Do you ever wonder what it REALLY must have been like for the Revolutionary Founding Members (there really were some women!) of America? I mean we get a History that is mostly sanitized, appealing to the adventure-spirited, with lots of highlights of winning escapades pulsating with talented minds, robust muscle, strength of will and determination, ignited with a passion for change so great that (what must surely have seemed at first) defeat and peril lay in every step, written word, or conspiratorial letters and mysterious meetings. Perhaps that is the way of it - change, I mean. Somehow I feel that we are more “isolationistic” in our thinking today than ever before (I know you’re thinking “what about Iraq?” - that is altogether another tale, one that is rife with treason, lies, selfish ends, egocentric governments and plain ignorance). Yet, we put those people in their respective offices in Washington, D.C. —and we could have taken them out, but no one wanted to be bothered; so now we’re just a bunch of finger-pointing hacks instead of patriot-minded citizens).

I try to envision what the turn of the 20th Century must have beenlike for those coming through the Industrial Revolution. They could not even have conceived of something called a “heart transplant”. I mean right away, the Religionists would exclaim how evil it would be to remove any part of one human being and place it in another, who would have died had it not become available. What became available was a mind ready and willing to accept such an extreme rationale. (even the Stem-Cell opponents pale in comparison, now that we’ve had time to assimilate this almost inhuman undertaking).

We are, at present, our own worst enemy. Without a commitment (that is more than mere words and lofty peace conferences, whose real intent is more for the writing of history on the Presidential blunderings, scandals and lame minded activities of the present administration, burrowing its own hole for burial in some time capsule--I wonder what those living, learning and loving at that time line in History will think of us - we enabled this farce to proceed when we looked the other way. Soon we will not have the choice of doing or not doing, saying or not saying.)

If we choose to stay rooted to the spot we’re in, human events and scientific technology will move us out of the way. One way or another, change occurs—that is the only certainty we have…the certainty of uncertain times. Yet when someone rises with a scenario of what will become our future if we allow this or that conduct to continue, to close our eyes to the ever present genocides, the ruin of our cities, the decimation of our bodies due to the quality we have come to just accept (as we do everything else that needs revamping) with the attitude of “but what can I do?”

When honest to God men and women asked that question of themselves, a hundred years ago, or over 200 years ago, they did so punctuated by acts of civil disobedience. We don’t have to shift into revolutionary garb. With the technology today, we can send a robot out to check on a suspicious package (a bomb?) instead of a real live human being. We must become more concentrated in our objectives. Therein is the victory. There is nothing so powerful as an Idea who time has come. Look at the Space Program. We are sending men and women to repair, among other feats incomprehensible to most, broken tiles on a Space Station. Work that requires a man/woman be outside in space, with a pair of pliers repairing telescopes! What we want to achieve, WE DO. We are learning. But it is too slow and that slowness is going to be felt sooner than many realize.

I feel like the fabled Rip Van Winkle sometimes when I look around me and hear and see what is transpiring and at what speeds! There is no more time for fence-sitting. Every age has the opportunity to be at its best, when times are at their worst. And just as those individuals a hundred years ago led the way to the once thought impossible advances that we live with on a daily basis now, we, too, can lead the way, with firm, wise and compassionate thinking and actions.

By our deeds we shall be known.