Beginnings
My earliest memory is on my third birthday,
looking out the window of my kitchen window
onto our fenced-in backyard in Wichita,
Kansas. I must have been feeling pretty
good about myself because I remember thinking
"Wow, you're three years old today.
That's old."
I must still be feeling pretty good about
myself because I was recently looking
out into my Silver Spring, Maryland backyard
thinking "Wow, you're 46 years old
today. That's old."
For purposes of full disclosure,
I am the publisher of Musarium.
As a publisher, I don't have to
submit my work for approval, so
what you read is straight from this
horse's mouth. I haven't been able
to convince everyone to believe
as I do and most people go right
on leading their own lives after
they listen to what I have to say.
You probably will too, but I encourage
you to speak your mind as well and
we'll include your comments on these
pages.
For those who know me, it won't
be a surprise to find out that I
don't live in Berkeley, hanging
out with the far left and reading
old copies of The
Nation. You can find me
in Silver Spring, Maryland, making
a living as an online publisher
and internet service provider. You
might see me reading Reason
or logging onto AndrewSullivan.com
, The
Onion, or a variety of
current news sources. News.google.com
is a great source for the latest
links to some of these stories.

A Talosian from another planet,
circa 1968 |
As someone who has spent most
of his working life as a photographer,
I may not be a likely candidate
for verbally musing about the
world around us. As I get older,
though, I often feel like the
world is pushing more and more
information into my head. I need
a place to put some of my ideas
together and out of my brain.
Perhaps this form of expression
will avoid my head enlarging to
the size of an advanced alien.
I saw this alien once on one of
the early Star Trek episodes and
I don't want to look like him
(or was it her?).
While growing up in Kansas I often
heard my parents talking about
current events and history. My
father was a member of the John
Birch Society briefly in the early
1960s. I remember my parents'
worry when Wichita decided to
fluoridate its drinking water.
Like many at that time, they thought
fluoride would turn people into
communists. This might be true,
as I became a socialist sympathizer
in my late teens. A quote often
attributed to Winston Churchill
probably applies to me: "If
you're not a communist when you're
twenty, you don't have a heart.
If you're still a a communist
when you're forty, you don't have
a brain."
I attended a Goldwater for President
rally in 1964 with my parents.
When I was first old enough to
vote for a President in 1976,
I voted for Jimmy Carter. He seemed
like the logical alternative to
the aftermath of the Vietnam War
and Nixon's lies to the American
people. And I had the socialist
tendencies of a nineteen-year-old
who wanted to live in a fair society
which cared for the poorest of
its citizens (I was a poor college
student then with a low-paying
part-time job and no idea about
how to play the stock market –
the stock market is still a big
mystery to me). I didn't realize
that Jimmy Carter knew little
about governing a country, much
less his home state of Georgia.
President Carter didn't know how
to deal with the aftermath of
Nixon's price controls, economic
skullduggery and general lying
to the American public. Gas lines
grew long and my professors warned
that the world would run out of
oil in twenty years. I also heard
that the world's population would
balloon and consume much more
than the world's farmers could
ever produce. By the time radical
fundamentalist Iranians took Americans
as hostages in 1979, the world's
outlook seemed pretty bleak.
For many of us with leftist tendencies
in 1980, the world started looking
like it was coming to its end
with the election of Ronald Reagan.
An ideological descendant of Barry
Goldwater, Reagan spoke like he
might start World War III. We
all remembered the commercial
about Goldwater during the 1964
campaign featuring a nuclear explosion
and a child holding a flower.
Reagan talked tough with the Russkies
and I thought back to my first
year in college, when we had to
watch Dr. Strangelove
over and over in a film history
class. By the time The Day
After (a scary drama based
on a nuclear war hitting home
in Kansas City) showed on television
in 1984, I was starting to think
my father might be right. My father
was a fundamentalist Christian
who believed Christ would soon
be returning to pick up the pieces
of our diseased humanity. My father
was a big fan of President Reagan,
and I've read that Reagan also
worried about the apocalypse during
the scary years of verbal engagement
with the Russians.
Nearly twenty years later, the
world seems like a very different
place. My father died without
seeing Christ return to Earth,
we managed to survive the 1980s
without a nuclear winter and the
Soviet Union collapsed, allowing
the people of Eastern Europe to
reclaim their countries and lives.
I also lived to see my fortieth
birthday and fulfilled Churchill's
maxim about growing older and
reclaiming your brain by rejecting
communism. I now exist as a living,
breathing capitalist, glad that
I live in a country which allows
people to make their own smart
or foolish decisions in their
lives.
While the major threats of the
twentieth century are behind us,
we now live in a world with a
new set of threats. I watched
the dreadful events of September
11 and knew that my child won't
be free of the fears she shouldn't
have to live with. There are still
horrible and nasty dictators ruling
the lives of many people on this
beautiful planet and far too many
people will never enjoy the freedom
to make their own choices about
their lives or speak about their
ideas without the fear of being
arrested, tortured or killed.
At the same time, we live in
a world where man has made incredible
progress and where we have the
potential to continue to create,
invent and evolve into a higher
form of life. In the same way
my college textbooks of the 1970s
got it wrong when they claimed
that mankind wouldn't be able
to feed itself and that the world's
oil supply would run out in 30
years, we still hear overly pessimistic
predictions about our future.
I think life is actually getting
better for a majority of people
in the world, not worse. Statistics
from places like the United Nations
support this idea.
As individuals who live and
breathe on this planet, though,
we have a lot of work to do to
continue to grow and prosper.
There are more than enough diseases
to conquer, starving people to
feed and enslaved individuals
to free, as well as new technologies
to invent, bridges and buildings
to build and other planets to
visit.
I'm probably too old to be able
to visit other planets and meet
a real Talosian, but I'm greatly
looking forward to continuing
my exploration of life on planet
Earth.
I wouldn't want to have it any
other way.
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