This manager has never gone with us. He is also a volunteer firefighter. He told me they had a bunch of surplus equipment, and he wondered if the fire department in Panajachel, Guatemala could use it. Without hesitation, I said yes. Lloyd Monroe (the missionary) stopped dead in his tracks and looked at me, “Did you know the Panajachel Fire Department’s gear was stolen a couple of weeks ago?”

There is a way to start practicing rich socialism that is inexpensive and can be done almost en masse. I keep several $5 fast food cards in my wallet. When I am in the city and confronted on the street by a beggar asking for money for food, I give them one of these. They are often taken aback, and, yes, I have somewhat imposed my will on a stranger, but I have met their request. I have given them money for food. It is just not quite as fungible as they anticipated.

On Monday evening, Nov. 5, 2018, I had had it “up to here” with political ads and thought I would go to YouTube and retreat into old “Newhart” episodes (the Bob Newhart show that was set in Vermont, not Chicago) and escape the world. (I realize many younger readers have no idea what show I am talking about.) Well, if I thought this was going to be escapism, I was sadly wrong.

I have many good friends in the Democratic Party, friends with whom I can have intelligent conversations and from whom I learn much. The Democratic leadership, however, the ones who pull the levers, they worry me. We seem to be very close to a second civil war if you listen to what they have to say.

Sometime, along about the late 1960s, early 1970s, manufacturing and service companies decided they needed to become socially involved. Suddenly, they started giving money to all sorts of causes and promoting these causes internally and with their customer base.

There are a couple of telling images from the Senate committee hearing on Sept. 27, however. One is a video of Sheila Jackson Lee (U.S. representative for Texas’s 18th Congressional District) passing a well-stuffed No. 10 envelope to one of Ford’s lawyers, right in the committee room, with the witness (Ford) seated at the witness table. Perhaps it was a birthday card. The other is the photo of all the handlers of Ford hovering around her before her testimony begins, with Ford coyly smiling.

I am sure I speak for all of us when I tell you 50 years passes in an amazing, blinding flash. At a snap of the fingers, class of 2019, you will be at 2069. Use your limited time wisely. What might be our final words of advice to the class of 2019? There was a famous old nationally syndicated disc jockey, Casey Kasem, who always closed his show with this wise admonishment: “Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.”

In less than two months, we will be voting across America. The election will no doubt have national implications, although all the races are local. There is only one national office in the country, and that is the office of president. So, we will vote for members of Congress, some senators and others in local races.

As I write this, it is September 11th. Seventeen years ago today, our enemies used airplanes to disrupt our lives here in the United States. They don’t need to be so crude and obvious in their attacks today – just come in through the internet – plenty of damage and mayhem can be done via this route.

In general, food for all the weekends on the farm was a problem until Mother perfected a system of dealing with eating in two places. We had bought a used refrigerator and put that in the McNary house. (It failed; and it was given to me to tear apart, and I became thoroughly drenched in ammonia when I relieved the pressure on the refrigerant lines. Is that child abuse or an environmental disaster?)

Today, diversity is rubbed in our faces with examples often plucked from what were once the fringes of society. It no longer addresses garden variety racism or sexism against our neighbors or coworkers. Today, one is labeled xenophobic for any number of reasons, usually because someone does not look or act like (I) (we) (you) do.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is largely an exercise whereby the federal government looks after Native Americans – just like the Left desires for the rest of us. Such a stance fosters an attitude that we (or the Indians) are too stupid to look after ourselves, so the government will take over and watch out for us. How has this worked out?

For a country that allows a city such as Chicago to record more than 70 shootings in a weekend without one arrest is indeed spiritually broken. For a country that allows a congressional district in Ohio to have a multitude of voters on its rolls whose age is above 116 years is clearly broken. For a great city, such as New York, to allow safety on the streets and in the subways to degenerate to a level that is significantly impacting tourism is clearly broken.

At the end of the day, business and agriculture are the only activities paying all the bills. Let’s change the system and get honest about the source of government funding in this country.

“Energy/Lack of Energy Sources” has been a front burner issue for my entire career. So has the environment. For these issues to fall so low, indicates a complete turnaround from the last 45 years. Expect impassioned advocates to move to bring this issue back to the front burner.