All this talk of hope…hopelessness…how without hope, you have nothing…

I think it’s off base. Faith is what you must have. You can develop hope, if you have faith. Faith in God, the creation, the unseen. Faith in your fellowman, faith in yourself. Faith that the sun will rise at some point, and that it will shine and warm you.

Faith…

We must have faith that despite all appearances, our country will continue, our freedoms will sustain us, our work will feed us, our efforts will reap rewards…

We must have faith in the principles that guide us, faith in our fathers and mothers before us, faith in our children after…faith that our doctors know what they’re doing, faith that our deaths somehow lead to life.

It is Faith that pulls us through when all hope is gone… and that’s how I see it…

The move to protect more national monuments, reminds me I once dreamt of becoming a world renowned archaeologist…Mary Leakey was my idol with her discovery of australopithicenes… after I married, and my husband told me I didn’t need to go to college because I was married now (1972), I raided the library and studied the Hohokam and Anasazi, and Richard Wetherill, who worked at Mesa Verde and in Chaco Canyon to uncover ancient relics. He removed many from their original sites, and they became part of personal and public collections around the world…it was the way things were done in the early 1900s. I had friends in the 1980’s who went on private digs in New Mexico, Arizona, southern Colorado, bringing home pots, pot shards, arrowheads, hand axes, metates, thousands of beads from Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo sites. It was fascinating, and I loved seeing and holding these treasures, but over time, we realized removing those artifacts without properly documenting them was not the best thing to do, and attempts are ongoing to return items to sites/museums at the sites. I am glad to know that over the past century, it has been realized that preservation of ancient sites is important for all of us, not only those who claim direct descendancy.

am reading the Sunday Denver Post editorial section… I have no idea what to think about the things I’m reading…”Universal basic income may be the next big thing” by Paula Dwyer, Bloomberg View, stating base income for all may be a solid solution. “Obama should be bold in Hiroshima” calling for the elimination of all US nuclear armament.

I remember no time when I didn’t believe that “if you don’t work, you don’t eat,” literally and figuratively.  I believe it to the depths of my soul. I believe if someone comes on hard times, hard work will get them out of it. If they become incapacitated, their previous hard work will come into consideration. I can’t imagine receiving money for doing nothing. It’s too foreign to me to even know how to think about it.

I grew up with a father who flew B-52s, carrying nuclear ordnance. Families gathered at the “Alert Shack” on base on Sundays to see our dads who lived there two weeks out of every month, always on alert for possible nuclear attack. I cannot imagine a country, a world not prepared for combating nuclear attacks. It is just too foreign to me…I cannot even fathom a serious discussion about it.

I recently took a college US history class covering 1865-present, with a text book presenting as fact revised versions of events that utterly astounded me. I was angry, then panicked because my fellow students, all younger with little to no experience with the events we were studying, accepted these revisions as fact. They accept that we are a nation of immigrants who remain victims of oppression, rather than seeing the strength, determination and success of our ancestors in overcoming oppression through hard work, community effort and financial success. How do you discuss overcoming oppression with people who, knowing their ancestors were oppressed, believe that they themselves are victims, too; who spend their days protesting, and hating, rather than continuing the climb out their victim holes, like their ancestors did; who expect wealthy and/or working people to pay enough taxes to the government to cover their needs.

Success is the best revenge! Hard work leads to success! Own your life, don’t bargain your freedom for a government handout! And don’t eliminate our defenses against evil and destruction by those who do not believe in personal freedoms.

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“Bidden or not bidden, God is present” Carl Jung
“God helps those who help themselves” Benjamin Franklin
“Get up, take a shower, and do something” Mom