The Beginning....

The Beginning....
When William Least Heat-Moon toured the country many years ago, his steed, if you will, was a van that he named Ghost Dancing. His journey of America was 13,000 miles. His book is Blue Highways, A Journey Into America. My steed will be a Subaru WRX (traded for an XV Crosstrek). My travels will be, what in the past were called, the blue highways of Virginia. Years ago, maps showed secondary roads in blue. Yes, the ones less traveled.

Friday, July 4, 2014

Today Is the Fourth of July. I Can Think of No Better Post Than This One.....

No, I surely don't wake up everyday and say, Gosh, it's good to be an American. In fact, I doubt many of us do.

However, something that happened a few days ago made me think about what it means to live in a country that allows its citizens to do just about anything they want, to have freedoms that in many parts of the world people do not have. In particular, I'm talking about freedom of speech.

A few days ago, a person who lives in a county far away, asked my permission to use stories from my book, Fifty-Five 55-Word Stories. The person is putting together a book of one-hundred short stories and obliviously, I was quite flattered that he chose six of mine.

Sadly, like many Americans, I know little about countries other than ours. Yes, I read the news and know about some of the horrible things that happen to citizens in other places who speak their minds. In fact, this person lives in a country where you can be killed, yes, murdered by the state, for saying the wrong things about gods.

Yes, religion again.

Can you even imagine getting up in the morning and having to watch what you say?

So, I'm going to try to keep in mind our right to freedom of speech. And, I'm hoping that if anyone is reading this, they too will get up and think, if only for a moment, that's it's great to live in a country where we can say what we want.


This posted on another of my blogs, a year or so ago…..

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