Pine Nuts: Time to lay down the swords and take to sharpening our ploughshares
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Sun, 06/23/2024 - 5:53pm
Dear honorable neighbor, it’s no longer us or them. We are one big quarreling family trying to get along. Compassion lingers as our common bond, yet we sometimes bow to feelings, and mistake those feelings for thinking.
We will pick up a flag, swear allegiance, then proceed to beat that flag as blood sport upon others who carry different colored flags.
If we are to save this planet and ourselves, we must accept that we are all kin, and recognize that this little blue ball we call home is in fact our mother. It’s time to stop calling each other, “dirty no-good bastards,” and start shoring up civility in our daily discourse.
Mark Twain cautioned us away back in 1902 in a letter to his good friend Joe Twichell regarding America’s political and commercial morals, “There’s one good thing: we’ve struck bottom and can’t sink any lower.” Samuel must be spinning like a lathe.
Naturalized United States citizens take an Oath of Allegiance.
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America…”
I humbly suggest we amend the Oath of Allegiance to read, “I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign or domestic prince, potentate or sovereignty, no matter who he is, who he thinks he is, or who his daddy is; and that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America…”
While I’m up on this soapbox I might like to mention bump stocks. They should come complete with orders to report to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
We won’t be thinking bump stocks once we check our egos at the door and start to see our world as the fragile bionetwork it is. The very air that we breathe requires our steadfast stewardship, as does the water that we drink and the food that we consume.
Let us estimate our grandkids’ needs, and attend to those needs. It won’t take long when we start thinking about grandkids for our consciences to get into gear and inspire our best selves to insure a safer and more hospitable environment for those runny-nosed little door-slammers that we love.
Finally, if you’ll excuse me, my pet jay, Huckleberry and his wife Emmeline are taking turns sitting on four brand-new grandbirds, who are about to fledge any minute, so I need to spread a sleeping bag out to soften their first landing.
In closing, I would like to extend an olive branch to each of the political parties here at home, President Putin and Prime Minister Netanyahu. We are all one big quarreling family, so let us lay down our swords, and take to sharpening our ploughshares.
— For more than 35 years, in more than 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American."
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