Thomas Jefferson is my favorite writer of all time. He was not a good public speaker but he sure knew how to put pen to paper. He was also a very prolific writer. His archive spans thousands of letters and treatises about a wide variety of topics. He loved studying history as his library showed but more so he loved dreaming of the future.
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. So good night! I will dream on.
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams August 1, 1816
Anyone who has been around RJsCorner know that I proudly share several of the traits above with Jefferson. Because of my Aspergers traits I am not a good speaker. It just doesn’t come naturally to me. But I am constantly thinking and writing about what is on my mine. I kind of let a milestone go by here in that I wrote my 3,000th post here a few months ago. I never dreamed I would occupy RJsCorner as long as I have! All my life, or at least since Mr. Shuler, my high school history teacher, got me hooked I have studied American history. Up until a few years ago the ten foot wide bookshelf here in my study was filled with history books, now I have many in e-book form on my Kindle reader.
But most of all I am a dreamer of the future. For that reason I refuse to believe that our current dark times are here to stay. Like so often in the past the sun will eventually come up again in America. We have many good days ahead of us. But to make that happen all of us not on the fringes of society need to take back our government processes via the vote. We can no longer allow the fringes, neither left nor right, to elect our leaders who will decide the direction we take. As being proved now, that is just too dangerous a scheme.
Most of the problems we face today including healthcare for all, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, full employment are very solvable problems once we break the gridlock that is preventing us for implementing the solutions. All we have to do is to get over our stubbornness of thinking we have to invent everything and then to look for shining examples from the rest of the world to see a path forward in these areas.
The future is bright indeed if only we take the steps necessary to make it happen.
There just seems to be one bad thing after another happening in America today. It is hard to stay optimistic about our future. Our current Oval Office occupant is inciting hatred and ignorance among his “followers” so now they are trying to kill the people he does not like. Some seem to have gulped down the cool-aid he is serving by the gallon! It just seems to get worse and worse as each day passes. I am a very strong advocate of Thomas Jefferson’s quote “Hope is sweeter than despair” so I look for hope especially during these trying times. I know basic change, even when it appears rather suddenly, will take time to overcome especially when the wackos seem to control everything. But I have latched onto a reason for hope. To understand that read the excerpts below, and I would encourage you to read the whole source if you have the time:
I don’t know why I seem to be so fixated on sounds lately let alone poultry stuff. My daily and weekly posts here are RJsCorner are now named after sounds (cackle and squawk) that chickens make. I need to get to the underlying reason for this. 🙂 I lost my hearing thirty years ago, and since then my brain has forgotten what many sounds sound like. Sadly one of those areas is musical instruments. I used to play the guitar, not terribly well but to my own satisfaction, and I really enjoyed that pleasure. Now when I see a musical instrument being played, I struggle unsuccessfully to remember the sounds they make.
When I was young my dreams were often a result of the many fictional books I read. My favorite authors during those years were John Steinbeck and Jack London. These two guys took me to places I never knew existed and to people very different from me. When I got a little older I started dreaming about what I might become when I grew up. My first infatuation was with astronomy. I read everything understandable for a young teenager about the topic. A friend of mine gave me his old copies of “Scientific American” and I devoured them. I also read autobiographies of people like Einstein, Jefferson, and Edison. They inspired me but I never dreamed that I could be like them. My self-esteem was just to low for those lofty goals.