Blog 2225 – 11.21.2021

I’ve Got The World On A String

I am beginning this blog on the eve of my seventy first birthday with a picture, a favorite song title for the title and a cover of that song for the close. All that remains is for me to splice in a few encouraging words. Here goes:

My dad never cared much for one of Glenn Campbell’s early hit songs, The Wichita Lineman. It has always been a special favorite of mine, especially the lines: “I hear you singing in the wires. The Wichita lineman is still on the line.”

I believe that there is a string than binds us all together. That string is love, the Divine spark, the God particle, the “blessed be the tie that binds.” The first telephone most of us ever used was also a very smart phone. A replica of that wonderful childhood invention is pictured above. As children many of us spent hours sharing our deepest and most important secrets and discoveries with a friend at the other end of that string.

On my thirteenth birthday, our young pragmatic President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated. On that day two other famous writers also died (JFK had written a best seller before becoming President, Profiles In Courage). The other two writers who died that day were Christian apologist (defender) C.S. Lewis and defender of a polar different point of view, Atheist Aldous Huxley. Some one later wrote a book about the three meeting in heaven after their deaths to discuss their differing views on life.

We do not have to agree on every point, but it is good that we keep the string that binds tight and that we keep talking. In a speech shortly before his untimely death (an odd expression since death comes for us all sooner or later) President Kennedy in an effort to find common ground with our supposed enemies said:

President John F. Kennedy’s “Peace Speech”

Some believe the military industrial complex was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. In another speech in October, barely a month before he was slain, he announced plans to remove our military advisers from South Vietnam. I can imagine that was a very unpopular notions with arms makers. Making war is profitable not just for them but for many others. It has been documented that the long Vietnam War created more millionaires than there had ever been before in the United States. I am sure that figure has been eclipsed by our involvement in the even longer Afghanistan War that has finally ended.

Feel that tug on the other end of the string, hear that voice, whispering my birthday wish and the wish of many a sane and sensible heart around the world, the song the angels sang to shepherds, the story goes, “Peace on earth.”

Your friend, fellow traveler, and about to be birthday boy,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FgP076Q0NvmBsbn4NeJS8V6LmoJIivqo/view?usp=drivesdk

I’ve Got The World On A String