IS HALLMARK RIGHT WITH ALL THOSE LACEY MEMORIES ABOUT US?

We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language. So it is that everything we are, once was; and what once was, still is. Good, then, to occasionally take time to relax the ropes on our relentless climb. There are places down below from which we've come that warrant a wistful glance or two.

Consider for instance who we once were. A hundred fifty years ago we were Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn. At least we smiled at their raucous adventures. Today, they'd probably be sent to the principal's office. At the very least, diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and put on meds. Our national sense of youth and daring all too often suppressed in the name of order and civility.

But a warning here...! As author George Ade puts it: "Nothing is improbable until it moves into the past tense." When the climb ahead gets tougher like it is today, we may enjoy glorifying the past at the cost of remembering its flaws. In the age of Mark Twain, America still bought and sold slaves, still barred women from the vote, still chained the mentally ill, and still had more outhouses and unpaved roads than libraries and national parks.

But now a counter-warning...! If our national past was flawed, what is one to think of our national present? Lets see, today vast millions of us think our President is a Muslim...was born in Africa....wants to create death panels for the elderly ill...is in secret alliance with Wall Street billionaires [that is, when he's not in secret alliance with the labor unions the billionaires hate]...and has already earned the decision "worst president in US history.".

In a democracy, where "the people" are the drive-shaft of the machinery of government, one can be easily terrified by such profound ignorance. As if the drive-shaft is permanently busted. And just to verify this fear, we are reminded that vast more millions of "the people" prefer movies that feature gore and glory, sex and sadism, and especially vampires and vendettas. Shifting to television, more millions of "the people" say they vote for "American Idol" contestants more than they do for president.

Small sidebar. Among America's chosen "Idols," several have been disallowed because they were charged with: Battery...killing animals...and having affairs with judge Paula Abdul. What is one to say? Idols with feet of clay? Or America's best at their worst?

Anyway, there is a large groundswell these days of "the people" who seem to have made up their mind about which America they prefer. Past America, or as the paraders chant it, "the real America." But of course there is no such place except the America we each see in our own memories. Are Tom & Huck heroes or troubled kids? Is Black Jim a repressed philosopher or ghetto vagrant? Are the riverboats plowing the Mississippi loaded with free-enterprising capitalists or poker-playing hustlers?

Your call....