Greetings members and readers.

There has been too much time passed since I have offered a posting.  For that, I apologize.  It has been a difficult winter here.

My Mother passed away last month and it has been a difficult time. One fraught with anxiety, sadness, a time of remembrance and an awareness of lost opportunities to share with her in her last days.  She was 92, not sick, just tired and ready to meet her maker. There may have been some dementia involved, but not the severe kind that might have shown itself down the road.

The death of a parent is bone jarring.  It seems that the rock is gone and the empty seat at the table is glaring.  So much to do: to overcome grief, re-organize the family tree all the while understanding painfully that now, we, the siblings are left to carry the family mantle, and deal with funerals and estate issues that, thankfully, my sisters are handling since they are on location and I am not.

Once one gets past those above mentioned chores and challenges, it can give one time and the impetus to consider that life, recently lost to us.

My Mom was born almost a hundred ago and endured and / or participated in tumultuous times.  Post depression, World War II, post war inflation and recovery, the sixties which was a turmoil of another kind, racial strife and reconciliation to those people of color, women’s rights and women in the workplace, the Vietnam era, where I could have been involved or killed, etc.

She had seen the evolution of flight, TV, Moon landings, the introduction of computers, a higher level of female suffrage, cell phones, social media and a great movement toward welfare in all things.

She worked hard, put food on the table, and improved herself with her husband that was a wonderful man who lived 96 years.  He was a tail gunner in the pacific war theater and later an architect, a degree he earned on the GI bill.

They did well as entrepreneurs, husband and wife and shepherd to us children.

This writing seems to be a tribute to them and perhaps it is but the message in all of this that I want to really share is that they, from early in their relationship, looked to no one to do for them. They took personal responsibility early on, to parent, work, and succeed.  They did this with focus, determination, tenacity and sacrifice.

They embraced honor, work, Christianity, parental responsibility, morality, love and caring for us and themselves along with community, (the Civitan club, the womans club), design clubs for both architectural interests and interior design interests.  They both earned their expertise, both were business owners, and they both towed the line with early debt, and a successful end to all of that.

We, the siblings, their community, and their country are left better off in many ways because of them and their practiced beliefs, all of which was based on earning one’s future and a preference to “personal responsibility” to work, family, God and country.

I suppose that if we could isolate a few important missing links in our society today, that they are all listed above.

They lived a life of observed and honored persuasion to personal responsibility in the above mentioned ways.

It gives one pause to realize that free stuff, failure to see the benefits of honorable work, that the lack of productive work creates low self esteem and a subservient lifestyle, that the insistence that life’s problems are always someone else’s fault and that an intolerance for christian principles, law enforcement, and a reverence to the country that our fathers, mothers and forefathers helped build, leads to the mess that we are presently experiencing.

There is no such thing as free stuff.  There is nothing produced if no one works. There will be no stuff, free or not.

Below are a few quotes that we might refresh in our heads.

**** “Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask what you can do for your country”:   John Kennedy

**** “A democratic republic can only be kept by a moral society”:  John Adams, Thomas Jefferson

**** “Walk softly and carry a big Stick”:  Teddy Roosevelt

**** “All things cometh to he who waiteth if he worketh like hell while he waiteth”:   My Mom

There many types of eulogies and one of them for my Mom is:  “She was a great American”

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For all you naysayers, I say this: America is a great country, it is founded on the miracle of the Constitution.

Capitalism is a great way of life, it allows you to sacrifice today in order to learn, earn, achieve and save for tomorrow.

If you are feeling left out, know this: One can not succeed with his face stuck in face book, criticizing others for their unfounded opinion.  Wailing and lamenting about your skin color or your sexual confusion is only one more distraction and rationalization for your lack of direction or for your sloth.

If you are falling by the wayside in a country chock full of opportunity, it is only because you have hitched your hopes to the wrong star.  Opportunity does not often knock on your door, it has to be earned, sought out and seized and there are not many lessons taught in this regard on social media. If you can not stand the heat, you will be kicked out of the kitchen and that will be the result of your failure to understand how to achieve a fruitful and rewarding life in the only country in the history of the world that allows and promises the “individual”, such opportunity.

Be aware:  Observe success and identify the reasons for it!

Beware:  Be careful for what you wish, because you might get it!

TPP