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["Melody O." <melody AT crecon.com>]

At 08:05 PM 3/31/05 -0600, you wrote:
>I'm an optimistic person in general, but in the last several years I've been
>grateful that, owing to circumstances beyond my control, that (1) I'm not a
>young person faced with the world we have now and (2) I don't have children.
>
>
>I do have a niece and nephew, 19- and 14-year-olds, respectively, and I love
>the only world we have, so I'm not immune to the building angst. I guess if
>reincarnation turns out to be a fact, I may even be personally involved in
>the terrors to come.
>
>Damn! Something always gets you.
>
>Marie

That is exactly why I am always looking out for the long-term.  I have six
children and who knows how many unborn grandchildren who will have to take
the world as it is handed to them, good or bad.

I cannot, for that reason, look only to what is good for my generation.
It's the whole building bridges thing...

“The Bridge Builder"
by Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide—
Why build you the bridge at the eventide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head:
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.” 

Best wishes,
Melody
"…It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless
minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds…." Samuel Adams