Why?

[Guest]

Lately some thread have been posted speaking of older musicians, signs, and in these threads other sharings of the past have come out in postings. We had other threads that do this as well.

Why?

I was born in 1955, that makes me 51. I was the eldest of 4 sibs, and from a very early age I was the eldest male in the household.
I wanted something, and I bugged the fire out of folks I call Mentors & Elders to get it.  I was attracted to these Men and Women, because I wanted what they had. I was attracted to them because of the way they carried themselves.
I understood real young what the "Old Man" in Ruark's work meant by " Respect the Quail"
I would grow older and learn the term "Moral Law" from reading "Atlas Shrugged".


Mentors & Elders lived this  "Respect the Quail" and "Moral Law", and everything else I had read, or been read to by Ruark . Hemingway, Thoreau,  Rand, Heinlein, Orwell, and too many other works and authors  to mention. Firearms were just a part of all this.

Mentors and Elders spoke of "dimensions", when I asked what these dimensions were, it was shared I would know , and would know when I was changing into another one.

Why?


History teaches, history prepares, history prevents , history does a lot - therefore history must always be preserved and passed forward.

Hat boxes of old photographs and negatives,  shoeboxes of letters written, the vinyl records, eight track tapes, cassestte tapes, CDs...
...8mm movies, old newspapers and magazines, Micro-fiche at the Library, Library sources of books, texts...
...great great great grandparents tools, furniture, firearms...

The list goes on.  A Musician may listen to a old scratchy 78 to learn, an artist will study Picasso, a scholar read Einstein, ...

Col. Cooper has passed. All his life he has used history to pass forward to us, we will continue to pass forward Col. Coopers contributions as well.

It is not living in the past, it is not re-living the past to be younger, nor is it the sharing of the past to make anyone feel younger, older, or anything other than - passing forward .

Sharing experience strength and hope.  Keeping it by giving it away.

Why?

How raised - what you do.


Steve

[garrettwc]

I think it is a result of the times we are living in. Everything is so topsy turvy that we find ourselves looking into our past to reassure ourselves that we will have a future.

[Guest]

George Santayana said that  Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

I grew up in the '50s and '60s listening to the lessons learned - both good and bad - by my grandparents starting from the time they were born in the 1890s. The same with my parents who were born in the first half of the '20s. One of the lessons I learned from these folks who lived through World Wars and a Depression was that people and times change, for the better and the worse, and that a periodic reassessment of the lessons learned provides a deeper understanding of how to live in the present and prepare for the future.

Yesterday my father and I were talking about the role that optimism plays in many families (vs. some families that just don't seem to have it.) Looking back at the hard times that our family has been through (and the country as well), it just seems that an attitude of It Will Work Out makes a big difference - if you concentrate on the Work.


Dad also told me about one time in flight school in WWII when he decided that instead of flying around a big lowhanging cloud he'd just dive right in. Well, he got turned around and upside down, but didn't run into anything or anybody before he cleared it. He admitted that sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart. Still, the lesson is that it's better to be lucky and smart if you live long enough.  

I need to go paint my 80-year-old neighbor's porch.

John

[Bob F.]

Steve: keep passing forward. Many of us are benefitting (though some aren't)

Stay safe.
Bob

PS: I've got 10 yrs on ya', age wise; but learning from ya'.

[Monkeyleg]

Steve, for me it's just the fact that I'll be turning 56 in less than three months.

I honestly never thought I'd reach that age (especially given my self-destructive ways), nor did I ever give any thought to what that age meant. Now it's the boulder in the road.

Before I can figure out what that age means, or what's to come, I have to look back and analyze where I've been.

My focus on music in threads over the last few days is because music in the 1960's shaped how I thought, behaved, and where I was going.

Just as my reading of Ayn Rand's novels gave me perspectives I'd never thought of before, listening to Dylan or the Stones also gave me perspectives.

But they didn't tell me how to live. Even as a young punk, I was able to separate to my best extent the feathers from the bull in bullfeathers. Didn't always do the best job, but the best I could.

garrettwc may have hit on something that resonates for me: we're in the most turbulent times I've experienced since the war within the US over the war in Viet Nam. While I don't think Iraq is another Viet Nam, I have to view what the US is doing through the prism of what I learned--right or wrong--in the 1960's.

And that makes it very difficult to form an opinion, since there are similarities. It's only the distinctions between the two wars that enable me to say that what my country is doing is right.

And then pray that I've made the right decision.

There's nearly 56 years of experiences of all sorts in my shoebox. Looking back, I wish someone had just handed me that shoebox and said, "here, kid. You're going to learn something from this box."

If I'd had such a shoebox, I would have been more popular with the young ladies. I'd have amassed at least enough money that I'd be retired at this point. I'd be mentoring my great-nephews and great-nieces on how to make the most of their lives.

With such a shoebox, I would have avoided the mistakes in my life that I cannot make right today.

So, instead, I post long-winded threads here on APS, and ask young folks like Fistful and Winston Smith to listen.

That's my shoebox, and it's theirs if they want to look inside.