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"Our American Heritage"
January 20, 2009
The inauguration of our newest President, Barack Obama took place today and as we watched and listened to the many comments and commentaries of a wealth of reporters the one constant was the term, "first African-American President." Although this is a correct statement it brought to mind something we wanted to write about.
America has become through its history a country that was founded and has flourished because of its melting pot effect. That those peoples who arrived here and became citizens added their individual flavor to the grace of the country. Perhaps it is time to remove those prefixes from Americans. Barack Obama has an ethnic heritage, a cultural heritage and like all of us a family heritage. For many years we both admit we were of the kind that discerned based upon race, culture or ethnicity. It was not one of a derogatory nature but one of a classification in our minds and hearts of the varying differences of men and women. Yet these are the external visions that fill our eyes not the versions of a human that count which is what a human is inside. In this category no color barrier, no elective racisms exists. Inside the heart of all people runs a common blood with a common color.
We want to believe the next step in a philosophical growth of our universal race would be the elimination of a category of person. That one is an American and that is how they should be viewed. However we do not condone loss of identity. We do not want others to believe in this writing that our heritage, cultural or ethnic backgrounds should be swept under the door. Race or the use of race in defining an individual should no longer be necessary. To us it perpetuates another time and another age when such statements carried weight, weights that we no longer need. We congratulate now President Obama, not because he is of African-American decent but because we feel strongly that he believes in our nation and the eclectic individuals that make it up. Perhaps this is just another avenue of change?
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"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless . . .."
Brandon Lee quoting shortly before his death from a passage from Paul Bowles' book, The Sheltering Sky.
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For too long I've messed with the wiring in my head. Now it shorts out more oft than not. But at my age I just sit and enjoy the sparks. RJM '07
Many Exceptional Free and Pay for Images Available here Fotosearch.com
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