Richard Franz

“School days, school days, dear old golden rule days, readin’ and ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic taught to the tune of the hickory stick” (1907, by Will Cobb).

Have you found it a lot less painful—perhaps even enjoyable—to fill up your automobiles as the price of petroleum continues to fall? The same gasoline that is now reported so abundant was once touted as very limited and likely to run out in a few short years.

On August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a stirring speech with a vision for the future. The speech was delivered as the United States of America struggled with fighting a war on two fronts. One was a military battle overseas in a place called Vietnam, while the other was a civil/social battle, a war on its own soil grappling with segregation of black people from white people.

Have you ever considered all the things we take as truth, things that actually shape our lives by guiding our behaviors, habits, and attitudes? Some of our beliefs come from friends to whom we gave credibility for reasons we have long forgotten. Others were handed down to us by our parents, and some of what we take for granted is "just the way things are."

Have you ever heard someone speak lies aloud almost as a way of affirming or looking for affirmation what they want to believe was true? Have you ever done this yourself?