As we, as a County people, emerge from the clutches of COVID, I find myself challenged to reflect upon what was lost and what was gained over the months of mourning and method whether mental or physical.
And the loss of American spirit reconfigured into a series of sad and angry and worn weary faces I see locally fill me with an earnest — I say, an earnest need to communicate.
And what may I say to communicate, but a message of love and hope and goodwill and peace for our future. The forces that insidiously engulfed us, whose origins remain shrouded, now retreat and melt away but like a departing ocean tide which leave the refuse of regrets and the rubble of recriminations.
But we are and remain a better people than what unfolded in streets and malls and shovels and grills of recent months. And who would, in the final analysis, choose to live in “A World Without Love,” as songsters Peter and Gordon sang almost 60 years ago? “Not I,” says the farmer. “Not I,” says the teacher. “Not I,” says the mother. “Not I,” says the blind man. “Not I,” says the preacher. “Not I,” says the little one.
Each one of us must dig deep recover what Abraham Lincoln once referred to as the “mystic cords of memory” which bind us together as Americans locally and more. We must strive to regain our American “main spring” once defined politically by Adlai Stevenson but which now serves as a reminder of our collective heartbeat. The true meaning of Independence Day, America’s glorious birthday, still propels us towards new frontiers, the identification horizon that “America the Beautiful” still sings within us.
And if — and if, which I do not for a particle of moment believe, that this decade sees the fall of our future, then our cosmic inheritance beyond the summer stars above will still sustain and remind us of the 50 stars united in one accord.
Aroostook men and women, let’s reach for the stars together and sweetly hold hands once again unburdened as rightful children of the Universe. Push the love button.
Lawrence Berz, from the shoreline of the Francis Malcolm Science Center, sends birthday greetings to 2021 America. He is director of the Francis Malcolm Planetarium and astronomy instructor at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics.
