Perry Will talked to the Grand Valley Kiwanis Club on a recent Monday, and three times he referred to us as \u201cyou all in this room.\u201d I\u2019m not sure what he thought he was trying to say, but what I heard was \u201call you in this room \u2014 \u2018we\u2019 \u2014 understand I represent the Western Slope \u2026 not \u2018they\u2019 who live in cities, or on the other side, over there.\u201d Perhaps he also thought we all think alike? We do not.<\/p>\n
Pitting one group against or in opposition of another is not what family does. We are a family now; all of us except native Americans have come from somewhere else. The history we cannot ignore is that we stole, cheated, bargained, took, plotted and ended up with native American land. That dismal period we must acknowledge as well as the equally horrid period with African-heritage human beings. We are an imperfect family who left countries for tolerance toward all religions and for freedom of speech, unclear just what that means.<\/p>\n
As a family, we must find answers very soon for climate change, planet care, and the powerful hold money has over all and ruling the day. Compromises made in the past to achieve peace in the family must not be eroded away, ignored as if they can be erased. Science, facts, truth and values matter; family has to find them.<\/p>\n
A question I have is how do we get people into the wilderness, the mountains, the waters, the land in a way that they experience how vital and necessary those things are to our well-being? Our politicians should be required to visit 75% of our states, learn and discover the they in we and the them in us.<\/p>\n
We are an American family. Our differing cultural backgrounds identify what that means to us as individuals. Best not to use sports\u2019 analogies of winning for one meaning a loss for another. We are all here together on one finite planet; it\u2019s our home.<\/p>\n