You bring up an interesting aspect of life from back then. We were a nation...one for all and all for one. Even as mistreated as black folk had been, they threw in when one might have reasonably expected them to say...we ain't jo nigga's...fight em yourself. No...they had to fight for the right to fight and they did. We were a...one. A nation. Not perfect but striving to be. Everybody pulling in one direction.

I thought this even when I was only nearing 20...after Kennedy declared us to the moon...and the tail end of that idea washed it's way through the government and ended...this nation has not been set on a unifying direction since. There was not a common goal for the nation. It seems as if we have been nothing but divided since and the sad thing was that has been a purposeful goal of some...united we stand, divided we fall.

Optimism is beat down by a daily barrage of negativity. Maybe it was just my nature as a younger but I remember a time when I would wake up in the morning with butterflies in my stomach...just so excited to see what a new day would bring. Woooo...what can I do today? Glad to be free to do as I please.

On this, the 18th anniversary of 9-11-01, it strikes me, as we are on this topic, that it seems all we have achieved in the 18 years since is a loss of more freedoms. Ever notice how it seems a war or an act of terror, as it were, is an opportunity to take some freedom away from us. Something they gleefully did in spades after 9-11. America will never be the same, they said. Yea...guess not.