Today I am preparing for a small exhibition of the Wisdom of the Hands program, including the bench for Crystal Bridges. It will be from 6-8 PM at the home of my good friends, Susan and Jim Nelson. A bit of fundraising will take place and my readers are welcome to contribute to the Wisdom of the Hands by sending a check to Clear Spring School. PO Box 511 Eureka Springs, AR USA. Please make note on the check that it is for Wisdom of the Hands. We are a 501-3C charitable organization and all contributions are tax exempt.
Today in Time magazine there is an article about the advantages of our current recession... that it will lead us to a new era of practicality and creativity. It is the official end of the idiocy of the Reagan era and an end to thoughtless consumerism (I hope).
I was explaining yesterday to my students, the advantages of self-employment. First is that you can keep on learning with no limits, and secondly, because you do everything yourself, you can diversify or contract at a moment's notice to fit yourself to the marketplace.
According to the article in Time, "It's time now to be more artisan-enterpriser and less prospector-speculator, to return from Oz to Kansas." Welcome to the world that I have been discussing in the Wisdom of the Hands for years now. I told my students that when I started my business over 30 years ago, that I made a sales trip to Dallas, Texas, and found that nearly everyone was selling something, but no one was making a cotton-picking thing. Now, after a 30 year Reagan induced coma and lapse into laziness and destructive consumerism, it is time to rediscover Kansas. I hear Toto barking at the dead wizard. Click your heals for the wonderful journey home.
Doug,
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong but, why do you always single out Reagan as the apple that spoiled our country. I am just curious, I dislike him and find fault for my own reasons, Mostly I disliked him when he was known as Ronny Reagun from his early CA days however, when he becaume President, I felt just as much negativity but for some reason i still can't get away from how it felt oh so wrong that this is where we are going as a country and thats to hell in a hand basket with this man the country has never been the same. I would like to read your take. Thanks
Scrap Wood
Ronald Reagan didn't do it to us. But he was a clear symbol of what we have done to ourselves. He claimed to have won the cold war, but what the US and Soviets did to each other is largely responsible for where we are now. The Soviets couldn't keep up with the US expansion of militarism, so they were the first to falter under expenses they just couldn't keep up with. Their economy was brought to ruin.
ReplyDeleteReagan was fully prepared for the second coming and he didn't mind bringing it on or pushing us to the brink. It really didn't seem to matter. Remember James Watt, his secretary of the interior who believed that the coming end of the world would make concern about the earth's endangered species unnecessary?
Carter was a realist. Reagan was a fool. But he was also the puppet and spokesmen of other fools. So it may seem unfair to lay the blame on Reagan. He was a lovable character, or at least he played on on tv. But what he represented was a serious threat to peace in the world and democracy on the planet.
We may have managed to keep our government in power while the Soviet Union slid in the dark ages.
But I will go back to a Jackson Browne lyric. From the time we learned that we each are a part of one another, we have lost as much as we have won. And at some point I believe we will learn that survival is not about winning or losing but about cooperation, sensitivity and empowerment.
Thanks for your response and well said too. Also pardon my sentence stucture. When I get typing about someone like Reagan I tend to want to snap like a frozen green bean.
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