I live in a country created by a Declaration and some battles.
The men who came to agreement and signed the Declaration of Independence did not have it easy. Change is difficult. Pressure under fire?
Do you think more policies and more laws are going to improve on the basics of any of our nation's first documents or the Original Big Ten?
The American Constitution Preamble uses the term "We the People and "more perfect Union". Nothing is perfect. And it takes people to make our country work. It begins in ourselves and homes.
Alexa says, because I asked, no one knows who fired the first shot, but the triggering events of the American Revolution were in Lexington and in Concord, Mass. on April 19, 1775.
What is it about that date?
I am trying to read, The Great Shame, a book written by the same author of Schindler's List, Thomas Keneally. I say try because, it is an epic. Many characters and details. Irish prisoners (women and children) slaves and indentured servants make the long ocean journey to Australia, not willingly. I have only read about 100 pages, taking it in two chapter increments. It is not a book I can read in a park setting or with distractions. I am going on the characters' journeys. It may take awhile.
We may not have learned of Irish history in school, fact or fiction. I didn't learn much of it at home either although my mother was Irish.
When I was growing up in the 1960's, my parents were busy with us, grandchildren, jobs, and maintaining a life in an American city hit with riots. They lived their faith, prayed and discerned, faced ignorance and violence as did three of us in our schools. My parents worked in their city to help improve it. They did not abandon it or take us out of the schools. Upon retirement they moved. I do not attend the reunions.
In school we did learn about the start of our country. It has something to due with the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, right? America is now, and never was, perfect. But the experiment works as long as we never forget the motivation of the men who put their hearts to pen and paper. Who inspired them? To whom did they listen?
Lest we forget, no one race or group can claim exclusive ownership or victimhood to slavery, indentured servitude or being prisoners. Don't muddy the waters with victimhood. Our forefathers, from the 1700's and Biblical times, paid dearly for our living arrangements in America. Not every generation gets it right. We have to continue on the journey and not be perverse.
In our schools, rights and expectations have become muddied, and in some schools bloody. It is not pretty, perfect or preferred in a civil society. Bell curves are ringing. Do we hear them?
The American Revolution lasted about eight years. The Treaty of Paris, to end the American Revolution, was signed on September 3, 1783. Why signed in France? Who helped during the American Revolution? Ben Franklin was there.
Ratification came on January 14, 1784 by Congress. England, under King George III, approved the Treaty of Paris on April 9, 1784. On May 12, 1784 the papers were exchanged in Paris.
It took courage and time to create a society, flawed, but one with clearly documented rights. We are getting the right to life wrong since 1973.
It takes cowardness, and not alot of time, to destroy what is good or has stood for years. Is our nation under attack by those who have no knowledge of our founding fathers or no rememberance of yesterday? Did you forget 2020? Oregon was in the news alot.
It takes as little as one person to take away our rights. Look what people do after shooting deaths in schools. One person's action does make a difference. Intent matters.
A contemporary father is petitioning. He wants a more perfect union after he fired a shot to protect a school.
Do we get words and dates wrong? Do we get the intent of our nation's beginning wrong? I can think of some laws and mandates that got it wrong recently. Are those errors felt on the football fields, in our schools, in our homes?
Did we forget the work that it takes for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to be more than a dream? Abraham, Martin and John, what say you?
When we forget those who gave up their lives for us, we fall victim to prey. Predators come in all shapes, sizes, races and motivation.
France comes back in repeat. Why is Paris burning? School funding is the excuse. Whose flags are being waved?
France is a mess but Americans still have chosen to go there for a football game. Faith over fear or football over fear, they are entering a battle zone. Pray that the confidence shown in security is not a disappointment.
No one with a good heart goes to football games, a track meet, school, down the street or outside their door to purposely meet destruction. But sometimes it happens. We still send our kids to school days after a shooting.
The Gospel reading on Friday was about reading signs. What are the signs of our times? Which way is the wind blowing?
It is not new that our children enter battlefields daily, even before they exit their front doors. Those real battles enter schools through locked or unlocked doors when weapons, sharpened or locked and loaded, are chosen to render vengeanance, not defense. Our children become unwilling members of the ensuing journey.
What are you doing to make life, rightfully, one with liberty? Happiness is subjective.
I do remember those from the distant and immediate past to help remind me of my responsibilities for the present and future. Yesterday's news can haunt. A perverseness reigns in every generation. Does it travel faster today?
A song, a brief interlude, played after Communion on the televised Mass yesterday, is:
"We Remember, We Celebrate We Believe"
I first heard the song at an Aunt's funeral held in Pittsburgh. She was a fan of her adopted city and the teams. (Jersey girl by birth, I get it)
Song link:
https://youtu.be/bFZ1NiXzJew?is=ZW-TUdLhXS0mI4Ew
Some have loved us to the end and showed it by laying down their lives. I choose to remember, look for signs, pray and have faith over fear.
Keep us from just singing, laying flowers or wringing hands. School bells ring.
Do we remember the bell and why it rang in Philadelphia in 1776?
From the Teacher's Desk with love,
Marian R. Carlino
October 23, 2026