Category Archives: Historical

Sanity Prevails-For Now

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, Family, Historical, impediments, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

April 7, 2026- The only possible solution to the current stalemate in and around Iran has been reached-for now. Personally, I am most concerned for the safety and well-being of my fellow Baha’is in that country. They have, since the proclamation of the Babi Faith, in the days of the Qajar Dynasty, been relentlessly persecuted by the Shiite Muslim clergy and by elements of the government. This was as true during the Pahlavi Dynasty of the mid-Twentieth Century as it was earlier. The Islamic Republic has upped the level of persecution, to the extent of desecrating Baha’i graves, banning Baha’i marriages and refusing to let children of Baha’is receive an education, past eighth grade-if even for that long. Many Baha’is have been imprisoned, and several executed.

That said, the way to reversing the waves of prejudice against my fellows in Faith doe snot lie in “an eye for an eye” or “bombing the country back into the Stone Age”. ( Iran was a highly civilized place when much of western Europe was still a land of hunter/gatherers and North America was mostly settled and a place of organized agricultural communities, but not yet of classical, nation-based civilization.) Baha’is take the position that only consultation and equanimity can resolve the various conflicts, large and small, around the globe.

One of the tenets of the Baha’i Faith is to “regard the Earth as but one country and mankind its citizens.” This is accepted, in principle, by a good many people around the world. Some go back, though, to “What about national sovereignty?” or “Clean up your own back yard”, when I have raised this in the past. I say we can, and should, be concerned at all levels. Indeed, my most elemental concerns are for my own health and well-being, then for my granddaughter and her parents, and on up the family ladder. Neighbourhood, community, state, nation and planet do not, however, get short shrift. We all share the air, water and mineral resources.

The various leaders, when they take a break from screaming and yelling at one another, can surely bear witness to this reality.

Nuremberg, The Motion Picture

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, Education, Historical, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

March 29, 2026- I want, more than anything else, a place where I can know, of a certainty, that my son and daughter-in-law can raise their daughter, and any other child they may choose to bring into the world, to be a strong and free human being. I want to see Hana realize her gifts and fulfill her dreams. She is already showing signs of being a self-directed, internally-disciplined person, with a very basic sense of at least her biological needs and how to communicate them.

I start with this, because I watched the film, the motion picture “Nuremberg”, this evening. The military psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, wrote one of the first scholarly descriptions of the totalitarian mindset, having conducted several hours of interviews with the second-in-command of the Third Reich: Hermann Goring. Kelley wrote a book on the subject, after his discharge from the Army. The book cautioned that totalitarian personalities exist in every nation on Earth, including the United States. For this, he was castigated. The book failed to sell.. That was in 1949. A year later, Dr. Kelley, and the nation, witnessed the rise of Joseph McCarthy, and his reckless campaign against anyone who opposed him, on the grounds that they “might be Communists”.

McCarthy’s campaign lasted four years. finally being undone by the suicide of a Senate colleague whom McCarthy had hounded relentlessly for over a year, and by the increasing indecency of his campaign, orchestrated by a hack lawyer named Roy Cohn. Cohn went underground after McCarthy’s fall from grace, but continued to mentor certain individuals whose personality and viewpoints struck him as being similar to McCarthy’s.

I have rambled a bit, but we have witnessed, in the past year or so, unbridled use of Federal officials to round up, harass and even kill those deemed “less than” loyal American citizens. They don’t number in the millions, or even the hundreds of thousands, yet. The campaign was supposed to focus on criminals in this country illegally, who were to be deported to their home nation. As time has gone on, the campaign has been plagued by indiscipline, wild lack of focus and scattershot detentions of even American citizens. A Canadian mother and daughter, both legally in the United States, are now at a Federal detention facility, in Dilley, Texas, after being picked up at a border checkpoint in Hebbronville, Texas. There have been several cases of infants, some of whom needed medical attention, being taken to similar facilities. The miscarriages of justice differ from the Holocaust only in degree and in the number of victims.

There is nothing, in the statements of Executive Branch Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, to indicate that the activities of the agencies doing his bidding will not get worse. Only a reasoned stance by the new Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, would show that the present administration is bringing the travesties to a halt. The scenes depicted towards the end of “Nuremberg” and the scenes I saw in the museums at Auschwitz-Birkenau and at Srebrenica, last autumn, should never even closely be allowed to be replicated in our country.

I wait, and promise my grandchild that she will have a path to fully and freely pursue what she is meant to achieve. God bless America.

The Slow Death of Subterfuge

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Family, Historical, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 26, 2026- The meeting apparently went relatively well. Credit was given where, and to whom it was due. My daughter-in-law stood her ground and was at least recognized for making a concerted effort to set things right. An attempt, by a less-motivated individual, to shift blame onto their superiors,fell flat. The process will continue tomorrow, but YH’s in-person participation is done, for now. She can focus on her little girl and perhaps get some rest, over the weekend.

The thing that irritates me, a bystander in the whole affair, is the same thing that aggravates about a number of situations: The devaluing of any human being by another, I used to think that this was merely the result of elitism, misdirected cronyism or even narcissism. Yet the more that I recognize put-downs and dismissive comments as largely being reflections of the critic’s self-perception, the more hope I actually have that we, as a species, can move away from subterfuge.

In terms of cosmic energy, a formative civilizational period, of 6000 years, has come to an end. We have gotten all the mileage we are going to get out of one-upmanship , achievement based on cutthroat competition and a zero sum mentality. The Age of Brutus, of Machiavelli and the Borgias, of John Henry Hammond and John D. Rockefeller, even of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, is at an end.

To be sure, we have not seen the literal end of the last two mentioned above, but to have any influence in the emerging civilization that is based on openness, self-awareness and a cooperative mentality, they, and others like them, will have to sharply pivot from all that has sustained their prominence, and be re-born in the same manner as Saul of Tarsus. It worked for Andrew Carnegie, towards the end of the Gilded Age. It might have worked for Woodrow Wilson, had he not suffered that incapacitating stroke

Here at our little home, I will continue to foster a culture of frequent consultation, team planning and celebration of each achievement by any member of the family, no matter how small. Hana’s initiation of “Army crawling” (moving forward on her belly, using her hands and feet, with head raised) is one such cause for joy. Her mother’s soldiering through the rectifying of crisis that was manufactured by the ennui of others is another such cause celebre. Aram may well have climbed another rung on his ladder.

In the life of society, as well as in the life of a family, nature abhors a vacuum. What appears, on the surface, as collapse and chaos, is ever underpinned by an emerging layer of solidarity and certitude. This is what I see happening in our time.

Springing Forward

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Family, Historical, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 21, 2026- Hana came into the world with winter, being born on the December Solstice, last year. It was a day later than usual, but that worked for my granddaughter. Early this morning, as her second season began, she turned over, from her back to her belly, and quickly turned her head to her left, as her father came over to see what had happened. I watched it all on the monitor in my bedroom, glad to have been in on the milestone.

Today is Naw-Ruz, which for Baha’is begins a new spiritual year. Iranians, Tajiks and Pashtuns have celebrated Naw-Ruz (“New Day”) for over 3000 years, since the Dispensation of Zoroaster. In the latter tradition, it is a twelve-day celebration. For Baha’is, it is this one day, and our local community gathered at Plano Baha’i Center, a spacious and lovely facility, for two hours of readings, songs, a Q & A game for children and youth and a large, delectable spread.

What was most heartening about this gathering is that, when children under 12 were presented with gifts by the Spiritual Assembly, and there were more kids than gifts, the children made sure that each of their fellows had a gift, even if it meant dividing up a whole gift. One girl was given a snack wand and, since her brother already had a wand, she gave hers to a girl who had a small bag of chocolates. The second girl brought over half of her chocolates to share with the first.

Ours is one of the strongest models for a society which is now struggling. It remains, though, a matter of acquiring knowledge, adopting volition and taking action. This is the bounty given to every person, in these days of confusion and disruption. I invite anyone reading this to check http://www.bahai.org.

Happy Equinox!

Survivors

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Posted by on in children, Community, Historical, impediments, Personal Values, Social

March 18, 2026- “No legacy is above accountability”- Nancy Pelosi. I have read, with disappointment and disgust, of the documented behaviour of the late Cesar Chavez, in the heyday of the United Farm Workers’ campaign to improve the lives of field hands in California, Arizona, Texas and Colorado, in the 1960s and ’70s.

To their credit, the economic justice and civil rights communities have denounced the assaults on Dolores Huerta and several young daughters of Chavez’s own close associates. Ms. Huerta stood as tall as Cesar Chavez, in those days, and now she stands ever taller. They both worked hard to improve the lives of agricultural workers, but he could not, or would not, transcend the deadly subculture of machismo, which measures a man’s worth by the number of sexual conquests he can claim.

“No legacy is above accountability”. We have, as an effect of deep research, come to re-assess the lives of every single heroic or admired figure in the past 500 years of American history. The legacies of everyone from Christopher Columbus to Cesar Chavez have now been examined, some tarnished beyond repair. There will be schools renamed, a state holiday (in Arizona) canceled and the lives of many hopefully given closure and some cleansing.

Some have chosen to waffle, in response to this news, There should be no daylight on this issue. Chavez died 32 years ago, but his reputation was shattered by the cancer of misogyny, the minute he violated the person of his first victim. It was buried in an unmarked grave, when he became emboldened to continue the lustful violence.

I can only say “Gracias, y lo siento profundamente” to every single woman who has carried this torment with her, all these years. “Me, too” must never become shopworn or rendered irrelevant, until every victim is given a path to justice and healing.

“No legacy is above accountability”.

Bloodlines

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, Family, Historical, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 17, 2026- Today being St. Patrick’s Day, my thoughts go to the Irish heritage on both my mother’s and father’s sides. The Kusches, who hailed from Szcezcin, Poland, back when it was Stettin, Pomerania, ended up in St; Louis and Chicago, by the mid-19th Century. Papa Kusch journeyed east, as a young man, and became a shoemaker in Boston, and a small farmer in Saugus. Before they were Kusches, though, they were Cooks-in the area around Wexford, Ireland. Poverty, and the Hanseatic League’s allure, brought them to the Baltic shores. The family was proud of having been prosperous in Germany, and in the Midwest, and I heard little about our Irish roots, but I always felt a draw to the Emerald Isle. Mom had me pledge to look into her side of the family, when we talked of the genealogy that my Dad’s older brother had compiled. I thought that meant going to Pomerania, but last summer’s visit to Wexford, and nearby Rosslare, brief as it was, introduced me to a few people who looked strikingly like my mother and aunts. I later learned their family name was Cook. Part of me wants to go back and spend more time there, but that will need to wait.

My granddaughter will have far taller order, should she ever want to check out her roots. Half of her bloodline is Korean, and there are probably some Chinese ancestors. going way back. The other half is Heinz 57: German, English, Irish, French, Penobscot, Jewish, Lithuanian, Romanian, and Scottish. Her present and near term well-being, though, has me refocusing my energies. The journeys I undertake in the foreseeable future are all along the paths of introducing a little soul to the wider world.

That brings me to a separate point. There was once, at a Baha’i-sponsored conference in Florida, a zone set aside for protesters. Neo-Nazis and Black Separatists found themselves next to one another, in that small zone. There are, on both the Far Right and Far Left, those who today preach the credo of division. The truth about human relations is “whatever we say it is”, and any who call for reconciliation between ethnic groups or “racial” entities are accused of clinging to outmoded, discarded concepts. I beg to differ: It is the very divisions to which they cling that are outmoded, counterproductive and dangerous. Clothing them in academic jargon, or using tones of ridicule, do nothing to bring a longed-for peace. I have to wonder if peace is even what they want- or is conflict more alluring?

Regardless, as Hana and others of her generation show, bloodlines are no respecters of truly outmoded ideologies.

Centrifuge

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, Historical, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 2, 2026- Humanity seems like it is in a vessel that is spinning and separating people according to various qualities or elements. Those who took chemistry or physics in high school or college know full well that I am referring to a centrifuge. They can imagine, correctly, that the feeling is uncomfortable at best and shattering at worst.

Neoliberals argue that this “us against them” process is simply the way of the world- “just the way it is”, as the President of the United States said yesterday. Their whole premise is that the other side started it, and besides, the other side is “seeking to divide us against each other”-a centrifuge operating inside a centrifuge.

Depending on the historical record cited, this is indeed how it’s largely been for the past 6,000-10,000 years. It has been a slugfest, fueled by testosterone, territorialism and a scarcity mentality (zero sum game). “If you have power, I don’t”, however, no longer works well in a world that is more connected than that of Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Chingiz Khan or Napoleon Bonaparte. Hitler, cited by the ignorant who look wistfully at a past they barely comprehend, was in fact a poster child for the limits imposed by impulsivity coupled with simplistic blame-casting. His centrifuge tossed virtually everyone to the edges, leaving a sour cream of faux perfection to try and hold his fading Reich together.

The substrate of money plays a heavy role in the present exercise. Notice how those taking action against some countries, but not against others, seem to be acting mostly against those whose countries are rich in resources, and therefore a potential source of ever more revenue.

The centrifuge needs to be turned off. We are in a world that needs justice, far more than it needs to fuel ambition.

Our Better Nature

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, Historical, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual

February 12, 2026- Abraham Lincoln closed his first Inaugural Address with:
“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

He struck a conciliatory tone to the slaveholders of the Southern and Border states, in a last ditch effort to avoid the outbreak of hostilities. Some became emboldened, and it didn’t work. We are warned, in Scripture, not to encourage those who lie, steal or engage in selfish behaviour. Lincoln thought he could convince those he regarded as “friends and neighbours” to retreat from their threats of secession. He would have done best to have heeded Christ:

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” – Matthew 7:6

“Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them.” – Titus 3:10

When I was a teenager, I was warned by elders who have since passed, but who I respect to this day, to not give in to bullies. I stood my ground a few times, enough so that the kids backed off and some eventually became friends. Had I not stood up for myself, it was clear that they would have become emboldened.

It is also clear that, in the days when confrontation, and going after “the low-hanging fruit” are practices being substituted for reasoned policy-making and public discourse, the angels of our better nature require standing ground by sticking to facts, orienting self and avoiding the temptation to fall back on self-propelled fantasy. They require listening, certainly, and they require discernment, in evaluating what one has heard.

All Matter

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Education, Family, Historical, impediments, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social

February 1, 2026-

There is an illusion afoot, across the higher ranks of the Federal government, that there are two classes of people: Those that matter and those that don’t.

This is the logical consequence of centuries of “othering” and compartmentalized thinking. As long as one can separate self from those near or far, there is a path for those who profit from separation, to obtain that person’s allegiance. This is not a Right thing or a Left thing- both extremes follow the same mantra.

It has yet to work and will not work in the future. The only answer is adhering to the idea that all matter- and not just saying that as a rejoinder to people who feel unheard and have reminded the rest of us of that fact.

These are my thoughts, as Black History Month begins. I personally think that all history should be openly taught, discussed and made into fodder for learning how to move forward. I will, in the years left me to be with my grandchild(ren), teach the open truth and critical thinking skills. Hana already shows that she is no fool. I would expect the same from any sibling she might have.

Inclusion

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Historical, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

January 19, 2026-

We have come too far, as a nation and as a species, to go back to a world in which fever dreams of a “Master Race” or favoured status of one group over another can dictate policy or social coda.

I say this on a day when many people honour the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. it is not a liberal or conservative matter. One of Dr. King’s lieutenants was Ralph Abernathy, a social conservative and sometime Republican, who also did not wish to be relegated to second-class status. Another was a noted progressive, Jesse Jackson, who has spearheaded the movement towards full inclusion.

Two years ago, when I was still in Prescott, for MLK Day, a presenter spoke of the concept that “All means all”. She said that conservatives are part of the mix. She also said that no one group should be allowed to limit any other.

That arrangement allows even extremists to speak freely, while putting a check on their ability to act against the rights of those they seek to dominate.

That, to me, is the basis for social inclusion.