We'll Marry Our Fortunes Together

So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies... 

In these United States, if we are truly as lost as we have appeared to be for the first two decades of this century, engaging in an ever-escalating, unabating tit-for-tat exchange of insults and invective that fueled the historically unprecedented attempted insurrection of the Congress by the President less than two weeks ago, then there is no point in continuing with the Founders' experiment. A Republic requires some tending to, which is never easy.  It is ours, as the great Benjamin Franklin reportedly observed, for only as long as we may keep it.  

While I shall never be mistaken for an optimist, pie-eyed or any other variety, I choose to believe that a basis exists for continuing to press forward with the Founders' experiment. I have five grandchildren, the oldest of whom will not be four until May.  I have skin in the game. Whether you have grandchildren, you too have skin in the game. Each of us does. 

It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw...

America is found in Frank Miller, his wife Alice, and the boys and girls of all ages from the Millers' Dallas, Texas neighborhood who responded to Alice's invitation to join Frank for a catch.  

America is found in Ted Lumpkin, Jr. and his fellow Tuskegee Airmen, who during WW II simultaneously fought against fascism in Europe and racism in the United States Armed Forces and kicked the hell of out of both foes. On December 26, 2020, less than one week shy of his 101st birthday, Mr. Lumpkin died in a Los Angeles hospital. His reported cause of death was COVID-19 complications. 

America is found in Landon Hacker. Nine years ago, he was a drug addict living on the streets of Camden, New Jersey.  On January 13, 2021, Chief Justice Rabner of the New Jersey Supreme Court swore him in as a member of the Bar of the State of New Jersey. 

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike...

Less than twenty years ago, on October 20, 2001, a boisterous crowd gathered in Madison Square Garden for The Concert for New York City, a benefit to honor the City's first responders, their families, and those killed on September 11.  Among the highlights of the show was the set David Bowie performed. At the time of the September 11 attacks, he lived with his wife, Iman, on Central Park South. Neither of them was an American by birth but both became New Yorkers, engrained into the fabric of the City as it was into them.  His performance of "Heroes" during his set brought the house down.  

His set also included a stirring rendition of Simon and Garfunkel's "America", sung by an Englishman who had not been born here but who sang every line as if he had experienced each firsthand.  He sang it as a love song to a country that may not have been the land of his birth but was most assuredly a land that he loved.  

If it is true that America has been lost, then let us make it our job, yours and mine, to find it.  

All come to look for America...

-AK