“All of us who are concerned for peace and the triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.” — Albert Einstein

It was some time ago that Einstein said this, perhaps, however, it is still applicable in spite of what Wallace Alcorn shared with the community in his Monday column where he shares his own life experience writing his own doctoral dissertation and how a committee member attempted to point out his “over indulgence.” Perhaps the age difference between Obama at 43 and McCain at 73 might explain that. McCain has to keep his answers short. He couldn’t answer the number of homes he (they) have.

I listened to McCain answer a radio question on our way to Green Lea golf course with Casey for nine holes using my brand new secondhand 25-cent golf clubs. Some of them worked quite well, while other times failing miserably. Rev. Rick Warren asked McCain if there was a religious moment that stood out in his life — he thought for a minute and then shared a situation in the Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp at Christmas. [A North Vietnamese guard] came walking up and with his sandal drew a cross in the dirt and stood there. A minute later, he rubbed it out, and walked away. For a minute there, there was just two Christians worshipping together.

It sounds, “So fake and so contrived” by someone from the blog house who searched and found a story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn from his times in the Soviet Gulags. In 1997, Rev. Luke Veronis recounted the story the Russian author told him: As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the cross. The man got up and returned to work. As Solzhenitsyn stared at the cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater then the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for that simple cross-represented all people.

Coincidence?

I read a very thin book by Solzhenitsyn I found tucked away in the catacombs of the old gracious Andrew Carnegie Library. In it he openly expressed his concern about America; I think the legal element was a factor. I attempted to attend the “immigration meeting;” in fact I was present for the first 30 minutes or so before leaving. I found it disturbing and somewhat deceitful. The deceitfulness came from speakers not willing to answer some of the questions asked by the audience. I was not around to see the fly-over at the Mower County Fair. That too was shameful.

This brings back a memory from 1954 when I think I heard my sister say there was a “Black Clause” preventing blacks from living in Bel-Air Addition.

This weekend we took our recent high school grad to a college up in the Fargo-Moorhead area. I think we traveled through that way when the kids were young when we went to Kindersley, Saskatchewan to see my Aunt Mable who proceeded to comment repeatedly, “You’ve changed!” We also spent time with my cousin Mary Ann and Brian and their family.

The trip this weekend is fresher in my mind, and there is something so peaceful between St. Cloud and Moorhead, beautiful land, rolling hills, water ponds here and there, and Sunday coming back I saw for the first time in my life a fisherman landing a fish, “a keeper” I think, in a little boat in the bay as we passed by. And, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Speaking of Sky, he is in the process of becoming a college student a long way from home. The campus he is on is well shaded but not with Oaks. For some reason they don’t seem to like that part of the country. They seem to stop on the northwest side of St. Cloud. I was able to hold back my tears when giving Skyler a hug goodbye.

He isn’t sure what he will be taking up, but I am sure the price of books have increased since I entered the junior college located then on the third floor of the high school.