Something You Might Or Might Not Want To Hear

note: I have no idea why this blog isn't posting any of the photo images these past months :( 

A few years ago it would never have occurred to me that what you are about to read might possibly be anything that anyone would need to be reminded of, let alone be something that some people may not have even heard of. It’s not new news; it’s not a new take on anything; it’s not unique in any way – at least until these past few years … the growing up years of our young adults. 

Below you’ll find excerpts from three separate blog posts. Together they say something you might or might not want to hear.

this is an image of the Constitution of the United States of America, which isn't showing up

1)  We are governed not by any one sitting president, not by any single current congress, not even by our courts. 

We are governed by the Constitution of the United States of America which grants sovereign rights to the PEOPLE of the United States. It is We the People of the United States of America who wield the final authority. We are not just saying 'NO' to corruption in our government; we are also saying 'NO' to those who have for too long been disregarding the fundamental premise of our form of government. 

  

these are images of a flying Bald Eagle and a standing American Bison

2)  Both the National Bird of the United States and our (apparently soon-to-be) National Animal/Mammal - the Bald Eagle and the American Bison - were both around for that last big ELE (Extinction Level Event, almost 13,000 years ago) - and somehow survived.

In much more recent years, both were on the verge of extinction (again) and both were 'brought back' from that verge by the collective will of the American People.

That we as a people, once we recognized what we had done, were doing, did what we had to do to correct ourselves ... something about that is reassuring, gives me hope.

God Bless America

Indivisible

3)  … I refer you to the stars that grace the Flag of the United States of America. Yes I know they represent each and all of the States of our Nation. They can also represent the forging of this Nation, one made up of many. You notice that each of those stars is the same size; each is equal to all of the others. The fact that Texas and Alaska are far bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware is entirely moot. They share equal status, and our Flag needs ALL of her stars in order to be complete. Not a single one of those stars carries a label but together they, and the stripes of red and white that flank them, represent one nation. One. Recognizing and respecting individuality in NO way diminishes what that means but enhances it.

this is an image of a flying dove carrying an olive branch

All of the above having been said, here’s what I want to remind you of:

First, regardless of who is in the White House, regardless of who fills the Seats of Congress in Washington DC, even regardless of who sits the benches of our courtrooms, the United States of America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights are what govern us.

Administrations come and administrations go, one after another after another. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights cannot be changed, only added to by the collective Will of the People via amendments (which are not easily achieved).

Second, we as a people have made mistakes. That we have, and do, and will come to recognize our mistakes, speaks well of us. That we have, and do, and will take steps to correct our mistakes speaks even louder.

Bringing back the Bald Eagle and the American Bison from the brink … how many of our younger folk even realize what that means? How many care? I would venture to say  :  few – very few – too few. Yet it is symbolic, and perhaps therein lies the issue at the moment. It is symbolic of something we as a people did RIGHT. These days, everyone’s focusing on other symbols, interpreting them in ways that are twisted.

Third, connected to second (and to first when it comes right down to it) the individual groups that make up our larger population have been, are, and will be collectively We the People of the United States of America.

That’s a statement of fact folks, not a recommendation.

There was a time, brought to mind by recent events, when mistakes were made by more than one ‘faction’. The effect was not pretty. The result was a still-united nation, albeit a wounded one.

The three points merge.

Today we can, if we look, see what has come of ‘that time’ which is of course our own Civil War, something that I hear some people threatening again. We will not go there, people. We will not.

For those who think perhaps it is a viable option, think again.

You have only to look to our southern states of Texas and Louisiana, right now, in August of 2017, to see the incontrovertible conclusion of that war. In the midst of horror and pain We the People, once divided and again threatened with division, are oblivious to the factors that once divided us. Watch, and listen. You can’t help but see what I’m talking about. There is no South any more; there is no North. There is no Urban; there is no Rural. There is no Rich; there is no Poor. There is only ONE People of the United States.

What you will see, if you care to look, is the United States of America, full-blown and just doing what it does – pulling together in a time of crisis. Addressing with steadfast resolution (a cliché I know but here it fits so yes I’m going to use it) those who would use the hurt of others for their own ends – the looters are being arrested; the politicizers are being shouted down or ignored; the price gougers are being documented and will be dealt with; the haters are being called out and shown up for what they are.

So, contrary to what ‘current events’ in the form of riots and protests and the destruction of symbols of our past successes and the haters might want us to believe, our nation as a whole is actually reaffirming what we have needed to be reminded of: we are ONE nation, indivisible. Made up of many and many different folks, this is true, but nevertheless ONE.

In our ‘crisis mode’ nobody cares about anything that doesn’t matter. Nobody cares about who someone is sleeping with; nobody cares about skin tones; nobody cares about how big someone’s house is or how fancy their vehicle is; nobody cares about who anybody else voted for; nobody cares when or how or under what circumstances anybody else’s ancestors came to these shores. Nobody cares about what anybody else ‘identifies as’ – because at the moment the only ‘identity’ anybody has is ‘American’.

Part of me weeps that it has had to take a Powerful Act of Nature to bring home to us what should have been recognized and celebrated all along. Instead, we’ve had divisiveness shoved down our throats for so long that we were starting to believe in it, even while choking on the very thought of it.

So y’all haters can just sit down and shut up now. We do accept that even you are a part of us. You are the part of each and all of us that we know we have inside, the dark ugly part that we fight to subdue and overcome. You are in the dark corners of our internal ‘gardens’, where we put the rotting detritus that we don’t want to see. You are there, and we are not denying it – but just as we nurture and care for the beauty and productivity of our own selves and our nation and set the detritus aside in a dark corner, so too will we set you aside. You need no nurturing; natural processes will decay you until you become again something we can use to further nurture the beauty and productivity. In the meantime, we do not want you front and center – not of our own selves and not of our nation.

Going back to our points …

The laws that govern us as American citizens forbid harm to any, for any reason.

We the People of the United States of America have been making a mistake; we can and will take steps to correct ourselves.

We cannot, and do not, and will not deny the value and importance of any part of our collective population. We might have to put you haters in a corner for a while, but in so doing we are but protecting the beauty and productivity while you’re decaying enough to become again nurturers of said beauty and productivity.

Just as, at the moment, Houston and other places are addressing the weeds (haters) in their sodden garden while caring for the beauty so too will the United States as a whole.

So you can either go to the corner on your own or we can put you there. Your choice.

Frankly, it would be a great deal more pleasant if you choose to become a part of the beauty right away, for you and for the rest of us. I can’t imagine it would be at all pleasant to find myself rotting and decaying for as long as it takes to become fertilizer. You can skip that step. Pay the piper (can’t skip this step, sorry), be forgiven, and ‘come on home’ – if you want.

It took many of our folk a real long time to make that happen, but … look to Texas and Louisiana right now. Look to We the People of the United States of America as we respond to the needs of our own. Look to the various States kicking in and getting the job done. Look to our Federal Government doing its part.

Tell me you don’t want to be a part of that; tell me you’d rather be rotting in a dark corner instead. Go ahead; try to convince me; give it your best shot; tell me why you’d prefer divisiveness over unity. Your chances of convincing me are slim to none, and slim isn’t really in the running, but here’s your chance to try.

My words to you are: come home – just come home to the America who already accepts you and loves you enough to put you in a corner when need be. You don’t have to stay in that dark rotting corner. Your place is here in the beauty and productivity of this oh so precious nation that we all call Home.

Justice

+Mercy

=Peace

The Authority of the United States of America is WHAT?!?

Me, I think we as a nation have been trying to look through the wrong end of the telescope. 

IMO we ought to ditch that telescope and go with a microscope, start focusing on what we can reach. 

The way things are right now is bass-ackward from the way our nation is designed to be run. No wonder it's not working the way it's supposed to.

Yeah that's kind of a pretty design, but it is NOT the way things are supposed to go.

Me, I cannot believe I'm sitting here on a 'day off' trying to think of how to explain something to people whose educations OUGHT to have drilled this stuff into them years ago. That's a part of the bass-ackwardness I'm NOT going to get into today, not if I can help it.

Mmph.

What I'm hearing from our young folk is that the rich guys have all the good stuff, the government is in cahoots with them, and we poor folk are stuck doing all the work and paying all the bills, with no end in sight. They're torn between getting mad about it and giving up.

Little do they know the whole situation is absolutely nothing new. The whole concept they're experiencing is exactly why there is a United States of America.

So what does it have to do with telescopes and microscopes?

This:

When you look through a telescope from the wrong end, what you wanted to see closer gets further away instead.

The more we of the general population try to get a handle on what's going on nationally or globally, the further away it all seems to get. Even if we were looking through the right end of that telescope, we wouldn't be able to see the whole of the 'big picture'. We're only going to get more frustrated and upset at what we do see. It ain't all that pretty out there these days, folks.

So ditch the bloody telescope for a while. All it does is make us mad and convince us that yeah our government and our world are seriously out of balance. Trying to use it is just going to make us dizzy. Washington and Wall Street are too far away from the reality of our lives for us to fret ourselves about right now. 

True story, folks. I kid you not. 

There's not a damned thing any of us can do in the immediate future to make those things the least bit different, not right now. We can moan and groan and gripe and complain until the cows come home and it's not going to do anything except waste our breath and our time.

So ditch the telescope for the time being.

Grab that microscope and start focusing on things you can do something about. Instead of whining about Big Government and Fat Cats, put your local area under that microscope.

Why?

Because, my friend, the larger picture that we all think we want to have this huge impact on so everything will change for the better is made up of guess what?

Without getting all technical about fractals and golden ratios and all that, I can tell you this:

The whole is but a bigger representation of its parts.

You want to change Big Government?

Look in the mirror because you yourself are a part of it.

Look within your own family.

Look at your community.

Look at your County.

Look at your State.

You know what you're looking at?

Duh.

See, our nation, the United States of America, and its government, is built on the rebuttable presumption that she has a halfway educated populace who KNOW what the heck said government is supposed to be doing, and not doing.

There's a whole lot of rebutting going on right about now regarding that presumption, both here at home and in the world at large. So be it. That's another thing we can't do anything about at the moment. Let it be for now.

We're all at least partway familiar with our three branches of government, right? Legislative, Judicial, Executive.

How familiar are we with another set of three that's even more important than those? Hmmm?

Federal, State, and We the People, which I've listed in REVERSE order of importance for a reason.

The reason is that the above order is the way We the People have been taught about this hierarchy thing. 

For whatever reason, we ordinary folk have become convinced that we're lucky to even be on that list. When it comes to Authority, what do we believe? That the Feds are at the top of the pile, then the States, and then (maybe) us. We really do believe that, have believed it for a great number of years.

That is NOT the design of our Constitution, people. It is NOT the way our nation is built and not the way it's going to function the way it's supposed to.

Back to telescopes and microscopes.

The Authority of this nation doesn't begin out there somewhere, in Washington or anyplace else.

It starts microscopically small, to go with our theme here.

It begins with you. 

And me. 

And all the them people and the us people that make up WE the PEOPLE. 

Think about that for a minute. It's right there in the Constitution that rules our nation, for cryin' out loud. More than once. 

And we aren't only just the starting point - we are the whole of it. 

WE are the ones, you and me and Jane and John over there, and every other citizen of this Constitutional Republic (what? you thought we were a democracy? oh my. well, that will have to be another post I reckon)

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the starting point of the Authority by which this nation is supposed to be governed.

That would be us.

We're also the next point, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Since the outward spiral of Authority seems to have taken a twist somewhere along the way, there's only one way this nation can get herself back into the balance she's designed to have.

We need to quit worrying about telescopes for the moment and turn our focus to the microscope - we have to look at the beginning point.

That would be us.

Quit trying to look 'out there somewhere' for answers and changes. If 'out there somewhere' was going to fix anything, it would have been fixed long since.

And I'm talking to our young folk here. (Us older ones too, but you young folk have a chance of seeing this thing through so I'm passing the buck to you. You'll be the ones to benefit, too - not us old folk.)

YOU are going to look into your mirror. 
YOU are going to look around you at the people you know. 
YOU are going to decide how much of a difference you are going to make.
YOU are going to decide how much of an impact you are going to have on your own Life, your Community, your County, your State, your Nation, and your World. 

YOU. 
The one you see when you look in that mirror. 

YOU are We the People.

The Authority of the United States of America does not rest with the folks in Washington; it does not rest in the POTUS; it does not rest in any of her many branches and twigs and leaves. 

The Authority of the United States of America belongs to her people, the cellular level of the bigger organism.

YOU.

Intimidated yet?

Nah.

All of what we've been thinking about who wields the Authority in this nation is pretty much hogwash.

Me, I don't expect to see any big huge changes, not in what time is left to me here.

YOU, however,  you our young folk, might just find inside of yourselves the 'whatever it takes' to make things get back to the way they're supposed to be.

I can't make it happen. 

The best I can hope for is that maybe one or two of you will have enough common sense to read your own freaking Constitution, think about what it's saying, and realize that YOU ARE THE AUTHORITY OF THIS NATION. 

Yep. And then proceed to exercise that Authority the way you're supposed to.

How?

By understanding that while you all by your lonesome are not the only Authority in this nation, since every Citizen shares that, you can be a darned important part of the whole.

How?

By looking in the mirror.

Huh?

Well?

Are you or are you not committed enough to making things better to step up to the plate and get things rolling in the right direction?

Me? I'm no politician.

Well hallelujah for that! 

We don't want any more politicians. 

It's not anything anybody has ever been supposed to make a career out of. It's something you take time out of your life to do for a while, because you care, because you want to make a difference, and then you get back to your life.

If you aren't 'public figure' material, look around you for someone who is. Then get them voted into whatever office they might be interested in.

Yes.

I said VOTE.

From the microscopic beginnings, the Authority of the people of the United States continues through every step of the way. Those cells are what makes up the whole thing, you know.

Did you know that your County Sheriff, the person YOU your own self voted for (or not) is the ultimate Authority within your County? Well yeah, if you've read recent posts, you know that.

You know WHY said Sheriff has that Authority? Because that person is representing the collective will of YOU and everyone else in the County. THAT's where the Authority comes from. It comes from US, the citizens of the United States of America. That's how come a County Sheriff can kick the President of the United States out of the County, and jail him/her if they refuse to go. Because the Sheriff isn't acting on his/her own Authority but on the Authority of the people who elected him/her.

NOBODY in this nation has any more Authority than anybody else, unless they're acting in accordance with the collective will of the citizens, Authority which has been accorded them BY the will of said citizens. And the Authority so accorded by the citizens can be revoked, you know. By the ones who accorded it in the first place.

That bit of information isn't bandied about much, is it?

If somebody is in a position of Authority, it is because we said so. That makes it our responsibility to maybe take a bit of interest in who and what we have a say-so about.

I tell ya.

We get so wrapped up in trying to look through that telescope at who's in Washington that we totally don't pay much attention to the stuff that actually matters to us on a daily basis.

That 'daily basis' is a whole lot more vital to our health and well-being than whatever we're trying to see by looking through the wrong end of that telescope. 

I tell you this and I tell you true.

Start taking care of things nearby and get that spiral thing going. What happens on a local level, on every local level of this nation, matters a hell of a lot more than anything else right now.

Why?

Because it is from out of the Center of Authority, the Authority wielded by the People of the United States of America, that the Future is going to unfold. 

It is going to be our own local folks paying attention to our own local elections, and choosing folks who are ready, willing, and able to do the job they're elected to do - by the will of their own local folk - that will bring out the leadership we're all looking for.

No, it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take a damn long time, and a whole lot longer than it actually needs to take because we don't realize that we can do it.

'A revolution would be quicker' - and yes I've heard those actual words come out of someone's mouth.

'We need to re-write the Constitution' - that's another one.

'The States ought to secede' - heard that one too.

They're all baloney.

A revolution wouldn't speed anything up any, believe me.

The Constitution is fine just the way it is, which people would figure out if they ever took the time to read it.

States Rights are outlined in the Constitution; when it comes right down to it the States have a lot more say-so than we're led to believe. Not as much of a say-so as We the People, but neither are they the helpless pawns of the Feds like some people seem to think.

Looking through the wrong end of the telescope again here.

Start where you're the most comfortable. That's the way it's supposed to be in the first place so what the heck. 

Pay attention to what you see under that microscope. If there's a problem out there at the other end of that telescope, chances are you'll find the virus or bacteria or germ or whatever's causing it right there in the petri dish of your mirror, your home, your community, your county, your state.

We honestly don't have much recourse at the moment for fixing what ails our nation. That's flat out too big for us to even wrap our heads around.

BUT.

We can start trying to knock out that ailment in ourselves, in our homes, in our communities, in our counties ... do you see where I'm going with this?

The Authority of the United States of America - bottom line - is me. 

It's you.

How are we going to wield it?

more than a year and a half later ...

I can finally look at these photos and videos without having to peer through tears.

Duke's the best travel companion EVER.

Yes there are trip photos of ND, SD, NE, KS, CO - I'll likely put them into another post.

 At Bill's ... happy Duke!

 Some of the ones who have gone on ahead ...

Dad and me ...

  The video doesn't work (did it wrong) but here's Dad again ... 

Bill and me ... 

Out at the Ranch ... Dad of course couldn't go himself - but he loved the video!

I did this wrong so it won't run ... I've got another video from out there but can't bear watching it just now.

 Goin' to Scott's ... 

Ben'ts Fort above; zoom below

Bindweed - prettier than it is nice

Duke and Cockroach 

Heading west ... to Bev and the Rockies ... and another post ... :) 

Working my way through these has been rougher than I thought it would be. Even though it's been over a year and a half, during which I've pretty much left them alone because of the emotional pain I know the grief of homesickness brings me, it's still so hard. So very very hard.

Yeh.

I was wrong about the tears.