Everything we do in our society is based on trust. Our government, education, finances, infrastructure, and day-to-day living habits and necessities all depend on trust in one way or another. Just driving on surface streets or the freeway requires trust as does shopping and traveling from place to place.  Trust is inescapable in a free society.  When you answer your door or just go for a walk you must trust that you are safe from the unexpected or from being accosted by someone with ill intent.  We are taught to trust from a very early age.  We depend on it.

Unfortunately, the recent left-wing agenda with its violence, destruction, murder, censorship, and general intolerance have broken that trust which even at the best of times can be fragile.  It will take a very long time to rebuild that trust which we need and depend on.  Anytime we are in any area with different or unusual people with stereotypical loud manners and dress, confrontational attitudes, metal rings or tattoos on all visible skin, or any combination of the above we will now be wary, slightly skittish or even paranoid.  We don’t at any given moment know if the issue is mugging, political harassment, racial hatred or just spur-of-the-moment meanness.  Any of these are possible.  We used to say “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.”  If someone is dressed like a gangsta, acts like a gangsta, etc., you are probably being confronted by a gangsta.  As a former Boy Scout, I still subscribe to their motto of “Be Prepared.” From this point on we will plan well ahead where we will or won’t go when shopping or traveling and always look for unusual signs before stopping anywhere.  We will always be on guard to protect our children and our families.

Can we even trust law enforcement to protect us anywhere anymore?  It is very inconsistent as to who and where, and if they will protect the victim because of a recent habit of protecting the guilty perpetrators.  Liberal judges, mayors and even governors have turned around the protection of their citizens.  Our streets and neighborhoods are sometimes infested with the unpredictable and mentally unstable who are given a free pass while the police are prevented from providing basic law and order. And even if they do, they are castigated and the perps are then released so they can commit the same crimes including murder. Even worse, if we try to protect ourselves, we are then prosecuted and even persecuted by the media who are unmerciful.  Needless to say, our trust in our justice system and the media has been broken by mendacity.  Legally we are virtually helpless.

Even though this heavy burden seems to be only on so-called white people, it is really all shades of each color and race that are affected.  And even though the lines drawn by the left are racist, this is not the case; not even left or right, liberal or conservative.  The lines of demarcation are in reality through people who are law-abiding or not, normal family or not, faith-based or not; responsible, respectful, hard-working productive citizens or not.

Our society has been infiltrated by the evils of socialism, collectivism, political correctness and scare-spreaders of the most unscientific ideas of environmentalism, global warming, climate change, and ozone layer destruction by cow farts, carbon, coal, and probably just our breathing in and out.  All of the above are spread irresponsibly by political newbies and has-beens and the uncaring and irresponsible tactics of the news media, without which we would have none of the above. Our collective trust is beyond being frayed.  It is broken.  Everything was blamed by the last administration on the previous president.  But this was all that was accomplished. No solutions were offered or ways to alleviate the unworkable attitudes and laws that permeate our present society. And when the new administration began, all of the blame was then shifted to the new president.  But again with no solutions or any intention of working together to help the citizens of our country.  Only blame.

Before we are forced to become vigilantes to protect ourselves and our families, we need to unite as people with faith in our constitution and our God, and elect politicians with the same faith in our land and its laws which give us our freedoms.  We need to get rid of the old and jaded, the socialists and atheists and the attitudes of the left-leaning party filled with decades of evil and its proponents who have existed for way too many decades by getting politically and exclusively wealthy by pretending to help our country and its legal citizens. We need to eliminate the blaming and concentrate on solutions.  We need to reinstate trust in our government and its checks and balances.  How do we do this?

We need to vote.  We need to insist on fairness.  We need to draw upon our innate common sense.  We need to stop blaming the presidency and think about the issues at hand.  This coming election is not about one man, it is about the fundamental issues in our way of life in the greatest country on earth.  We need to realize this.  The agenda of the left is intimidation.  Threaten anyone who is for our president or his party which has solutions which don’t include socialism.  The silent, intimidated, preyed upon majority needs to arise and vote with a clear conscience.  We need to eliminate darkness from our government and our society and open our thinking to the freedom of light.  The censorship by the press and the media in general, must be eliminated.  We need to hear all sides of the issues at hand, not just the policies of the socialistic left who constantly constrict our freedoms.  Let us vote to open our minds and let in the bright light of freedom so that we may trust again!  God bless our president, and may God bless the United Sates of America…!

Crazy is when the news media turn everything upside down and backwards. Crazy is what we are when we get sucked in and begin to believe that which is obviously false.  Crazy is when your friends lose their way and their moral compass and retreat to the dark side. Crazy is when falsehoods are presented as truth and fact incessantly, becoming propaganda which is repetitive indoctrination used to soften the base of society, the education system, the naive and the weak-minded. These non-thinking persons become unwitting followers of the loudest and most attractive voices filled with promises which are empty and ultimately evil. Crazy is now…!  Are we equipped and able to deal with it…?

The evils of violence and destruction tend to erase all of the good things we have thus far enjoyed.  Our freedoms.  Our unrestricted lives.  Evil promotes censorship and limits freedom of speech by making semantics more important than actual content in our speech and ultimately our thoughts. Evil divides us in issues which have been resolved, but are still vulnerable to those who are willing to bend the truth of our actual day to day existence. Evil takes advantage of any anomaly in our society and elevates it to an undeserved height filled with hate and uses it to promote violence and destruction.  Evil can gradually take over all of our systems of education and fill them with non-essential information that can bend our history and slant our unfettered way of thinking to become followers instead of leaders.  Evil can gradually take over all parts of our government to make sure that an agenda of obeisance is inherent so that there may be no blocking of the new system of everyone in lock-step.  Evil can hold our great cities hostage by electing leaders who are weak-minded and afraid to confront situations which are dangerous to our lives.  This evil promotes anarchy and chaos.  It will take over and weaken anything that promotes excellence in thought and excels in competition.  Every sport is at risk.  Every contest of any sort.  Any system of awards.  No part of our society is safe or beyond the reach of evil.

Do we have the tools to combat this evil?  Our basic, most powerful tool is the elections of our leaders and representatives.  We must be sure that they are uninfected by those promoting an evil agenda.  They must not be beholden to those who can buy anything with large amounts of money.  They must be able to think clearly and for issues that will benefit all citizens, not just those with money-assumed power.  It is our support which will elect them.

Law enforcement is another tool that we need to have which is unapproachable.  Evil will try to eliminate anything that promotes law and order because it inhibits the evil intentions of the few who would take over from the many.  From the CIA, FBI, Military, National Guard to the local police – men and women, we need to support and enforce their job descriptions for the safety of all citizens.

We need to recognize that every person who is a citizen has rights and privileges in this country.  All lives are important from the time when the spark of life is ignited to the time when it is extinguished.  We are protected by our Constitution, Bill of Rights and the systems of justice which need to be beyond reproach.  All of us are protected regardless of our outward looks and surface qualities.  When our nation, our families, our properties, our thoughts are attacked, we need to defend them and be supported by our legal systems.  No one is above the law.  Excuses only demean the weak-minded for their bad behavior.  Responsibility in our daily lives and our honest work matter the most.  Beware the slippery slope.

Wishful thinking leads to idealism then to liberalism and the far left which leads to socialism which leads to fascism and anarchy which lead to communism and then to total dictatorship where there is no recourse from becoming a slave or a puppet for the above evils that we have investigated.  This is the slippery slope.  Beware.  Think.  Read.  Self-educate.  Our country and our lives depend on each person’s responsibility to themselves, their families and our country.  “God Bless America”…!

When will common sense return? When will we stop listening to people who have a distorted agenda and an undeserved platform in which to promote their diseased propaganda? Will the silent majority awaken?  Will education be taken back from the fake teachers with undeserved tenure? Will learning be changed from indoctrination back to the basic skills and real American History that are needed for our survival?

Will the media finally realize that it has been like a coin with only one side with an agenda that is comparable to rowing a boat with only one oar and going in circles, never forward? When will we be able to once again state clearly that there are two sides to every story and be able to voice another side without recrimination or violence?

We are now in an age where only the loudest, most bizarre or criminally bullying voices are promoted over and over by a one-sided, half-blind media.  People lose positions and jobs over a word, sometimes misspoken, or even accurate in meaning and context, but not in line with the prevailing thinking of those few who control the media.

When will we realize that the foundation for socialism and its inherent evils is being constructed in and around us and our children by evil people who are insulated by large amounts of money which gives them almost unlimited power? Will we awaken in time? Will we be able to regain our way of life? Will we regain common sense?  If I could write a letter to those great men who poured the foundations for our present day, it might go like this:

Dear Mr. Washington, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln,

During this July 4th celebration we also celebrate your lives, for you have formed us into these United States of America, states bound together by: our freedoms of speech and worship, freedom from want and from fear. We have enjoyed these freedoms since our Declaration of Independence was written long ago. You have guaranteed our rights and privileges through our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Through these you have made us the greatest nation on our earth.  We deeply appreciate your lives and dedication that made this possible.  We salute all of those who have given up their own lives in order to continue this great land of opportunity for all.

But, gentlemen, we are in trouble and need your help once again with the hearts and souls of all who have built this land with their blood and sweat and tears.  This vast land extending from sea to sea, from borders north and south and even beyond is beset with a sickness in our cities and with a cancer springing up containing evils which would eat away our hearts and minds and freedoms.  We need your spiritual guidance to repair those damages which have already happened and the ones yet to come. We have cities living in fear, oppressed by hate for our very foundations, afraid to speak freely from their minds, prevented from flying the flag that saved the world and from singing our beloved National Anthem with the respect it deserves.  Citizens are intimidated in a voting process that is also beset by corruption and leadership whose aim is personal wealth with no limits on tenure and whose ostensible aim is to obstruct the very tenets and processes that have made us great.  We are being weakened and torn apart by an alien encroachment which dilutes the lives of all legal citizens with undeserved entitlement and welfare, jobs and hand-outs given freely by those whose moral and ethical compasses are corrupted.  We are deluged by rampant mendacity in the media which is so important in communicating those truths we hold to be self-evident. Their incessant message is now one-sided, broken and diseased.

Gentlemen, we need your inspiration and your strength to raise the sleeping worker from an apathy that seems to accept that someone else will guide our ship of state. Day to day we live and work together in peace and harmony and let a chosen few guide the many over cliffs of indecision and compromise of our ideals. Please help us to wake the vast majority to their task of stewardship in tending to our freedoms, and weeding out choking restrictions so that the way of life for us and our children may grow freely.  Let us protect our children from divisive ideas, destructive laws and ideas for a utopia that can never exist.  Let us also by the weight of the majority stamp out hate, greed and corruption and instill in our young once again that “Freedom isn’t free.” It takes constant work and eternal vigilance to protect it from harm.

Gentlemen, we call upon you and all of those with kindred hearts to raise our thoughts to levels yet unknown that will save us once again from a destructive division that would drag us into territories of doom and gloom.  Give us the impetus to once again let our freedoms freely ring for all citizens who abide by our system of laws which have been formed and tested through the years.  Let us all hear the bells of freedom ring once again unchained, unfettered, and untouched by evil hands.

Messrs. Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln,

We salute you once again on this 4th of July, our celebration of independence. God bless you, and may God bless our United States of America…!

We are finally opening up slowly from our pandemic lockdown.  This has been an unprecedented and very unnatural few months to get through.  But I think that we all have made it.  There is still an unknown factor in this process with the Covid-19 virus itself.  Will it disappear?  Can we control it with an as yet undeveloped vaccine?  Is there an ever-present chance of re-infection on a mass scale?  No one knows. We can only hope for the best.  The style of living has changed drastically for all of us.  Our daily lives have slipped back to a time when life was simpler.  Our present technology is still with us, but everything else has slowed until it seems that we had less choices, especially in events outside of our homes.  Some decades ago we didn’t go out as much to restaurants and for shopping and for entertainment.  We went out, but not nearly as much as we have now experienced.  I was born in 1941, so I remember those times.

Even though I was very young I remember living through the Second World War.  Times were tough.  Necessities weren’t always available when you needed them. Everyone lived more in a day to day existence. The time passed with work schedules and mealtimes.  The technological advances we now have were non-existent, at least in their present forms.

I remember when I dialed the rotary telephone, the ominous busy signal and the lack of an answer machine.  In fact, when we lived on a farm for a while, we had a party-line crank phone.  You cranked it to get a dial tone that alerted an operator who would place your call (or not) if the line was busy.  And when you did get through there might have been people listening in to your conversations.  It was just something that entertained the bored or the busybody.  Listening.

I remember when the ice-man brought blocks of ice for our ice box.  It worked until it started melting and the drip pan had to be emptied and you needed more ice.   The ice man would return.

I remember when the coal man brought a load of coal to our basement window and dumped and shoveled the coal into the coal cellar.  Coal dust everywhere.  And then someone would have to shovel the coal into the furnace and shake the rods that held it and hope there were no “clinkers.”  These could be a real source of frustration.  Also, the ashes had to be shoveled out of the furnace periodically and taken outside to a disposal.  All of this meant that you had heat in the house, and hot registers that the heat came out of into each room.  Careful you don’t burn your feet.

I remember when the junk man came in a truck to empty the trash cans.  Not much different now except for the disposables like paper products.  Most people had large cans or steel drums that worked as incinerators.  Outside, we burnt these disposables periodically in a place that was safe from setting fire to something else like a garage or shed.  There were a lot of ashes in the air at times, especially when the dry leaves in the fall were raked into large piles and set on fire.  Safely, usually.  An alternative to trash pick-up was to dig a large hole in your backyard and insert the trash and cover it up in layers. When you got to the top, plant grass or plants of some kind.  They grew very well.

I remember when most people had gardens with many vegetables, fruits, and herbs growing seasonally.  This was followed by canning parts of the harvest for the winter months.  This process of growing and harvesting and canning took a lot of time but it also saved a lot of money.  The local grocery was for meats and paper goods unless you were lucky enough to grow chickens (for meat and eggs), ducks, turkeys, etc.  But someone had to prepare these fowl for the table. A messy process.  Trees were also important, and their fresh fruit was always delicious.  Apples, pears, peaches, cherries, etc, were great for pies, cobblers and canning. We baked.

I remember when we had a cornfield which took up maybe a quarter of an acre.  Great fun as a playground when you are young.  And again, the corn itself was delicious.  But also a lot of work like all of the above.  Our time was allocated differently toward different priorities.  Day to day survival.  And there is so much more to remember about those times which were simpler but sometimes just as stressful as now.  What kept us sane then?

I remember the big bands that entertained on the radio and at dance halls.  They thrived through the war years.  Their recordings were listened to on 78 rpm records.  And these same recordings with the bands and instrumental soloists and singers are still listened to today.  The musicians are mostly gone, but their music which was romantic, entertaining, nostalgic even then, and even inspirational lives on.  Songs that were written then are still meaningful even now.  As we once again regain our way of life we will remember years later these times and the music that coincided with them. It still keeps us sane. Music.

In a global pandemic there seems to be more time to think, and to think clearly, uncluttered and unfettered.  When the the days run together into weeks and months, most of us tend to lose track of time in our traditional way of dealing with it.  In this situation, instead of being clock oriented, with minutes and hours, we become meal or stomach oriented.  Our days become divided into breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime.  And the days blending into weeks become divided by our pill boxes and our TV programming and scheduling.  Everything else is randomly fitted in and around the above.  The earth’s rotation, the circuits of our sun and moon and our four seasons bring us yet another division in our perception of time and the way it affects us.

What would our lives be like if this present situation continued?  How would our perception of time change? How would it change our lifestyles? In our past fast-paced lives when we were slaves to our clocks there was no way to think out of that “time box.” We just accepted it and dealt with it accordingly. We grew into it from birth.  Then we physically matured but mentally still became unavoidably attached to the tyranny of the clock. Has this held us back mentally and stunted our mental growth? Would the expanded time that we either have or could simulate reverse this tendency? Or would there be no noticeable difference? So the question becomes: Do we really mature in time? Do we at some point become whole, both physically and mentally?  I believe that generally the answer is “no.”   I think that “yes” we mature on the outside, but in our inner core we stay the same undeveloped personality that we have grown to become.  The “Peter Pan” syndrome whether male or female.

We show our outer shells to the public, but our inner core only surfaces from time to time in unguarded moments when we forget that this core is supposed to be protected and hidden.  This duplicity gives us a refuge, a place in which to retreat when we are hurt or lose confidence or lose our way on the highway of life. But, we are here on earth to grow and fully mature in both our outer shell and our inner core.  And when this is finally accomplished, we are then ready to move on to our next level, our cosmic home.  Unfortunately, I don’t believe that many of us actually reach this ideal state, and even with unlimited time, there are many who would not even get near.  Most of us, in our own timeline of life, do make an attempt at intellectual and spiritual growth and usually show outward signs of this progress, but our allotment of time is finite, and it is within this time limit of our lives that resides our own personal gauge. Our meter of accomplishments relating to our personal growth.

Physical growth is relatively easy and easier to track or measure. Mental growth is intangible. It is only noticeable when there is an aberration.  Otherwise we become accomplished at disguising our real selves and personalities.  This is why marriages can fail and jobs not fit us or the company and there are inevitable drop-outs from society.  Bad market-research, both personal and whoever is on the other side of us. Mental growth needs time.  Time to absorb information and to digest it; time to think, both of the past and the future.  Our congested lives rarely permit this.  We have to find ways to permit this very necessary access to our imagination and our subconscious.  We need to find quiet time.  Not easy.  Headphones can be a help if what you are listening to is fairly innocuous and doesn’t inhibit the thought process.  The sounds of wind or rain or the ocean. Or music.

Music has the ability to alter time and, if we use it judiciously, we can create time for introspection and self-assessment.  And it is this time adjustment that can help us re-evaluate our direction and reset our inner clocks, and ultimately make our much-needed growth possible.  Music of a certain kind can help us to use time to become a better person. This is worthwhile and worth considering, but time must actually be allotted for this purpose.  It is quality time that is most important, not quantity.  A few minutes of quality time is infinitely better than hours of meaningless quantity.  And, reverting to our attachment to the clock, we realize that in the pace of our daily lives there is never enough time.

So let us use music to our advantage in altering time for our personal growth.  The music needs to be classical in style and instrumental in type. This minute organization of frequencies, uncluttered and unfettered by the specificity of text can be the most helpful in our quest.  Given time it can inspire us and motivate us to seek a different level of consciousness which can make possible our wholistic growth.  Music can give us time to think. And thinking is definitely one of the most important aspects of our lives. Take the time for it. Let us all grow to our full potential. In time…!

A whole generation or two have been born and grown up not knowing what our country and our world used to be like.  Some of this is a very good thing, but there are other aspects that are not so good.  We need to remember at times what certain things were like.  For instance, most of the younger generation have never known “want”,  being without something with no chance of getting it or replacing it.  Most of the time this is fine, but on the other hand we tend to lose a perspective in our daily lives that is sometimes blurred or surreal.  This might be somewhat like thinking that money is a permanent part of our lives or that food is always obtainable and that water is always fresh and plentiful.  An expanded perspective can give us a realistic knowledge as to where and why and how these things come to us.  This could be a very healthy addition to our collective maturity.

I think that a simulation of want has happened to us in this most affluent of countries during the month of March and possibly continuing through the month of April.  This can be a learning experience for all of us as to what things “usta” be like  in the olden days: the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s.  The people who lived through those years had things, but not everything that is available to us now.  Toilet paper is now in our consciousness as a luxury item.  We no longer take it for granted.  As are the toilets themselves.  I remember when outhouses were ubiquitous and there was never any toilet paper in them.  The most pervasive item to use was a Sears Roebuck catalog.  With glossy paper.  Think about this.  And the most characteristic memory about this whole process, as with a lot of other situations was the smell.  We don’t think about unpleasant smells as being a part of our lives anymore.  But we are no longer an agricultural society.  We are the city folks.  Far removed from the barnyard and the pasture.

In an agricultural society food takes on a whole new characteristic.  Now we have the supermarket. And in some places the farmer’s market.  But both are sanitized and healthy. Everything looks good and the smells are innocuous.  In the olden days of our ancestors even as recent as the 40s and 50s this was not the case in many places.  Many people had gardens with fresh vegetables and fruits and trees and flowers.  Beehives for honey. Large pens for chickens and ducks and turkeys and guinea hens and pigeons, and hens who laid eggs regularly and lived a comfortable life until they were selected for dinner.  Then someone had to end a certain comfortable life, remove the feathers, clean and prepare the carcass and then, only then cook the meat for dinner.   Youngsters then learned early not to think of these animals as pets.  Also in this area were the hunters who would bring home squirrels, rabbits, pheasants, etc., and then expect them to be prepared for dinner.  Always a messy process.  Even if it was a catfish or trout or a bluegill.

During this month of April when we are to be sequestered for thirty days, it might be a good time to reflect on the above.  This could be a wake-up call as to what could happen in a real crisis: an earthquake, tsunami, tornado, asteroid crash, etc.  Can we actually be prepared for any eventuality?  How?  What would happen when a situation occurs that means that we really can’t get food, water, medical supplie or even…toilet paper?  How we could have prepared would be meaningless at that time.

At that point in time we are no longer “entitled.”  The entitled category gets immediately buried in reality.  Can thinking about this eventuality help our young , our millennials, and those people with totally unrealistic outlooks face reality?  Would they be ready and even able to handle the intellectual shift necessary to survive?  In a crisis individuals must act in order to survive.  No one can rely on someone being available to do things at their beck and call.

The good old days meant that life was based on reality.  Pay to play.  Participate or leave.  Think before you act.  And “Be Prepared.”  Scouts understand this and so should we. Let us use this month to prepare ourselves mentally and physically and spiritually for whatever eventuality comes at us.  And let us unite as the great nation that we “usta be” and still are. Let us all sing “God bless America” with a gusto that comes from deep down in our hearts…!