QUESTION OF QUESTIONS

The Declaration of our independence  
Back from a hiatus, hoping to find the nightmarish world I left, was  just a bad dream. Only to find myself in a Munch world wanting to  scream. But today is America's Independence Day, our birthday and anniversary as a  nation.  We should be celebrating it joyously.  Yet in the face of all  that is happening around us, it may be difficult to celebrate anything,  while we are under attack from within as well as without. Perhaps it is  time to revisit the declaration of our independence. What exactly was it  that we declared independence from? Is our world free today?  For what it declares, is for everyone, not just the USA. If you have  never fully read this document, or even if you have, please read it here  and now.  It only takes five to ten minutes, and you may come away with  a totally new perspective of it.   

In Congress, July 4, 1776
The  unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in  the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to  dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and  to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station  to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent  respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the  causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to  be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed  by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are  Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these  rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers  from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government  becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to  alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its  foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as  to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.  Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should  not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all  experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while  evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms  to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and  usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to  reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their  duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their  future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies;  and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their  former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great  Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in  direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these  States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He  has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing  importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should  be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend  to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of  large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the  right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them  and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative  bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository  of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into  compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He  has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others  to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of  Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise;  the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of  invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to  prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing  the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to  encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new  Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He  has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of  Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He  has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our  constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to  their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For  protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which  they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For  abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province,  establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its  Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for  introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He  is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to  compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with  circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most  barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He  has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to  bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their  friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has  excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring  on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose  known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages,  sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have  Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions  have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is  thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the  ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to  our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts  by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.  We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and  settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and  magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred  to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our  connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of  justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the  necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the  rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore,  the Representatives of the united States of America, in General  Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the  rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the  good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these  United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent  States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown,  and that all political connection between them and the State of Great  Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and  Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace,  contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and  Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of  this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine  Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and  our sacred Honor.                                      
                                            HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

 

MEMORIAL DAY 

5/26/2025 

The following is an excerpt of the page on Memorial Day, from my book: Practicing From the Heart in the Age of Technology. Perhaps we should make this, a day to remember the victims of broken societies as well.
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Memorial Day is when we remember  those who gave their lives to defend our country.  It is noteworthy that  a year after the end of the Civil War, in April 1866, four women of  Columbus, Mississippi gathered together to decorate the graves of the  Confederate soldiers buried in their town. They also felt moved to honor  the Union soldiers buried there and to note the grief of their families  by decorating their graves as well. The story of their gesture of humanity and reconciliation is now told and retold in Mississippi as  being the occasion of the original Memorial Day.
 

Another heart-warming Memorial Day  story is that of the Vietnam Veterans Peace and Brotherhood Chapel in  the mountains north of Angel Fire, New Mexico.
Following the death of their son, U.S. Marine Corps First Lieutenant  Victor David Westphall III, Jeanne and Dr. Victor Westphall decided to  build a memorial in his honor and the fifteen men that died with him  near Con Thien, South Vietnam on May 22, 1968, and the Vietnam Veterans  Peace and Brotherhood Chapel in Angel Fire, New Mexico was erected. The  Chapel was dedicated on May 22, 1971, the 3rd anniversary of the death  of their son. It was the first major memorial created to honor the  veterans of the Vietnam War and inspired the establishment of the  Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was completed ten  years later in 1982.
 

In circa 1982, a group of veterans  and motorcycle enthusiasts made a pilgrimage to the site to honor their fallen comrades and to visit the one of a kind memorial. Somehow the  word got out in that era of no internet and many more made the trip the next year and every year since, so that last year's (2024) Memorial Day event attracted ~40,000 to  Angel Fire, New Mexico.
 

We salute all veterans everywhere who honor us with their devotion, patriotism and sacrifice. 

                                                                                    Reza Ghadimi (USAF 1967-1971 Veteran)

I head out west

Needing to get far away from 

Smugness of NY and its people.

My VW bus packed with

Everything I owned

And mostly didn’t need

I drove on, till I crossed the border

Into Colorado. The WELCOME TO …

Sign felt especially heartwarming.

Boulder was as I remembered 

Quaint and comforting

I rented an apartment on Walnut St.

On the way back from dinner that first night

I bought some books

Back in the room, the books looked menacing 

As the walls closed in 

Reminding me of toil of the past months

Reading, memorizing, testing

Over and over again.

A crack of thunder over the Rockies

Called my attention.

As I watched the sunlight fade

And the shadow of the mountains

Fall over me, I realized why I was there.

I dug through boxes and extracted

What camping gear I still had.

The next day, I spent shopping for what I didn’t.

Morning next, geo maps in hand

I head for the Continental Divide.

The first night under the starry skies

Overwhelmed by the surrounding nature

I lay awake till Cygnus flew behind the

Western hills and call of an owl and rustle 

Of a marmot finally put me to sleep.

Most of that summer, I spent

Hiking the trails from Mount Blanca

To Arapaho Forest, as I recharged

The wild desert in me.

The cold winds of fall arrive early

In the Rockies and I had a stack

Of job offers to consider.

Reluctantly, I left the rivers and 

Mountain critters to consider the future

The West has been home ever since.

School years are but a memory now

Though writing this note takes me back

Regretting not the gone times

But wondering how I survived 

Living with those who know this not.

                            Reza Ghadimi