Category: Uncategorized

Blood for oil? Blood for oil, and somebody else’s at that. Look up Shiite versus Sunni, and you’ll see the crux of the problem over there. On 911, 15 of 19 were from the big oil country. Now we’re their protectors?

Big oil. The United States has been bragging for several years now that “America is self sufficient” when it comes to oil, but now we bristle at that 5% that is in jeopardy?

Money and oil, and drill everywhere. Take the restrictions off everything, and let’s pollute the rivers and air again. Smog over LA that chokes the children so badly, they can’t go outside. I remember those days, does anybody else? I remember when the Chattooga River was choked with all kinds of crap. You couldn’t eat a fish out of it, much less canoe in it.

Why is all of this necessary? Are the oil companies not rich enough yet? Is the water and air so clean we need to dirty them up a bit? I don’t understand the logic, does anybody else?

Money….the source of it in our country, who controls it and how, has brought low the highest in power, and elevated to power the lowest in morality. It has been this way for hundreds of years, but has been controlled more so in this country since around 1913.

As you have seen, even since the financial crisis of 2008, who has been served by the laws and policies which were enacted? The people who were in debt, or their creditors? The common man, or the banks and stock sellers?

Everything is out of the control of the people, because the people cannot even vote for the ones who control the money. They are appointees!

In America, very few rise up above the rigged system to become rich. Most spend their lives working for the man, and paying through the nose for the things they need the most. Not the automobiles or the TV’s! The health care, the drugs which are needed to live, the dental care. All are needed to sustain life, and can be withheld as kind of a “blackmail”

Think about it the next time you consider who controls the money, and what they want you to have. If bread and circuses will do (pizza and football) then America will remain what they want.

We never had Kindergarten at our school. We started with the first grade. It was in 1956 for me. Now, I know that date sounds pretty ancient to a lot of people. Not so ancient to others. But, in terms of the way things have changed in the world, it was centuries ago!
Back then, we were still in the old three “R” mode of learning. And, believe me, some of the kid’s in my first grade class wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with them of the first day of class.

I remember two girls in particular whose Mom’s had to drag them kicking and screaming into the classroom! Both of them later became good students, but oh…not on that first day.
Things have changed so much.

Kids start going to school, or pre-school, or pre-preschool so young now, that some of them will NEVER be able to remember when they started to school, like I can. I think that it’s kind of a shame too. Those two girls (It was Sandy and Alma by the way) had both experienced what it was like to be HOME with their Mommas, and to have a “little kid’s” life prior to being rudely awakened one morning and being told they were being taken to this strange new place, full of people they didn’t know and things they weren’t familiar with. They were definitely out of their comfort zone. (So was I, but I didn’t cry. I would have, but as long as I can remember I have had this “thing” about not letting people see me cry. Guess I think it shows “weakness” or something) only by being taken out of our comfort zone could we learn new things, but we didn’t know it at the time, and we sure were not real happy about finding out.

We had these cool metal desks though, that had big old holes in the bottom of them to stuff our books into when we were not using them. That was the other thing too…books! Wow, for the first time in my life somebody gave me a book that didn’t have Scrooge McDuck on it, and said it was MINE. At least for that year anyway. I felt privileged! I took care of my books like they belonged to me. When we had to scrawl our names into them a few weeks later, after we all learned to WRITE our names, I felt bad about defacing that nice new book. It WAS really new, because 1956 was only the second year that the new grammar school had been open, so everything was still in great shape.

I lived in the same town long enough to see that same school go through the metamorphosis of age to the point where it had to be torn down a few years after the river got up and got into it. Both the High School and the Grammar school had been built on a flood plain, because that’s the land which the Mill gave the town to build them on. They knew the land would flood, and that’s why they never had put part of the mill on them. It was good enough for a school though. We had a lot of floods, but the huge 100 year flood that came about 1990 or so I think it was, finished both those schools off.

Anyway, I did feel bad writing in a book. I still feel bad when I see a book that has scribbling and scrawling and writing all in it. Books are sort of sacred things to me, since all the knowledge that mankind has ever been able to accumulate is written down in books. Guess that’s why I like to read them still, and buy and sell them too. Some people get most of their information off of computers and TV now, and don’t bother much with books. That’s ok for them I guess, but I don’t know what I would do in a world without books. Kinda’ glad I will be gone before people totally stop using them.

But, I digress. I think the point I was trying to make was about how kids miss a lot of their childhood nowadays. They are thrust into the world of learning, and really into the adult world itself much too soon. We think of them as little adults from just about the time they can come up with a sentence that makes sense.

“Time for little Tommy to start to School, he just said his first word!”

It’s a little much I think.

Fall is coming.

The days of Summer are numbered. The only thing left in the garden is Okra and a few scraggly tomatoes growing up too high for the bugs to get. The humidity is so bad that when I took my camera from the inside to the outside yesterday, I had to wipe the fog off the lens for twenty minutes before I could take a picture. You can’t walk around the neighborhood without having to wring a quart of sweat out of your T-shirt when you get back. So…I’ll trade the last of the fresh Okra to get rid of the humidity and the bugs.

Perhaps an early frost this year? An early end to the “dog days” of the Summer of 2022? Usually the first frost is very close to my birthday…which is October 21, but I definitely would not mind a good hard, white hoar frost much sooner. I love them. I love the crisp, snapping, hot Apple cider, make a pot of chili days, which start out in the mornings with a white icy ground and ease up into the mid 60’s by afternoon, with a bright warming Autumn sun in the sky.

I love those days. The ones where you wear a sweatshirt but not a coat, and you see the kids out tossing around a football. The ones where the wind kicks up little whirlwinds of red, orange, brown and yellow leaves. The smell of somebody off somewhere in the distance burning a pile of those same dry leaves. The sunsets which are bright and clear with a few streaks of purple… oh how sweet and precious are those days. More valuable to me than piles of gold or diamonds. Especially when they are populated with my loved ones.

I want to be even more aware of the wonderful days of Fall this year. I want to notice how blazing Orange the pumpkins are at Halloween, and how wonderful my wife’s Thanksgiving dressing smells and tastes. And then I want to see the little one’s eyes light up at Christmas when they tear into their gifts. I want to hug my new grandchildren, and smell the fresh newness of their lives. I want to see things through their eyes. Especially the littlest of the group.

I never took the days of Autumn for granted. Even as a child I knew they were something special. The first poem I ever wrote was about the beauty of a special Fall day. The first song I played on my guitar and sang to was “Autumn Leaves” ” ….the falling leaves, drift by my window, the autumn leaves of red and gold…”

And so I hope for an early fall, an idyllic fall, a peaceful fall, a loving fall, a prosperous fall and a memorable fall. Not just for myself, but for all of us who need one right now so very badly. For those of us who have already seen more of them than we will ever see in the years ahead. Seventy two is looming for me in October……

A taste of simplicity, a smell of memory, a sight of loveliness, a sound of familiarity and the feel of hope…for the future of all mankind. An Autumn of change..and not just in the weather.

I wrote this on this day last year, before the pandemic and all of the recent Civil strife. I publish it again, as I find it may still pertain to the times we are in….as well as an addendum. Feel free to scroll by if you want.

The Chosen One

I walked out the back door this morning , looked at the sky with my eyes turned up and thought: “I am the chosen one”

I was chosen to live in the midst of the world’s beauty. But, I am responsible for helping to take care of it.

I was chosen to be the Father of my children and the grandfather to their children. But, I was and am responsible for helping to show them the right way to live. To be caring and empathetic. To be respectful and helpful.

I was chosen to help my neighbors, to love my neighbors. I have had to teach myself not to hate anyone, and it has been and will continue to be difficult. I choose to try and keep on trying, and to pray for forgiveness when I fail.

I was chosen to write about many things, and to record the world around me. I was chosen to share these things…right, wrong, black, white or in shades of gray. It is my calling. It is my obsession and many times it is my curse. It’s been a lifetime path.

I am king of nothing except hope. I am prince of nothing but despair. A harbinger of doom, but a prophet for survival.

I live my days and nights in constant thought about how to change evil to good. I despair sometimes at how great the battle is, and is becoming. Yet I know that it is not totally my responsibility because I am the savior of naught, not even my own fate.

Afterthought:

People are going to believe what they believe. I believe in what I think is right, and it’s vastly different than what many others believe. I don’t believe the path we are currently on will end well, but many do. Even though there’s a vast difference in our beliefs, most will still be here in the short term. I think that neither group can afford to simply write off the other. If that happens we will always be a divided and hostile country. I don’t have the “Golden arrow” answer. What I’m hoping for is that something or someone can prevail in a compromise which relieves some of the ill will from both sides. I respect most opinions, except the extreme and the conspiracy theorists, and hope we can all ride this spaceship we are on a few more years together and hope something paradigm changing happens.

Our most precious commodity, our gift, our one and only most important currency we humans have to spend, is our time. Our minutes are worth more than gold, and our days more than diamonds. All of the physical things we own amount to nothing if we have no time. They will sit until the dust covers them, and eventually will be reclaimed by nature. The time we are allowed here on Earth is all we will ever have. When we die and our time ends, our lives will eventually be as shadows in the memories of those who are left behind.

Our words and actions during our time here, are the only real manifestations of our physical existence here, and how those words and deeds affect other people is our only legacy. We need to think about that before we speak….think about it before we act. What do you want your legacy to be? One of hateful words and actions, or one of empathy and love?

1619-1865 is 246 years. 1865-2019 is 154 years. We have almost a century left until this country has lived as many years without legal slavery as it did with it. That doesn’t even count another 100 years exactly from 1865-1965 when the voting rights act passed. So in reality that’s 346 years.

Spain, and then Mexico…after it won independence, owned much of the Southwestern US from 1521 after the conquest of the Aztecs, until 1848, when the Treaty of Hildalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War, which the US had instigated. The US got Texas, Southern California, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado in that treaty. That’s 327 years the SW United States belonged to the “Hispanics” and 171 years that the United States has owned it. All citizens of Mexico got to choose to stay in the new United States, or go back to Mexico. Most of them stayed, creating an instant cross culture between the United States and Mexico, which has persisted since then. That’s a total of 498 years that Spanish speaking people have been in this area, as opposed to only after 1848 that white Americans started to go into these areas to settle. (The Gadsden purchase of 1853 further enlarged New Mexico and Arizona)

It amazes me that in just a very few short years, history in this country has been forsaken for media make believe. The myth of white manifest destiny over the cultural patterns of this country, and the belief that somehow the stain of slavery and repression has been washed as white as snow in a few short years belies the facts which lie in the history of America, if any would take the time to read it. Perhaps it cannot be understood.

Perhaps the trend of purposeful ignorance has taken such deep root that it can never be reversed. It is a shame that we Americans of the last half of the 20th century have been either unwilling or unable to defend the hard won freedoms and openness that our Fathers fought and died for in World War II. We have given them up to Autocracy and Oligarchy with hardly a fight.

‘THESE DREAMS GO ONE WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES”

(with apologies to “Heart”)

Our brains are extremely complex organisms, which are still largely unexplored in many areas. One area that intrigues me is the subconscious or unconscious thought process which takes place when we sleep. I guess most people call it “dreaming” There are dreams, and then there are DREAMS. I think they take many different forms and possibilities.

I surely wish I could remember everything I had ever dreamed. Sort of like having a little “hard drive” built in to my brain where I could push the “save” button every time I start to go to sleep. I also wish that I could dream some of the things I WANT to dream about. I wish we could dictate to our brains the “script” of what we want to start out with in our dreams, and let them go forward from there. One thing I really wish I could dream about is running.

I have been exercising quite a lot lately. I started about 5 weeks ago and I have worked my way up to 45 minutes on the treadmill at 3.1 mph and an elevation of 1.0 I know that’s not much for most people, but for someone who’s had two heart attacks, 4 bypasses and one stent….it ain’t bad. I still have to be careful and not let my heart rate get above a certain point, so there is one treadmill that I always use which has a really good heart monitor. So, I’m walking pretty quickly but not running.

I would just love to be able to run across the country, sort of like Forrest Gump did. Running on and on and seeing things that I have never seen before. Taking the time to appreciate things which I have never appreciated before. Chances are slim of me ever running again in real life. Not for very long anyway.

I have started sleeping better since I have been exercising, but I used to lay awake for hours previously.

My wife and I always listen to music at night, and a few weeks ago as I was trying very hard to sleep, I began to actually see the musical notes in my mind. I was listening to Enya I think, and on all of the notes I saw silver and gold patterns in my head. The chords were like sunbursts and moon glow. The voice of the singers, which was angelic in nature, flowed through my mind like a deep blue river, rushing towards the ocean. No, I was NOT on anything! This was dreaming, and it was the strangest and most wonderful dreaming I can remember in quite a long, long time. I wasn’t deep asleep; I was just sort of in a land somewhere far enough away from reality for things to be ecstatically good. I am not sure that I will ever get a repeat of the “unreal” concert. I didn’t want to “wake up” I finally snapped out of that vision…even though I could have stayed in it for a long, long time.

On a very rare occasion, I dream of times past and of people who are now gone from this life. You would think this might be a more common type of dream. But, for me at least, it is very uncommon. I think maybe you have more and more of the dreams like this as you get older, because more of the people you have loved and known in your life start to leave. I dream of my Grandmother occasionally, most of the time in the kitchen cooking! I can still smell the biscuits cooking, and in the back of my mind wish I had gotten her to teach me how to make them! My mind yearns for a trip back. For just one more day, as Mitch Albom has so sweetly expressed in one of his books. One more day to say things that should have said, but which I always thought I would have time to say.

I used to help my Grandma sometimes and it was during this period of interaction that I learned a great deal about here philosophy of life. A lot of hard work mainly, but a lot of love for life too. When she had here 100th birthday, I asked her if she had it to go over again what one thing would she do or not do. She told me simply “Worry less, because worry never did change nothing!” It still doesn’t Grandma, it still doesn’t! Since Grandma died…Dad and Mom have gone on also, and occasionally I still see them in my dreams.

It’s just a shame that we can’t step into these kinds of dreams anytime we want to, and visit with our loved ones who are no longer with us. It’s also a shame that we don’t realize that some of the loved ones who are still with us now, may soon be a memory. We should tell THEM the things we need to, before it’s too late, and we can only visit them every once in a while in our dreams.

I really haven’t had any BAD dreams recently. Nothing which I would call a nightmare, or anything even resembling a bad dream. My granddaughter who is now a High School Junior, used to have them. Occasionally when she was little and would spend the night, my wife and I would wake up with her standing next to the bed: “I had a bad dreams…” she would say sleepily as she climbed into the solace and comfort of our bed. “It will be OK” I mumbled. And, I knew it would. Most of the dreams we have, we never remember, and I was pretty sure she would not remember her bad dreams by the time she woke up in the morning.

Last night I was awake until 1 am in the morning, and I was wishing so badly I could sleep. I sneakily turned my Kindle fire onto Netflix and pulled up “Forrest Gump” and fast forwarded to the point where he was running out and back across America. By the time he said “Just like that, my running days were over…” I nodded off slowly and slept dreamlessly through the night.

IT’S ALL in your MIND…..(or…What’s on your mind, as this blank space always asks when I come to it.)

What is the first thing that you can remember? That’s my question for now. What’s your first memory? Our mind is a funny thing and they say we only use about 10% of what we have. But just humor me and try and frame a mental picture of your first memory. If you can do it that will eventually lead me to my other question.

See, the reason it interests me is that I often wonder if everyone else’s brain functions about the same as mine. Most of my childhood memories are rather fuzzy around the edges. Do you know what I mean? It’s sort of like trying to look at something right after you have just woke up, and you still have a ton of “sleep” in your eyes. Either that, or maybe it’s like trying to remember a dream which you had the night before. The dream is really clear when you first wake up, but if you EVER want to remember it, you should take the advice of dream specialists and write it down right then. If not, it’s going to be fuzzy in the morning. Fuzzy around the edges, just like those really early childhood memories. Sometimes I wonder if some of my “memories’ are not really dreams. Is that possible? I think it might be. As we go through life, and we live through so many different things, it may just be that some of our more vivid dreams get mixed up in our brain with reality. That would be a hoot wouldn’t it? I really think this is a good exercise though, because the more I have consciously thought about the past, the more memories starting bubbling to the surface like bubbles on a pound full of snapping turtles. The more I try and separate reality from fantasy, the more sure I am that it’s not always possible to do so.

Well for starters, the very first thing I remember is having to go potty really, really bad. We lived in a house back in 1953, when I was three years old that was originally a duplex that had been turned into a regular house. I remember that it confused me, because both sides of the house seemed to be the same, except the living room furniture was in one side and the bedroom furniture in the other. I remember thinking that the rooms were the same and that when I blinked my eyes, or went to sleep (especially if I got carried from one side to the other during that time) that the furniture was rearranging itself! Strange, right? But, back to pottying. I had to go really, really bad, and nobody was around to “direct” me to the correct place, so down went the pants and…..well..you can guess the rest. The part I remember the most, was getting my rear end tanned by my Pop! I never, ever did that again!

I also remember having a pair of Easter bunnies that same year. Dad brought them home in a box, and we took them out back to eat grass and they got away from us and ran up under the car. It took Daddy forever to catch them, and I didn’t know what some of the words he was using meant, but I used one of them later on when I rode my tricycle down the front steps. My Dad was secretly tickled I said it to the Dr. who was sewing up my head, but he still blamed it on my Mom. I can’t remember what happened to those damn rabbits though. I think Dad probably got tired of them making a mess and got rid of them one night while the furniture was changing itself around.

Another vivid thing during that same year I believe was during the summer we would catch “lightning bugs” (fireflies to a lot of you) We would put them in a jar and I would take them to a dark place and try to use them like a flashlight! Usually, we would let them go before going in for the night, but once we forgot and I came out the next morning, and couldn’t figure out why the bugs wouldn’t light up. I didn’t realize that after being in a closed jar with no hole all night long, they were NEVER going to light up again! My Dad told me that they were not sleeping, that they were dead forever. That was my first realization that things sometimes really cease to live.

I know that I lived the first two years of my life at my Grandparent’s house. My Dad didn’t get out of the Navy until 1952, so my Mom and I stayed with them. I have seen pictures of myself at that age, but try as I might, try so very hard, I cannot bring up any memories of any of those times before 1953 when we moved back to Trion, where I still live today. I wish I could remember those times. What would really be neat would be to be able to remember anything and everything that ever happened to you. To just be able to sit down and say, “Now I am going to remember December of 1956 when I was six years old, and what happened at Christmas that year!” That would be a miracle wouldst it? Scientists say that everything is stored right up there in that little 3 pounds of gray jelly we call our brain. That wonderful, misunderstood and not fully understood organ that runs us. I have tried everything from meditation, to “commanding” my brain to remember, to closing my eyes and straining and squinting but I still can’t make it happen! Are all of you folks like that, or is it just me!!! I would like to know, so I can claim a deficiency if I am the only one.

Memory and the brain. They really are a strange thing. I remember one time when my Grandfather was in his last year of life. He didn’t know anybody, or anything much. He was afflicted with some type of memory loss which was permanent and very severe…as a result of a stroke perhaps, or of hardening of the arteries. When we went to visit him, he would just sit around and kind of “babble” like a tape recorder randomly playing back snippets of conversation recorded over years and years of time. Nothing made much sense. He always seemed like he was glad to see us, and sad to see us go…but…things were just not perking right. My Grandma was sitting there one day and talking about one of their relatives, and Grandpa spoke up all of the sudden and said: “Cleve’s dead” (I think it was Cleve….it might have been Pierce…my memories not so good….) My Grandma answered him back telling him how crazy he was, because she had just talked to Uncle Cleve that morning. That afternoon when we took Grandma back home, she found out that Cleve had died right around the time we were all at the Nursing home. So, the brain’s funny isn’t it. I would have bet you a million dollars that Grandpa couldn’t count to ten anymore, but somehow, someway he knew his old hunting buddy had died.

Maybe not being able to recall everything that has ever happened to us is a blessing. We might NOT be able to be selective and just remember the good things. We might also HAVE to remember the bad things too. There are a LOT of those things that I would rather keep shoved back into the tiny recesses and crevasses of my mind. Yes, my mind. When all is said and done, our mind IS what we are isn’t it? Even when Grandpa’s was taken mostly away, he was given a gift of sorts to replace what had been taken from him. I guess our spirit sort of resides there. I suppose the part of us which is our personality and which makes us us resides there. It’s about the only part of us they can’t replace with a transplant still! Shoot, you can have a ticker transplant and go right on being yourself, but a diving accident can turn you into something you would rather not think about! It makes you wonder about all those people who do have that kind of damage. Have their souls, what made them who they were, already fled the premises and just left the empty shell behind? I suppose there are many who doubt there is a soul…but I still believe in it. I still believe that “spark” of creation is still there.

Well, there’s the challenge for those of you who want to think about it. Can you remember everything? What was your first memory? Would you like to be able to have total recall? When our old brain is gone, like Grandpa’s was, are we still us? I think so….what do you think? Most of all I would like to know…how are your memories…are they as clear as a wonderfully taken photograph, or as gray around the edges as an out of focus picture?

Oh by the way. Does anybody remember a Science Fiction thriller from the 50’s named “Donavan’s Brain?” It was about this guy whose brain was taken out of him while he was still alive, and put into this thing that looked all the world like a ten gallon fish aquarium! They had all kind of wires hooked up to it, and had it connected to a computer looking thing. Ol’ Donovan’s Brain could still “communicate” and eventually took over some folks, if I remember right, making ‘em do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. It was a hoot! I hope to heck they NEVER learn to do that. I personally hope they never learn to “store” our minds on computers either. Never able to “download” the electrical impulses from our brains onto some kind of infernal storage unit, to be put into a program so we can still communicate with the living. I don’t wanna’ be a machine.

I know for sure a lot of really rich people are planning on something happening. Walt Disney is on “ice” as is Ted Williams and quite a few other folks with the dollars who thing there’s a chance for a human resurrection one of these days.

When it’s time for me to go, I want to go. I wonder, what will my LAST thought will be? Whatever it is, I won’t be able to share it with any of you guys that are left behind, so I guess I better concentrate on sharing what I want to now, while I still can!! Love and Peace to you all.

Grandfather and the Honey Bees

The last time I ever saw and spoke with my Grandfather in 1992, he was 98 years old. His mind was ravaged by Dementia and his kidneys were failing. Yet, all he could talk about that day were his bees. He wasn’t making much sense about anything else, but for some reason that day he had the bees on his mind. You see, he had been a beekeeper almost all of his life, and he was worried about them. Very worried.

As far back as I can remember there were always bee hives surrounding his old two storied clapboard house. They were not out in some distant field somewhere. They were within feet of the front porch, resting on large flat rocks that Grandpa had brought down behind a mule from near the top of “Johnny” Mountain which loomed tall just across Uncle Lark’s corn field straight out in front of the home place.

They were neat little white painted wooden boxes, with another one of the flat rocks on top. Simplicity in design beyond today’s comprehension, but workable nonetheless. I used to be mesmerized as a child watching these tireless workers fly in and out, and in and out of the little hole cut in the bottom of the wooden box, which served as their one entrance and exit from the hive. I could watch them for hours on end and never tire of the wonderment of their movements and the soliloquy of their buzzing symphony.

They would zip around my head as I sat on the front porch swing, and I once made the mistake of swatting one of them when he got too close. Not only did I get a sting from the bee, but a lecture from Grandpa. “They won’t hurt you, if you don’t hurt them first” he said. “They’re out helpers, and you gotta let ‘em be” I had to take this advice literally, coming from a man who more often than not would rob a hive of bees wearing no extra clothing besides a heavy pair of leather gloves. He talked to them as he took out the honey, telling them he was leaving enough for them to survive the winter. Talked and hummed all the while.

But late that afternoon in 1992 he was worried about them.

“Will you take care of the bees this year?” he asked “I just don’t think I will be up to it”

“And mind you, don’t swat none of them, we need them every one”

“Sure Grandpa” I answered. “I’ll take care of them”

Now we are looking at the very real prospect that something is very wrong with our Honey bees. The populations are disappearing, and with them the possibility of apple and peach trees that don’t get pollinated, corn fields and soy bean crops that may be lost, perennials that may not bloom again. How important these creatures, who we hardly ever notice, unless they sting us, really are to our society. If they were all to disappear today, would humanity survive? We may find out unless the energies of our government and scientist hone in on what it is exactly that is making them disappear.

I remember nothing so well as the sweet taste of the fresh harvested honeycomb, and how the honey would drip from the edges of my mouth when I bit into it. I would hate for my grandchildren and their grandchildren to never have that chance. I personally feel like I have let my Grandpa down because when I spoke with him that day in 1992, I thought it was just the ramblings of an errant mind, and I didn’t think anymore about it.

But Grandpa knew how important these insects were. “They’re our helpers, we need them everyone” he had said.

We certainly do, and all of us had better realize it before it’s too late.