Travel log… Saturday September 18, 2010…
Lately it’s occurred to me what a long strange trip my life continues to be…
The last two weeks have afforded me some long hours alone in my car driving through some beautiful country… Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Washington State… Snow covered mountains and sagebrush high deserts… Windy river canyons and winding mountain roads…
Big sky country and the smell of pine trees in the clean Montana mountain air…
Time to be alone with my thoughts… A new job 2000 miles from home and at 54 yrs old… I’m back doing algebra and trigonometry… Next week we’ll throw some chemistry and reactor physics in there for good measure… It’s interesting and challenging…
It’s also given me an opportunity to perform in some interesting and historic places… Elko, NV this past Thursday… It’s roots to the Gold Rush days of the old west… The town was built by prospectors looking for an opportunity to work hard and make their fortune… Not people looking for a bailout, stimulus or free government healthcare… People there still work the mines…
Sagebrush covered high desert plains turned to fertile farmland during the homesteading days… Not by government intervention, but by hard working people wanting nothing more than to be given a chance to work hard and enjoy the fruits of their labor…
Yes, the argument can be made… The Homestead Act was a government program… A stimulus program if you will… It was a stimulus of opportunity for common people looking for the opportunity to work hard and enjoy the fruits of their labor…
The government gave 160 acres to each person over 21yrs of age requiring they farm at least 10 acres of the land… It wasn’t all wonderfully fertile and well-watered land… It was a hard life farmed with a horse drawn plow and watered with the sweat of a farmer’s brow…
It wasn’t a welfare program that doesn’t even require drug tests for those watering themselves at the government thorough… They were required to carve their existence out of that land…
No one was guaranteed success because they were too big to fail… And many, many of them did fail… It wasn’t a stimulus of fat cat bailouts and crony union buddies…
They lived in homes made of sod… Common God-fearing men and women yearning to work hard and live free… To raise their families as they saw fit…
But many of them also succeeded through their hard work in turning this land into land that feeds a good portion of the world now…
The people here are still strong, hard-working, independent-minded people… I am happy to be living and working among them and I’m looking forward to more opportunities to make them laugh…
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