What We're Following Today June 25, 2020

The Old Lady Card...

I visited with a friend today and she made me laugh when she said that she had been to a business where she had some questions and was not getting an answer / solution that made sense and that her granddaughter watched her play the Old Lady Card...I love it.

Apparently that card is played when we say something like, "you have to understand I am an old lady and don't know what you're talking about. Here's my issue, can you help me understand how you're going to help me solve that problem?"

I can't wait to play the old man card...too funny.

But on another side - I think it's not just an old person card - we often just want things to work. But sometimes new systems and processes can make simple questions more complex than they need to be. At some point we should just be able to say, this is what I don't get, this is what I want to do, can you make that happen? Yes / no - and if no, what will we do to make that happen...

Reason #21 I Love the US Leading Up to the Fourth of July

The Smithsonian Institution / Museums

I still remember seeing the museums all around Washington DC when I was in 8th grade and I have been to some of them since. The air and space museum always comes to mind along with dehydrated astronaut ice cream packages. But I love that our country is willing to preserve history. Today we see many symbols of history under attack because the subjects were not "morally" just by today's standards - the problem with all this is that we fail to see the hypocrisy in it. Sure those in the past had their demons in addition to their angels - living in systems with different rules and ideas of what was moral or not - but we are NO different today.

Museums allow us to remember whose shoulders we stand on. I am not ashamed to be an American. I can look back in history, recognize when wrongs were done, but I am in no place to "judge" or assess "value" because I exist as a direct result of the actions of those before me, AND I know I am blessed to live in a country and a time when we can "change" the way we live moving forward by learning from our past. When we start to erase the past, we will essentially commit ourselves to erasing incremental improvements we have made while setting ourselves up for a very real chance of decline. I don't know, because I am certainly not wise - the more I learn, the more I realize I DON'T know. We can be empathetic but yet also pragmatic.

In the eyes of the Lord I am a sinner - everyday. I am in NO place to judge and I pray that I continue to reduce my sin and become a better neighbor, man, father and son. But as a citizen here in this great country I am given the right to an opinion. We don't live in times of the past when one group could work without due process / community decision making, but we're slowly returning to that time because we are no longer accepting of views that are "contrary" because if they are "contrary" they are "evil"?

George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Christopher Columbus and SOOOO many other historical figures can not be summed into one characteristic / decision / one belief...They need to be the sum of the good and the bad, and we should never be afraid to call out both. George Washington could have been a sinner, but at the same time working to accomplish a greater good - stepping into a role that he was capable of filling...

I hope that my daughters and son don't judge me on what I did wrong only - I hope they have the empathy and compassion to realize that we can do things wrong, learn from them, and grow while still recognizing what we did well and how we worked to correct ourselves over time to try and be better...And hopefully, on our shoulders, they will improve this world while recognizing our faults and building on our victories.

So I will go back to the original point before this rant...The Smithsonian and ALL museums have a huge purpose for us in the future. Help us understand the world that came before so we can appreciate where we came from and learn from what we did "right" and "wrong".

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