them has spared your reputations and not our lives.”

The second article I read was Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, “A tragedy beyond color”.  Robinson describes Dallas shootings as an act of terror, in ironically a city with a Mayor and Police Chief that have made remarkable strides in bringing the police and black communities together in constructive ways to deescalate situations and dramatically reduce police cases of excessive force.  One of the best examples according to many in the country.  The community of Black Lives Matter protesters turned out as a result in support of a police department that sought to protect and did interact productively with the protesters. ..”Such tragedy is beyond color” … In Dallas shows that people can unite and work together.  Robinson says “Poor, troubled , crime-ridden communities are those that most want and need effective policing. But the paradigm cannot be us versus them.  It has to be us with us — a relationship of mutual respect.”

The third article was by Leonard Pitts, Jr. a regular columnist in the Tampa Bay Times, who won a Pulitzer prize in 2004. He was on vacation on the Greek Island of Crete when he turned on the TV to hear about the Dallas terror.  From a distance and where he was at he writes “America has gone mad before; the cure wasn’t hate”.  He called his two sons from Crete, to tell them he loves them and to remind them that … “they terrorize people simply by being and plead with them to be careful” … Imagine that is the first thought and worry we would have  is to fear for how our children may be killed by a police officer simply because of their skin color.  Pitts goes on to write that America has gone mad before, in the 1960’s as those of us old enough remember the horrible riots and turmoil.  He went on to quote Bobby Kennedy in the aftermath of Dr. King’s murder… “My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote, ‘And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.’ … “What we need is the United States is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another and feeling of justice toward those who still suffer in our country”.

In 2008, I had great hope that Barack Obama’s election to our highest office would be a precursor to racism’s end, and I had pride in America and its people. I still believe that we are making progress, and we are a long way further down the road than 1968, but it appears that we still have quite a way to go.  I thought before I read these articles today that the violence we witnessed this week was the act of individuals acting out in the final throes of dying racism…. Or maybe more accurately I hoped it would be such, and the real issue was one of social, economic divide.  However, I think too I’m believing in an idealized version of America, as we hide in our enclave of “whiteness”.  I hope that over time we find that place of wisdom and compassion that over comes the emotion of fears and disassociation from the American Dream, and we come together in support of vast majority of great and effective police as well as support of the 40 million citizens of our country that feel threatened by the rest of us.

Patriot’s Ideals

Ideals defined by thought and design

Those words become one with us

Forever fair and free in heart and mind

Committed complete and with resolve

To share, care, protect and nurture

Never weak or slow to problem-solve

With higher purpose and with pride

Protecting our freedoms, doing what’s right

Onto the challenge, into the fire we do ride

Whenever wherever those colors do fly

There too are the thoughts and words

Meaning and purpose no one can deny

Through this creation of freedom air

Our patriot’s words and deeds ensure

A nation, a people beyond compare

Our united ideals were always right

Learning, welcoming, understanding

America’s past, present and future’s bright

Grandchildren

Daughters of ours beautiful and smart

Of math, science, literature and art

Now with lovely children of their own

Beautiful legacies of love once sown

Seeds of wisdom, seeds of wonder

Of future generations we do ponder

So young we were when we loved each

We did our best to develop and teach

Our past our present our future still forming

Over generations our understanding growing

A legacy described in fabric social conforming

Did we expand and improve in love reforming

Joyous to see future taking its shape

Protect, guide, but not our lives remake

Abandon our dreams for them so they can fly

A beautiful future we must not contain or deny

Someday they will be proud grandparents too

Then they’ll smile, and understand the love we knew

Time Traveled

Is it a moment when we close our eyes

Or is it years where memories play

Is time a measure or a summation

Of all we are and know

Is time traveled really a dream

And ghosts the echoes of our minds

Is our time here only and now

Or a summation of all we dream

Is our dreams and plans for future

Impelled by legacies past and present

Is it our condition to dream and wonder

Playing with memories we now own

Let time in all its glory always be our joy

In future, past and present in perfect harmony

Last weekend was Memorial weekend, and we happen to spend the weekend in New Orleans for a close friend’s son’s wedding.  We took the opportunity to visit the National WWII museum.  It’s a tremendous museum, well worth the visit.  The exhibits are expressive, and focus significantly on the service of the individual soldiers, sailors, airmen, as well as the women that sacrificed so much in those years as the USA was involved in helping free peoples of the world win over fascist dictators that were hell bent to rule the world with a maniacal superiority complex that dictated that they and their people were destined to rule or destroy all others.  The exhibits include embedded videos played out on screens everywhere as you walk thru the sections.  Very well done!

Most of you of course know about WWII…. So a history lesson is not intended, but hopefully the perspective provided here is of value.

The USA enjoying some of the benefits of oceans of isolation, allowed us to be late to the conflict, only after the Japanese attacked us on 7 December 1941.  Of course most know about the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor, were much of our fleet was stationed.  But simultaneously they attacked in the Philippines and at Midway island.  Shortly after our declaration of war, Germany, an ally of Japan, declared war on the USA… by the way, one of two really big mistakes Hitler made, the other of course was his invasion of Russia.  Avoidance of those two mistakes would’ve allowed his evil regime to have survived much longer.  Shudder to think of the impact that would have had on the world.

We now live in a world still at war, but in isolated places.  There are too many that live in these tragic situations and there are too many trying to export this strife to our country, and we must continue to defend ourselves.  However, some perspective on total war, which WWII certainly was.  In the USA we had many millions participate in the armed services and many tens of millions participate in war industries and making sacrifices on the home front with food rationing and fuel rations and limited raw materials.   We tragically had somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 deaths we endured.  It was our industrial might, our ingenuity and inventiveness, and our will and desire to fight for freedom that resulted in us being the difference maker in this war.

What many of you may not know however is the world-wide impact.  The war resulted in 50 to 80 million in civilian and military deaths over a 6-year period.   At the museum a movie produced by Tom Hanks uses the number of 65 million.  This was 3 to 4% of the world population. Countries like Poland lost 17% of their population.  USA deaths were about 0.3% of our population.  Russia was our ally and they had 500 to 600 times more casualties than our country.  I believe the echoes of this war resonate to this day in a nationalistic and paranoid population, that leaders like Putin continue to exploit.

Soon we’ll have no more veterans from WWII, but we must remember what they accomplished and the families, the generation that turned the tide of a vastly destructive war.  It is conceivable they may have saved another 50 million people from destruction as there is no doubt the war would have gone on longer and become ever more deadly without USA involvement, innovation and sacrifice.   Memorial day means something more to me after this visit.  It’s not just about sacrifice, which should be significant enough, it’s also about a fight against tyranny and making the world a safer place for not just us, but for all the world.  Today we talk ever more about isolationism, and I get it, the world can be an ugly place.  But we should remember the example of, as Tom Brokaw named them, the Greatest Generation, as they rallied around a purpose to not just save the USA, but to save the world from further destruction.  There is very good reason to be slow to war, but the example they set was to be all-in and at the end be about restoring freedoms and bringing peace to all.  We are not meant to conquer to rule and enrich, we conquer to ensure liberty and peace.

A week like this I’ve never had… 7 flights and 5 hotels in 6 days.  Gee, its hard to know where I am at any one time… but this is not really what I was going to muse about today.   Rather…. I saw a report yesterday that showed the middle-class in our country shrinking by 4.5% from 2000 to 2016.  The astonishing thing is that this includes a reduction in the minimum income to qualify as middle-class by about 8% … so the bar is lower to entry, and yet the numbers of middle-class households have declined as a percent of the total households in the USA.  If we think of all the threats to our national security, this maybe the greatest threat.  The backbone for a strong country is its economic engine, and the backbone of this engine is a strong middle-class.  Productive output comes from our middle-class.  These statistics are a symptom of a greater illness in our country’s economic health, and it is further backed by an average GDP (gross domestic product) from post WW2 till 2001 of about 8% (7.95%) yet a 2001 to present of less than 4% (3.78%) … this is a dramatic reduction in work output.  Yes, GDP is a measure work output in the form of the dollar value of all goods and services produced by our country.  These numbers are not inflation adjusted, so when inflation is high it results in $ value of goods and services to be elevated.  As inflation has been low lately these numbers are a little less alarming, until you realize that inflation is low because of artificial adjustments deployed through Federal Reserve monetary policy.  Its complicated, but the bottom line is we really need to see a pick up of about 2% in growth for the middle-class to become healthy again.

Our focus on all things internationally, and our boarders are not our biggest issues.  Our national security concern is the economic health of our country, and we’ll know that we are healthy when the households in poverty start to decline and the households that are in the middle-class begin to grow again.  Its my belief that this will happen when government becomes more business friendly. Regulations placed on businesses today are extensive and growing and as they are changing all the time, the uncertainty creates havoc for business.  Its more difficult today than ever for a small business to start and grow. It is also more difficult for mid-size businesses to make growth investments.   We must get back to a more business friendly regulatory environment, as well as legal environment.  Nuisance lawsuits take energy out of the system and contribute to slower growth (unless you’re an attorney).  Employment income is what drives middle-class America.   I believe we can and must do better.  Our federal government must be more business friendly.  Wall street matters, but Main Street America needs a booster shot!

I’m 2692, well that’s the name they gave me when they put me on the delivery truck.   I’m a golf cart, so to speak, I live and I work at the airport.  Of all the damn luck, I drive this sweaty repairman around and haul his grimy tools on this concrete jungle.  When he leaves, probably to go to a golf course, I get an electric cord shoved, well you know, and I cool my jets in a dingy garage.   Gosh I’d like to get out of here and see how my brother and sister are doing, they were the lucky ones.  They ride in style, they are named 14 and 23. Don’t they have cool names?  I hear they get to see green grass, and wander around in a friendly park with new riders every day, carrying golf bags like we were born to do.  Well maybe its not all that friendly, I understand they hear their share of swearing too.  But then they also get to hear laughter and silliness as their passengers sip away at fun beverages… ahh and the nice smell of a good cigar too!  Wow, I smell the sweaty repairman and jet engine exhaust, cough, wheez… geez.  I work… they play, how come they still call me a golf cart, named 2692?