Letter to Dad on Owen's Bar Mitzvah

Dad - you missed another wonderful bar mitzvah this weekend. Owen did an amazing job reading Torah and you would have been so proud of him. He persevered through the pandemic extending his studies for 5 more months to give us a perfect day. The day, the service and everything else was as unique as he is. Owen is becoming such a smart capable young man. He is wise beyond his years and possesses an intellectual curiosity that reminds us of you. He is really enjoying being in the Boy Scouts, being outside and learning valuable skills that he will be able to apply for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately you passed away almost 10 years ago now and have missed so much of our lives. Jacob and Mollie have also grown into amazing young adults who are following their own individual paths to find personal fulfillment that will hopefully lead them to years of happiness and joy.

I think I do #Movember because you were taken way too soon and way too young. If I can prevent this from happening to other men, other fathers than I think I will have done something good for all the rest of the sons and daughters out there who have experienced similar loss.

You are a hard act to follow. Your giving, your compassion and your kindness live on in me. I try to live up to the standards you not only taught me but showed me through your everyday actions.

That’s all for now. I wish you were here but have used this experience to try to make myself a better person. It’s an ongoing project that hopefully gives me a lot time to perfect.

Https://mobro.co/herzstache

Remeber the 5th of November, its in our hands and our hands only

So for 10 years, I have used the Guy Fawkes image as a cheeky way to talk about #Movember, but my fellow MoBro Anthony Nater posted this and it really resonated with me and worth sharing

"What ridiculousness aimed to destroy democracy will transpire tomorrow???      🙏🏼.   I finally understand  that we will never have a leader in this great nation that can bring us all together.  No politician will ever be accountable and I feel foolish for always holding that false hope. We will be forced to eventually rise up and come together ourselves to weed out the BS that our broken political system uses to fuel the hatred and fear that divides us further and further apart.   It’s in our hands and our hands only.   If anything this pandemic has taught us, is that we still have the moral ground to come together and support one another in dire times. We need a change that no one person is capable of providing.      I’m tired, very tired ..."

I have been asking friends on both sides, what is the end game for the division we are sowing, and what do we need to do in order to become united again? Continuing to spew hate, and believing the worse of your neighbor,  your fellow citizen is not the path forward.  It is the path to destruction, disunion and no longer the United States as we currently know it. Maybe its better, maybe its not, I don't know.  But I would like to request you think about what you post, as Anthony is right, this in our hands and our hands only.  

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What do we need to do to put the United back in the United States? - Election 2020 Thoughts and Ruminations

What do we need to do to put the United back in the United States?

That is the thought I have been having all day. I am seeing concern from both sides today which I guess is good and bad depending upon your perspective. I think we need to ask this question repeatedly over the coming weeks thinking about what each one of us can do to unite and not divide.

Regardless of tonight’s outcome we all need to demand and emphasize unity to whomever is elected. They do not just govern for you and what you believe in. They govern all of us in spite of all our warts, hemorrhoids and other various maladies.

Somewhere along the line our elected officials shifted to a my way or the highway approach that has not benefitted us collectively and has driven a chasm between our citizens. We need to push them back to compromise and putting our priorities over their priorities. The political parties have drifted further apart causing a vacuum that sucked everyone out of the middle. I assume most of us reside in the middle ideologically where we want to live in peace, raise our families and chase the American Dream as each of us sees fit.

United we stand divide we fall. If we don’t figure out a way to come together than we will most assuredly fall apart into civil unrest or worse. Is that what you really want? If so please stop reading now and just unfriend me.

We are not the Fascist Republican States of America or Socialists Democratic States of America. We are not red state and blue states we are all hues of purple mountains majesty. We are the UNITED STATES of AMERICA and it’s time that We the People start acting like it.

We are Americans. We all love our country and we all love it differently. We may not agree with how that love is shown but we all want those things guaranteed to all citizens Life Liberty and the Pursuit or Happiness

We have to stop allowing politicians to divide us. We have to stop the media from reporting on this like it’s a sporting event with winners and losers. We all win or we all lose. We have to stop believing that we hate or neighbor or your neighbor hates this country. We have to stop with the name calling and following the empty rhetoric spewed by talking heads and shared on social media.

I honestly don’t know what I can do to prevent what feels like an inevitable train wreck. It’s like watching the Titanic as it steams towards the iceberg unable to turn enough to avoid its frozen fate at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

What are you going to do to unite us? What are you going to do to help, not hurt, your neighbor or your fellow countryman?