My apologies for not having a new post for the last couple days.
Yesterday was my wife’s XXth anniversary of her 29th birthday, so that took priority over updating this site, as much as I might have wanted to.
Today, though, I woke to the news that this is the 44th anniversary of the moon landing.
Those of you who grew up in an age of space flight, where putting a man on the moon was old news, probably can’t comprehend just how momentous that moment was.
To this day, I clearly remember exactly where I was and what I was doing.
My father’s Knights of Columbus group had a picnic, scheduled long in advance, at the local park; a few members brought along their portable black & white TVs so they wouldn’t miss it. And at the appointed hour, everyone stopped what they were doing and gathered around their TVs to watch.
And by everyone, I mean the entire world.
America had done the impossible.
Again.
As teenagers and men and women in their 20s, my parent’s generation, possibly your grandparents or even great grandparents, defeated the greatest war machine the world has ever known. And quite literally, saved the world in the process.
They split the atom. They landed on the moon, using 1960s technology. They fought, and won, the battle for civil rights. They built the massive Interstate highway system that connects our cities and makes our much-vaunted mobility a reality.
They did the impossible. Not once, but over and over again.
A generation that believed it could achieve anything, did. Today’s America believes it can’t, and doesn’t.
That’s not to say they got everything right.
We’re still fighting the battle for equal rights for all Americans. And dealing with the nuclear legacy they left behind, and the needless deaths on our streets.
But it was a generation that thought big, and found solutions when challenges to those ideas inevitably arose. And refused to let a single roadblock, or a thousand, derail them from reaching their destination as a nation.
Unlike ours.
It’s long past time to end the era of small thinking and lowered expectations, and once again envision America as it can and should be, with limitless horizons and compassion for all.
We have proven over and again that we can accomplish anything we truly commit to, and solve any problem if we set our minds and hearts to the task.
So lets do it. Again.
Now.
