It’s the end of summer.  Yes, we had the “official” end of summer on Labor Day, but sometimes Mother Nature lets you get a little bit further into the month, keeping it warm enough so you can still go to the beach or do outside things.  Now the temperatures are dropping, you have to start wearing jackets and looking for sweaters you can’t find anymore; Mother Nature’s saying it’s about time for a change. 

But I just like summer.  I really feel like one day I’ll just move to Key West and worry about hurricanes instead of snow. 

And now we’re getting into the Presidential election.  Well, here’s my twelve cents.  When I watch television and I hear half of a story, I’m able to go online and follow the whole story.  When I watch Fox or CNN or MSNBC, I see a little part of the speech, which is why I love to watch C-Span where I get to see the whole speech.  On the commercial networks, they have all these talking heads telling me what I should be thinking.  I think we’re at a point in history where we have the technology to actually do the research, find out the truth, and make a decision on our own. 

I would love to see or hear a debate like the one I used to hear growing up in my living room with my father and his friends debating whether or not Joe Louis would knock out Muhammad Ali.  It was factual, and it was passionate.  I would love to see the candidates sitting on a stage with a moderator, answering questions from letters and emails that came directly from the American people.  That’s been done to a certain extent, but then I’d like to see the candidates ask each other questions, have rebuttals, and then after an hour or two of that, all the television stations would run Looney Tunes and Disney cartoons. 

Without all the spin going on, opinions about what the candidate meant, what they should have said, who won, the American people could just sit back and put a smile on their faces again. Instead of filling the next 2 hours of our lives with how doomed we all are, how we’re not moving forward, how people around the world don’t respect us, we could just watch cartoons and smile. 

I’d love to hear a candidate say, “As President, I will follow the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Not, “I have to win, they have to lose,” but a general “Let’s be nice to each other and think about others,” that’s all. 

Now I can get off of my soapbox. 

Thank you for your responses last month!  Let’s rake the leaves and start looking for the snowblowers, let’s get ready for the Fall!

-Kevin S. Nash

Photo Details: Personal project, Atlantic City, NJ.