America

Flying over this great land, looking down from 30-thousand feet you get a different perspective than from the road. I realize that is an obvious statement, but it sets up this post. I am meeting good friends in Beaver Creek to ski for a few days and enjoy their company and companionship on the slopes as well as in their condo and across a restaurant table. My friends drove from the east to Colorado. They do that a lot. Road trips they call it and they experience the magnificence of this country through people and places. Flying overhead also has its value for it brings in the gestalt and wonder of America. So few people in the world have the opportunity to see our planet from a high flying altitude. If they did, I would hope it would change their thinking away from narrow attitudes and a strict tribal mentality. I suppose in many ways America has a tribal mentality too. We think we are the greatest country on earth and in so many we are. We have opportunity and freedoms where others do not. We have a constitution based on fairness, and on guaranteed rights for all. We also have our political, cultural, and social differences, but we all call ourselves Americans and when it's necessary we put aside those differences and out of the many we become one. Note to Congress! Note to all candidates! It's necessary. It's time. Get it together. It's not your country. It is OUR country.