J. Davy Crockett III

A popular syndicated television and radio personality once related a conversation that he had with a well-known billionaire philanthropist. As they walked over the expansive estate of the wealthy man, the interviewer asked a profound question: “How much is enough?” This person of great wealth made the point that if one does not know “how much” they want to earn or accomplish, then they should know that they can never have “enough.”

Some news reports grab your attention and will not let go—particularly when they involve some desperate situation that affects masses of people. We see many such epochal forces going on now with massive flooding across the South in the United States, resulting in widespread property damage and loss of life. Yet a few hundred miles away from some of the affected areas, California—America’s most populous state—parches in prolonged drought.

Has it been 50 years since that fateful day in the spring of 1965 in Selma, Alabama, when racial tensions boiled over as the Civil Rights movement focused on the hardened segregation culture of the “Old South?” As the decades have passed, much progress has been made in racial relations in the South and throughout the country. The brutality of the opposition back then, and the bravery, naïveté and willingness by the marchers, who were seeking the right to vote, to confront centuries of prejudice is still shocking today.