DON’T TAKE YOUR LIBERTIES FOR GRANTED!

This week, I was planning to write a blog about the month of August, but I will save that for when we get to August on the calendar. But, this August will be an important month for me. I will be travelling to Boston, Massachusetts, to take Steve home. Steve had a passion for Boston that was deep and profound. He loved everything about it and talked about it often. I knew little to nothing about Boston, being raised in the South, and often wondered why Steve did not live there because of his passion. I asked him several times, and he did not have what I thought were good reasons. I don’t even remember what they were. His family had brought him in California when he was a young child. He never really liked California. Or, at least, that is what he told me. He loved Boston! We went together once in the dead of winter, and he told me more history during that trip about the founding of America than I ever learned in American History class in school. We were definitely planning to go back at some point for a continuation of the dialogue. I recently edited and will be re-editing his novel “Marathon Murders” that takes place in Boston. He talks a lot about Boston in that novel. You can feel his passion in his words.

So, today, I plan to spend some time, pondering liberties – BUYER BEWARE!!  DON’T TAKE YOUR LIBERTIES FOR GRANTED, frequently using cartoons for commentary.   When I think of Boston, I think about my liberties. I don’t know if that is an accurate “thinking”, but there is not a lot “accurate” about my thinking. Who cares? That’s what I think! And, in the past few months, as I watch the international news on television, I have thought a lot about how fortunate I was to have been born in the United States of America. A fluke? (See previous post about “Flukes”).  I could have been born in Libya, or Mexico, or Thailand.  But, I wasn’t. I was born in a small town in Georgia, U.S.A.  And I lived a blessed life as a child. Fortunate, in many ways. I experienced the fear of war by a small-town community as America entered World War II, and Mother had to use rations at the grocery store. I experienced the exuberance of a community when the war was over. I can still robustly sing “Over There, Over There”,