Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

As we approach the one year anniversary of the December 23rd 2004 ice storm it might be important to reflect on how far our world has come over the last century or so. After getting our power back first in our family we became the only heated home with running water for about a week. That brought the family together and we all lived under one roof for days. Although our home was crowded for that week it did bring about a renewed bonding of our family.

What last year?’s Christmas storm did bring into focus was how much we depend on these modern conveniences and if they are gone one day how does our society and our family?’s cope?

A few years ago I visited the birth home of Abraham Lincoln. The original structure has long been reclaimed by the elements and the Historical Society has built a replica of his family?’s log cabin. The only convenience in the cabin was a fire place.

The dimensions of the entire cabin were 14 feet by 17 feet. Many of us have family rooms bigger than that. Yet out of this back works cabin there was born a young child that became educated, a lawyer and President of the United States. Despite his wisdom and his writings (that are still quoted today) he led this nation through a very grave period in our history.

My point here is the primitive environment that Lincoln grew up in more conducive to future leadership and knowledge?

Lincoln?’s family was small in comparison to other pioneer families. So I imagine that at a very early age Mr. Lincoln was required to help with the family survival. The spring where they gathered their drinking water was a steep walk down the hill and into a cavern like spring. I am sure young Mr. Lincoln walked that path many a time during his first six years of life. Keeping warm in the winter meant chopping and splitting fire wood all year long. That also meant daily trips to the outside wood pile to carry in a day?’s supply of wood for cooking and heat. Without electricity and no way to keep meat fresh, the men and young boys would to go into the woods each day to kill game for a meal. The musket rifle was proudly hung above the fire place and accessible to everyone in the family including the children. Then there were the sanitary facilities which were located away from the cabin and we call them outhouses.

Today we see our young adults killing each other with guns, knifes, broken beer bottles, and drugs. Two hundreds years ago the common enemy for survival was the elements and the wilderness, today it is each other. Two hundred years ago going to the bathroom was a very quick trip and on days like this it was probably at a dead run. Today there are those of us that literally spend hours in our bath rooms. Just how many of you are prepared to face a black bear today on one of your frequent trips to an outhouse? The women then stayed home to literally keep those home fires burning and to take care of the children. Inside their cabin they were safe and that was the only security they had. The young boys at young ages would follow their fathers into the woods to hunt and learn to shoot. Even as youngsters they knew this was for their family?’s survival.


By Reflections

Christmas Cont

Today both parents work and there is not a connection between our generations. Fathers and mothers go off to do their own thing and our young people do theirs.

Lincoln studied in a cabin and the only light he had was either a candle or an oil lamp. Was what Mr. Lincoln read in those books the reason he was able to develop the insight and vision for this nation? Or was it the fact that he recognized at a very early age in the Kentucky backwoods the lessons of human survival. If you wanted to be warm you must chop and split firewood and carry it into your home. If you let that fire burn out then it may be hours before you could get another fire started because there was no Kroger?’s down the hill to buy matches. I suspect young Mr. Lincoln recognized at a very young age that his father or is mother could not do everything required to survive in the wilderness alone. It was the responsibility of every family member to do their part in the family?’s survival. I doubt very many of our modern families have that interdependence on each other for survival. They work and pay the utilities and everything is provided by a stranger at some corporation hundreds of miles away. Today we are very reluctant to loan our brother-in-law money to pay for his rent to keep your sister and her kids under roof for fear he will sniff the money up his nose. Would we take our neighbors in if their house had burnt down or they were freezing when there is a perfectly good Red Cross shelter in Lancaster?

In this last week before Christmas, we should all consider if Abraham Lincoln was born into your family this week would you expect him to be a future President of the United States. Would he succeed at being a lawyer? Would he develop the same keen sense of awareness as the original Abraham Lincoln did? Would he have the same strong desire to learn and gain the knowledge he did from the tiny cabin in the woods of Kentucky starting in 1810? If he didn?’t live up to these expectations who would you blame?

When you all place your youngsters into bed this evening with single digit temps predicted will they need to go to the bathroom? Will you need to get up to put more wood on the fire? Will your family have any food tomorrow if the weather is bad and the hunters bring back no game?

I know the questions above were in the minds of the mothers a century or so ago. What are your questions? Will your kid do drugs? Will they clean up this messy room tomorrow? Will they get their homework done by Monday?

Maybe we should all have a ?“NO ELECTRICITY DAY?” a week before Christmas each year to reflect on what is important in life and its lessons. That we not allow the Red Cross shelters to open and that we must look out for our neighbors and take them if you have heat and food.

I know this idea is not reasonable but it would teach us all more than what the computers and the books in our libraries are teaching our people now.


By Reflections

Further Reflections

I, likewise, often wonder whether, on the whole, life was better one or two, or even three, centuries ago than it is today. Have all of our modern comforts and conveniences come to us at the expense of our humanity and our sense of community? Have all our tremendous advances in knowledge come without any advance in our wisdom?

The Amish way of life, I suppose, may point the way to an answer. The Amish have tried to forego modern technology. They have no electricity, they travel by buggy and plow their fields with horses, they wear simple homespun clothing, their homes are furnished with simple homemade furniture, they have no televisons or radios and, I understand, they generally are schooled only through the eighth grade.

When one family suffers a catastrophe, the rest of the community pitches in to help. Their lives are guided by their families, churches and communities. They are lovely people, and theirs certainly is a lovely way of life.

My wife and I spent some time last summer in the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country. If you have not been there, Intercourse, PA, and its surroundings, are truly beautiful. The countryside looks like a Grandma Moses painting. The people you meet in the curio shops and restaurants are plain, humble, generous and friendly.

Yet our modern world intrudes on them in more ways than you can count. Many are selling out to developers, as the value of their land pushes through the roof. Intercourse, itself, has become a tourist mecca, complete with traffic congestion. Amish furniture and clothing, increasingly, are being mass-marketed. Amish men, for whom there increasingly is no room on the farm, have become construction workers, and have found ways to rationalize their increasing use of modern construction equipment. Amish buggies are now equipped with electronic turn signals. Power lines increasingly run to Amish farm houses. And one sometimes sees buggies parked at shopping centers.

Try as we might, we cannot wall ourselves off from the world in which we live. We all must learn to function in it. That includes our children. That even includes, increasingly, the Amish. Once released, knowledge and technology cannot be contained. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle.'

I believe we would be better off, in many ways, without our knowledge of the structure of the atom. It remains to be seen whether we have the wisdom to hold the ability to destroy the world without using it. Every significant advance in technology, it seems, is turned first to the construction of new weapons. But, again, there is no turning back.

At least part of the way to a better future, I think, has to be found in our schools. We need to build schools in which our children can grow in their wisdom as well as their knowledge. Schools in which our children our encouraged to ask questions, in which they learn to direct their own learning, and in which they learn the value of working together to solve common problems.

In so many ways, our generations have been failures. Try as we might, we have been unable to eliminate the greatest of human scourges -- our unhumanity to each other, as exemplified most graphically in war. We must understand our failures, far better than we do now, and we must teach our children to avoid them.

We must teach our children to reach out to each other; to build a world in which learning and the growth of knowledge and technology are encouraged, but in which they are used productively, not destructively; and to build a society, like that of the Amish, that supports the weak as well as the strong.

Count Me Out

Charming idea, at least until your grandchild dies of appendicitous. Remember reading about the last great flu epidemic? Maybe 50 million people died. Or the Black Death were a third of humanity perished. I like a world where I've got a fighting chance against ancient scourges. I like a world where hunger is a matter of politics, not production. Bruce do have you had your flu shot, stocking up on Tamilflu?

I wonder how many people have ever tried to farm with animals (I have, my grandfather insisted on it. I hated it so much I joined the army to escape) John Deere is the animal I like.

Every thing has an upside and a downside. Yin and Yang, perfect and equal.

By Any Mouse