About Michael
After years of travel around the world and with comparison in mind I now know that you and I live in the most purposeful country in the world. It has been said that our diversity is our strength. Perhaps our relative youth, as a nation, is the reason. We seem to change our mind quickly, sometimes every four years, sometimes in time, seeminly sometimes not in time. Think about that for moment. We can change our mind and not face militant action, not face anything more that a brief few weeks of annoying "paid political announcements".
In my six decade of life -and with much less life ahead of me than I have left behind me- I don't like the fact that I didn't personally do enough and say enough to effect change enough on a local, state and national level. So I started to comment in this manner.
I started writing my Journal and Commentary with my Children and Grandchildren in mind, almost exclusively. I wanted them to know how I thought and what I thought about issues and subjects and why I did what I did in my life. I reflected on the fortunate fact that I could look on life through the lense of the son of an immigrant. Not just an immigrant but of a man that had virtually nothing more than a fourth grade education and, all things considered, made it all the way through life in this country making no excuses while keeping his head high and working damn hard. With rare exceptions, all of us are immigrants and that should put us on an equal footing, a level playing field, so to speak. And with rare exceptions most of us are better off than our relatives “in the old country”.
An accident of time and place you say? I say it is no accident, and further I suggest that what separates us and distinguishes us and makes us the UNITED STATES of America can be attributed to freedom and...free speech.
Through 61 years of life and love, of the strife and turmoil, both self-induced and courtesy of that consternation caused by others, I have learned and I believe that if we--for one minute forget the principles that were used in the framing of our beloved country -than we are doomed to lose those principles and all the good we have inured over the years.
This is all to say that I write, because I can. I, and others, write because we can and we know that what we say will either be accepted or rejected but it will not be silenced.
After a few attempts at making my thoughts public I decided that the best format, for me at least, is a Journal and Commentary. The Journal part is written because I want my children to know me and what has shaped me, for good or bad.
The commentary part, well…that is because we, as members of the greatest free society ever known, can comment and should comment.
As Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith once said…. "There’s nothing to writing...All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
With immense respect for my family, my readers, and our country, I invite you to read my Journal and Commentaries and agree or not.
Michael E. Mahfood