I Now Pronounce You...

I now pronounce you Dyson and wife.

Mrs. Jaygerardtoday insisted that the vacuum she needed would provide many years of cleaning nirvana, a little pricey for me, the cheapskate, who could easily overlook a few hundred yards of dust-bunnies in favor of the cheapest price at Big Lots.

True to her word, she loves the machine, we are dust-bunny free and she has jokingly remarked she would “marry it”.

Strange how we casually use the “M” word, marry, especially in this age when communities, states and whole countries are wrestling with its definition that for thousands of years had been clearly understood.

Over the past few decades a tiny fraction of society has successfully been able to maneuver media and judiciaries towards far-left leaning liberal thoughts on the matter.

More traditional beliefs, still in a majority, continue to hold onto a man-woman insistence as definitions continue in flux in courtrooms and legislatures across the country.

The future is still being written but in some way I can now see how the traditionalist’s metaphor of the Pandora’s Box has slowly opened, with creatures escaping and encircling us.

Just this week a judge in Utah has suggested that the ban on plural marriage, polygamy, may be in part unconstitutional and has made an effort to reverse it. Somehow I suspect the average woman would not find this arrangement the most acceptable, but women have put up with worse throughout history.

Just ask my spouse.

The most bizarre related story I have read, to date, has been the “marriage” of a woman in England, Amanda Rodgers, who wedded her beloved Jack Russell terrier, Sheba, in a ceremony held in Croatia.

As Amanda has told the British press she proposed to Sheba and the pooch accepted by wagging her tail.

According to news reports, the ceremony was attended by 200 guests.

Eddie (Moose) from the TV Show “Frazier” couldn’t make it. He died.

So now do we not only have cross-species marriages, we have same-sex, cross species couplings.

Will the fun ever end?

This brings us to the next level, human and machine.

Spousy has not only expressed her “love” for the Dyson, she has utter the “M” word for everything from coffee makers to snow shovels.

She has become a hardware-technology hussy.

Her latest flirtation is the beloved Asus tablet.

As quickly as possible she relaxes in her Laz-Y-Girl each evening cuddling and hugging her newest love until so exhausted she enters slumberland.

I have finally accepted this new arrangement.

Last week, while she snoozed, I snuck a member of the clergy into our home and had him pronounce her and the flatscreen officially united.

Awaking later she was curious as to how she became covered with rice.

Mr. Dyson took care of the mess.

Now we have a nifty 3 way arrangement, Man-Woman and Machine.

Pandora, open the box a little wider please.

The Contrarian Falls Head-First into Social Media

I was never much on following the herd, not because I found others disdainful, I just had a curiosity to see if there was anything else of interest that was being overlooked by the masses.

This contrarian view could lead to indecision and immobility, but I have never feared new thought, rather I embraced changes, innovations, improvements and technologies but always with a firm belief that mankind was inherently flawed but with constant tweaking goals could be achieved.

I don't view Contrarian Thought a disorder, rather I consider it a vehicle that enables us to maneuver through life a little quicker than those whose impetuousness and lack of forethought cause unnecessary hurdles.

What's the rush? We'll get there and hopefully without all of any undue stress and hurdle jumping.

I sometimes look in frustration at the jackrabbits whose well-intentioned enthusiasm prove the age-old adage that "there is never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over".

My ideal contrarian would be the tortoise who finishes while enjoying the surroundings along the race path. 

Eventually every artist must put down the brush and declare their masterpiece "finished".  There is the danger that the contrarian artist could continue on the touch up, even after the painting is sold and they feel it necessary to show up at the owners' residence, oils in hand, requesting permission to do "just one more thing".

How does a Contrarian find a fit in Social Media?  Speaking for myself I can only say its like jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge and praying the bungee cord holds. No time for forethought, you're pushed into the pool and it becomes "swim kid or sink".

I envisioned the pace of SM (social media for brevity, thank you) to be similar to feeding a three-year-old a breakfast of Captain Crunch, Hershey bars, Marshmallows and hot dogs then taking him to an amusement park and having him ride a Tilt-A-Whirl placed on top of a 10 story Roller-Coaster.

I don't believe this is too far from the truth.

Nerve-wracking, frightening, nauseating but also curious, exciting and, yes fun!

As I venture in to this foreign soil I will certainly log my discoveries, of course with my own somewhat acerbic viewpoint.


Hopefully the bungee is secured.

 

 

It's your Thing.

Everyone has “a thing”, something in their interest, work, hobby, physical characteristic that identifies them to everyone?

We often pigeon-hole people in our life based on their interests and hobbies, appearances and past experiences, and everything in-between.

 My boss, Joseph A. Carter, I compartmentalize as a rabid politicophile as his interest in politics and activism is something I have not witnessed since the 1970’s (and I work for a newspaper). He also has a love for baseball, music, designer beer and grilling (although his fascination with beer can chicken seems to have wavered).

We can discuss a movie, television program or a particular singer and I await the inevitable “do you know he/she is a liberal (or conservative) etc. He too compartmentalizes in an abbreviated way, right and left, conservative or liberal.  It does seem to streamline and simplify things a bit.

Back in 1986 there were a series of commercials promoting California Raisins. Hip, anthropomorphized (wonder how long I waited to use that big word) musical raisins sang “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” all to promote the benefits of dried up grape eating for the California Raisin Advisory Board.

My mother made the fatal error of announcing to the family that she thought the raisins were cute. The next few birthdays, Mother’s day, Christmas and assorted holidays found her overwhelmed with all the advertising nick-knacks one could find at Spencer’s gifts in the mall.

Given the choices available at that store, Dancing Raisin clocks and figurines were the only PG rated item available.

My mother would never throw any gift away, no matter how hideous, and she could never understand how my brothers and I would swap Christmas presents if what the other had suited our needs. She kept every gift, not as a hoarder, but out of cherishing the thoughtfulness and love behind the present.

She passed a few years ago and my brother, Johhny Fangs, lives in the family homestead.  Just today he tweeted me a pix of some figurines he found at the house.

Mrs. Jaygerardtoday for years had been identified by her interest in cats. This was a love for the creatures, not a strange addiction found in inter-city row homes where neighbors report unusual smells only to discover a few hundred felines running rampant with a decomposing octogenarian on the kitchen floor.  
She too was a recipient of numerous figurines, coffee mugs, salt and pepper shaker sets until one day she calmly announced “enough is enough, there is no more room in this house and it’s just too weird”. The collection slowly disappeared onto the basement IKEA shelves, collecting dust and awaiting an eventual yard sale.

I have decided to formally announce my decision to make something “my thing”. 

My family never knows what to give me as a gift, not that I have a Warren Buffett bank account and can purchase anything I so desire, I just never express an interest that can tie in to gift giving.
 
I will now make Christmas, Birthdays and Father’s Day easy on family and friends with my new interest: collecting gold and silver.

Feel free to gift wrap as much as you wish.  I promise that like my mother I too will never throw it away and unlike my spouse I will never grow weary and retire it to the basement IKEA shelves.

K?

A few years ago I had taken a college course in Criminal Justice. 

I had no interest in becoming an officer of the law, it was an elective that I believed would benefit me greatly.  I thought it would be the only college course I had ever taken where knowledge gained could be retained and applied for many years; translation, how I could learn to beat a traffic citation. 

Well worth the price per credit hour.

Well my plan backfired.  I dropped the course, as I found the textbook to be very boring for these reasons:

·         The author learned a new word, “paradigm” and somehow found a way to insert it into every sentence. I am still uncertain if I actually know the true meaning.

·         I was convinced that Cop-Speak was only in acronyms.  I know this sounds as if I am exaggerating but the text was so overloaded with 3 and 4 letter words that the course credits should also be applied to foreign language studies.

These days, especially with “texting & tweeting-mania” running a muck, our every thought, deed or misdeed needs to be shared in writing, (or vine and youtube videos) and instantaneous, so I guess brevity and speed becomes paramount.

I have studied Latin (well I sat in a classroom for a year), as well as 4 years of Spanish and I am still unable to determine if the contractors installing my new roof are actually plotting against me.

Now I must resign myself to learning a new language, namely acronyms. 

Does everyone over the age of 40 realize that there are currently almost 1000 acronyms used in texting?

Truth be told 1000 is probably larger than my total vocabulary (including my Latin & Spanish words) but current medical science suggests that as we age, mind-expanding activities, like learning to play an instrument, a new language and doing crossword puzzles may help keep us from forgetting where we left the car keys (or the car, or the spouse) so I guess I need to check Amazon for the "Acronyms for Dummies" book and start cracking the code.

I understand that there are character restrictions when tweeting, so choosing the right words to express oneself can be challenging, acronyms abound.

Texting, however, provides plenty of opportunity (while seated in your office cubicle) for one to ridicule and detail how their co-workers and boss are so clueless and inferior that acronyms are really not needed unless others are relentlessly spying on you while you are screwing off.

As is every other thing in life, once something new is introduced into the society, and before you have an understanding of what it is all about, there will always be someone at the ready to quickly alter the existing and create a new paradigm (did I get it right?).

This is now occurring with acro-speak.

Just when I am finally getting to learn how to hit the correct keys on my Galaxy 4 without having spell check insert words making me sound even dumber, a co-worker acknowledged one of my tweets with the letter “K”.  I thought it was due to his lack of sobriety but over the course of the next few days he repeated the acknowledgement using just the letter “K” in additional texts.

He was too lazy to preface with the letter “O”, thus he was acronyming the acronym.

I was pondering just how lazy this lunkhead was until I started to receive similar responses from others, including my own daughter.

Wow, I guess my life isn’t as busy as others. I actually have excessive time on my hands to include the “O” in OK. 

I am beginning to feel slothful.

I will conform, get in line and understand the new-speak and all of its variations. 
I know my mind will also benefit from the mental exercises and one day I will remember where I left my car keys and my spouse.

The Do-Over

Many years ago I saw a television interview with a very, very famous man, (now passed on) summarizing events in his life.

He said something that was quite shocking i.e. he told the interviewer that he had absolutely no regrets about his life, none whatsoever.

I cannot imagine someone so senior, alive on this planet for so many decades and never having to wake up in the morning cringing upon the realization that he may misbehaved or had misplaced something during an evening of celebration (car keys, credit cards, pants). 

Didn’t he ever insult every coworker after drinking all the egg nog at the company Christmas party then pass out on the floor, sans pants, under the mistletoe.

Has he never brought a large box of vino to the family Thanksgiving gathering, began talking politics and religion only to find himself awakening in a cornfield in New Jersey?

The only reasonable explanation is that he developed some form of senior forgetfulness preventing him from reliving a regrettable past.

I was thinking about “day after regrets” after we celebrated July 4^th recently, our nation’s birthday.

With all those signers of the Declaration of Independence can we not just assume that at least 1 signer would have awakened on July 5^th with a “My God What Have I Done” moment.

It is actually nice not having any regrets and taking responsibility for bad behavior.  I have noticed a trend slowly changing our attitude allowing us to remove shame from our personal integrity.  It seems only those politicians in Asian countries now show remorse for very bad decisions in their lives. 

Newscasts always produce some political type in Japan or along the Asian ring tearfully begging forgiveness from fellow countrymen for an egregious act. We watch in anticipation to see if the anguished penitent will produce a short Hari Kari sword as restitution for what most of us would consider a minor infraction by today’s standards.

He should come to America. Not only could he teach us something about personal integrity, he would be such a political oddity that we’d create a TV reality show for him.

Actually now Americans have ramped-up something called a “do-over”. We also have embraced another term called “going forward”.  Both are cleverly designed to eliminate any discomfort for being such a screw up.

Politicians and their handlers are majestic in the way they turn their bad behaviors away from scorn and ridicule to a public just waiting to embrace and cuddle them like a hurt child for doing something wrong. After all don’t we all make mistakes? We can’t be too harsh or judgmental.  Everyone gets a second chance, a do over so that going forward they know the error of their ways and can avoid future pitfalls.

This always seems to work when your party favorite is the bad dog.

The opposition wants to whack your nose with the newspaper and banish you to the doghouse.

I know a man, we call him “do-over Bob”, one of the most intelligent, creative souls on this planet.  Self-taught he is just about the best printer, graphic artist and computer whiz I have ever known. He is instantly like by almost everyone he meets but he has one major flaw that always caused a problem for him in his print business; he could not proofread causing far too many flyers, forms, letterheads and envelopes to be tossed into the trash bin at a financial loss for him.

No one ever said “that’s Ok, I’ll accept this garbage and send it along to my customers so I can look un-professional”. No Bob accepted responsibility and reran the job to the customer’s satisfaction, and to his financial loss.

I recall my first financial loss. As an 11 year-old growing up in Philly we had something that arrived in corner stores each summer, the “pimple ball”.  It was a white hollow rubber ball with raised bumps thus the name “pimple”.

Before the air was finally extinguished we played street games like stickball, wall ball, wireball, boxball, handball, curbball and step ball.  When the bounce finally left we cut it in half and played half-ball using your mother’s broom stick.

One summer day I was practicing my step ball skills on Mrs. Cumberland’s steps.  After I had broken her window my parents, and Mrs. Cumberland, were both curious as to why I decided not to practice on home turf, traveling halfway up the block to the home of a neighbor I hardly knew.

I didn’t get a “do-over”.  There was no “that’s alright, you learned a lesson now going forward……”.

I got punished for being such a lunkhead, banished to my room and made to make restitution.

It is now time to implement similar practices to our elected officials if there is ever any hope for real progress.

I don’t suggest the severe measures taken by our friends in the Far East, but maybe we could send our Senators, Congressmen and Commander-in-Chief to their rooms until suitable corrective measures can be taken.

We will get to say things like “Go to the Lincoln bedroom, Mr. President and think about what you have done.  No golf for you”!

Step aside Dear Abby

Gone are the days when even the simplest question, or bar bet, necessitated a drive to the library. One could spend hours searching through Dewey decimals, hopefully finding  the book or magazine you needed had not been checked out, then actually writing down your answer and head back home to complete a book report, or collect on a wager.

Now within nanoseconds the wisdom of the universe is as close as your keyboard.

The computer and the Internet is our “genie in a flat screen”, there to do our bidding on a whim. 

Knowledge surpassing the ancient library at Alexandria, or even the Vatican, and yet there exists a component of this wonderment containing a glitch preventing it from ever becoming our master, despite all the ominous sci-fi predictions (like HAL in 2001 Space Odyssey).

The fly in the ointment is in the delivery system, specifically the ISP, certainly not a “HAL”, more like the “Fredo” of the industry.

I have been on the Internet a long time, maybe even longer than AL Gore, and have tried almost every available service since the get-go.
  
Recent university graduates are favored never knowing the dial up days when you would begin downloading a photo, then take in a double feature, steak and "Bloomin’ Onion" at the Outback and return home just in time to grab the print as it was exiting the tray.

These were our salad days when we considered state of the art to be the “Hamster-Dance”.

The Internet becomes friendlier each day.  I only wish many of my ancestors could have lived to witness where this technological marvel has brought us. 

I believe that many of them would stand in awe the same way they had at the advent of radio, television, the toaster and the demise of the telephone party line.

With all that high speed and accumulating wiki-knowledge, I occasionally appreciate pushing myself away from the monitor just to get back in touch with my humanness. 

My human emotions surface the moment I dial my Internet Service Provider to discuss another puzzling incorrect billing statement; knowing full well I will be attempting a resolution using the greater part of a vacation day and a never-ending "please hold for a few moments" recording.

I keep calling my provider just because I have to wait a few extra hours for my newspaper’s website to load.  This is due, I am told, to our company's attempt to place 30-50 flashing, jumping, blinking, video-ads on the main page.
   
Hedge fund investors, accountants and ad reps that have pushed aside editorial integrity for advertising placement, now run newspapers.

Yes, I am no communist, I know it takes bucks to run a newspaper, even a digital one, but why can’t we just move all those jumping ads next to items no one under the age of 75 reads today; like Dear Abby, obits and the letters to the editor.

Newspaper handlers tend to salivate over any new idea that will propel them into appearing current and hip. They long for a piece of the youth market. These idealists are convinced that when the current batch of seniors finally move on, the current future octogenarians will have embraced digital publishing as their preferred choice for news and views.  Today's teens and hipsters, they believe, will be able to help them maintain a healthy on line customer base.

This all sounds ideal until the realization that today’s young’uns have little desire to follow something as boring as news on their smart phones.  Their choice goes even beyond what the elders call “social media” (i.e. what the parents and grannies do now that they finally left MySpace & AOL and got Facebooked).

Kids choices have moved light-years beyond to avoid the peering eyes of their helicopter parents.  Their one constant appears to be video gaming.  Youth of all ages still seem to embrace it.

My suggestion is that publishers rearrange ad placement elsewhere and make it interactive.  Program those annoying pop ups to become targets, just like an old video arcade game.

We all win. The youth will finally open a newspaper, Ad reps can truthfully convince business owners that someone is actually reading on line newspapers, and my only reason for contacting Comcast will be to complain about their billing.

Step aside Dear Abby; I am taking aim at an IKEA ad.

What's your set-point?

All around Pennsylvania I constantly see markings on autos, homes and sportswear touting affiliation as an alumni or parent of a Penn State’er.

Regardless of a very embarrassing recent history Penn State still instills a sense of pride among graduates. For many, the years spent there will be the best of their lives.

There is a set-point in everyone’s life that may be considered “our very best years”. This summer just sit by any group at a picnic and listen to the conversations.  For some it was their high school football team, for others their military service, college days, summer camp, beach vacations, Woodstock; you name it.

I never participated in that kind of talk, believing I have no desire to be lumped in with any group longing to be stuck in days gone by. Today and tomorrow have always proved the best for me.

Most people become frozen in a particular decade, even if they profess not. Choices in music, clothing and inflections in their conversation can be a give-away, but hairstyles can be the acid test to identify the truth.

As I travel around I still see some people sporting the ol’ flat-top, others the big hair from the 80’s. I occasionally find the classic “mullet”, after all I do live at the gateway of Pennsyltuckey.

As I mock others I realize what a hypocrite I am, if only my words matched my actions.

This epiphany came about just after my most recent haircut.

I learn to adapt well to most changes however, when I find a doctor, dentist or auto mechanic I like, I am loyal for life; that is until they usually retire, then I sit Shiva, mourning the loss.

The same goes for my barber. 

I have had 4 barbers in my life, coincidentally the exact same number as my primary physicians, dentists and auto mechanics.

After barber #3, I went on a frantic search for his replacement.  Wanting to support the locals, as much as possible, I came across what appeared to be a converted shed run by a 90 year-old country farmer who has but one style of cut to offer i.e. the old bowl placed on top of the head and let the trimming begin.

Since I wanted something a little more fashionable than the Moe Howard (and my hair somewhat resembles Larry Fine when overgrown) I continued searching until I landed on Vinnie, “Barber to the Mob”.

That same week I was searching, Vinnie turned on the barber pole and opened his door for business.  His establishment had a very unique décor.  Rather than the usual photos of hair styles to choose from, Vinnie covered the walls with movie photos of mobsters. 

Godfather, Goodfellas, The Sopranos, Robert Di Niro, George Raft and Joe Pesci reigned supreme.

Vinnie himself has a “mobster-like” voice right from central casting. Very friendly and affable, somewhere deep down you know you have to compliment the cut or else you envision Vinnie telling you that you could be “sleeping with the fishes”.

On every visit Vinnie asks my preference.  My response is always the same; “get rid of the Larry Fine, slight cut all around and make it appear as though I still have some hair. In other words do your best Mojo on me.

When the scissors clipped their last hair, and the big hand mirror is brought out to display the final result, I know I can count on looking like a throwback to the early 60’s; Larry Fine gone.

    

I now resemble Beaver Clever.

Well at least it is now summer and I can wear a Phillies hat for a few weeks until some hair grows back.

I would say something but I don’t want to disappoint Vinnie, or sleep with the fishes.

A car by any other name is still a lemon

Humorist Jean Shepherd once related a personal story to author/cartoonist Shel Silverstein about how he was constantly teased as a kid because of his very feminine sounding name.

Silverstein wrote music about a boy with a girl’s name and performed it at the home of a friend who took the song to California, performed it before a captive (literally) audience at a prison and thus in the early 1970’s “A Boy Named Sue” was born.  It became a huge hit for Johnny Cash who performed it live at San Quentin.

In the book of Genesis in the Bible, the story goes that Adam was given the task of naming all the animals. As a kid I understood that as not naming a giraffe by its species, rather, I thought Adam’s task was daunting as he had to give this giraffe the name “Fred” that giraffe “Ethel” and so on.

He could get woozy and pass out if he found a mound of ants.

When would he ever find time to “share that apple” with Eve?

No wonder they lived so long in the Old Testament.

I have a whole flock of females in my family whose names are so unique that I could never find an imprinted coffee mug at a mall kiosk to give to any of them as a gift.  Seriously my wife, daughter, daughter-in-law and all 5 granddaughters have “normal” sounding names but not common enough for the mass market.

Recently I did see an imprinted keychain with the name Keshandra. It was the last one on the rack

. 

There were others? Who could have thunk it?

I bring up the naming of things because I was curious as to a car commercial I saw about a Volkswagen product called the “Tiguan”.

I found that the crossover vehicle, Tiguan, is a name combining the “crossing-over” of two species, the Tiger and the Iguana.

Having been an owner of two models of “superior” German engineering, I will expect to see the Tiguan perform with the same reliability as my former vehicles. 

I would have to park them at the top of a steep hill so I could push-start those lemons in order be able to drive to my auto mechanic.

The microbus was once towed 11 times in 2 months.  My insurance agent warned me that I was about to become the 1^st person in the history of Nationwide Insurance to have his towing privileges revoked.

With my luck with the folks at volks, if I were to purchase a Tiguan I would have to change the name.

How about “money-pit”?

Cool Hand Fangs

I comment quite often on food issues, after all like many people, eating has become almost an obsession for me. I could just as easily have kept or acquired many other vices to help ease me over life's little hurdles but food provides an endless amount of choices, is readily available, it's legal, injures no others and it provides comfort; thus the name “comfort food”.
Who ever heard of comfort beer?

I always mentioned my on going battle to win the personal war over girth, but another strange twist came to my attention recently whenever I frequent the local hipster-markets (Trader Joe's & Whole Foods), namely the war going on in my shopping cart at the check out line.

I never realized that not all foods in my basket love one other, actually the check out hipster request that I place some my choices in separate bags, almost like battling siblings being ordered into separate corners of a house by a frustrated mother.

They never seem to explain just why I should choose to have my meats placed in their own canvass bag away from all my other choices but I listen very carefully on each ride home and have yet to hear any commotion between a chicken leg and a can of beans.

I think their screwing with me. They have no other hobbies since no one seems to be “occupying” anyplace at this time.

We all know those hollow leggers who eat all day without remorse. There are no food battles for them.

I have one in particular in my own family, my brother Johnny Fangs.

I can devote volumes to his legacy of consumption but the story I have today is one minor episode in the life of Gobzilla, (the monster who devours gobs and gobs of food hourly).

I thought about Johnny yesterday while watching a Paul Newman movie.

We were kids both away at summer camp and the movie everyone was talking about was “Cool Hand Luke”. There is that memorable scene where Luke (Paul Newman) devours 50 hard boiled eggs on a wager placed by the other chain gang inmates to help pass the time.

I was telling the other campers about Johnny's accomplishments and of course there were many doubters. If they had only noticed that he regularly returned in line for 3^rd 4^th and 5^th helpings they would have saved a few camp dollars when the wagers were placed.

This time it was pancakes.

I lived with him, I new his culinary skill set and to consume 50 pancakes in an hour while washing it all down with a few gallons of milk would be child's play for him.

We were both ready to earn some serious camp bucks.

As the clock ticked away there he was proudly pouring syrup all over his conquest, downing glass after glass of milk with the ease of that skinny Asian hot dog eating champion kid.

Fifty was certainly a stretch but after one hour there he lay on the ground, his big old smile covered in stickiness, wearing a milk mustache holding a fistful of camp dollars and asking if he could get a doggy bag to take back to the cabin.

The rest of us hurled pancakes like Frisbees in a big food fight.
Cool Hand Fangs, the legend continues.

You can go home again.

The Australian journalist Ella Winter once said to Thomas Wolfe “Don’t you know you can’t go home again”. Of course he used that title and the quote is often mistakenly attributed to him.

Obviously today’s Baby-Boomers (along with their Gen-x’ers, Millenniums, Gen y’s and maybe z’s etc) have not paid attention and are beginning to intrude on the living quarters of both the Greatest & Silent Generations as today’s economy, unemployment and daily hardships force the sharing of home, hearth and video games again.

Multi-generational boomer-angers and all those prune juicers together under one roof should prove challenging.

I have heard that there are as much as 90 + million Americans either unemployed or underemployed, and the hope and change promised just a few short years’ ago never actually materialized, with facts and figures shrouded in nothing more than the slick tongues of snake oil salesman.

There is an uneasiness that seems to permeate the spirits of today’s citizens, who for decades believed in the American dream. 

This dream should never waiver; we have sailed through these rough waters before, and can do so once again, when we realize that we truly are the greatest nation on earth.

Immigrants continue to climb walls and dodge bullets to get here, much like many of our ancestors.

And don't forget the men and women who continue to fight for this dream on battlefields.

Yes, in many ways we can go home again.

The answers are out there, and we have 300 million voices that can contribute to the solution.

And a little prayer wouldn’t hurt.