Happy Mother’s Day! Did you call your Mom?
Out of here this morning, thus no post yesterday. Heading to Panama City Florida for a week of training and hopefully some golf and beer drinking. Ergo this post must be short.
Sad to leave my Mom and Dad this morning. I know my Mom is frustrated because I am so far away, plus both my parents are at the age where one cannot take future visits just for granted, which is a frightening thing. I know too my sister feels stressed taking care of my folks and wishes she could have someone to share the burden here. However I guess it comes to how one can do right by the elders and also live one’s own life. No good answer but I will have to struggle through me thinks. Good news is this new job will give me more opportunities to return to the US for short periods.
Being in the US for me is like wearing a an old jacket in the closet. It fits, its comfortable, but you know deep down in your heart it does not look right on you. It’s out of place with the fashion style you keep.
Being on planes has allowed me to read a lot. Finished American Theocracy this weekm by Kevin Phillips. A guy on my e-mail list pilloried the book, saying “Why should I read a book that attacks Christianity?”. My response is that Phillips book does not attack the belief of evangelical Christianity at all. Rather he attacks the uses and misuses that individuals have made of those beliefs and how the church has lost its way in focusing on governmental rather than individual salvation. His section about the US and its debt is right on the mark IMHO.
There is also a point he makes that Americans might want to take a hard look at: What if the US is not a chosen nation, on a special mission for God as many Americans believe, but rather just a another nation in the cycle of history who has reached its zenith and now slowly recedes into the annals of history? No answer for that yet, but perhaps some indicators of it are in this column my Friedman. The damn NY Times requires a subscription for it, but the thrust is that because of oil wealth and US dependence on it, the overall hegemony of the US is being impeded by competitors and that the realities of getting energy are getting in the way of democratic advances………I’ll publish it this evening-gotta run!
