February is always an interesting month to me.  My brother’s birthday is on the 1st, on the second we throw science to the wind in favor of folklore to predict the weather, then we have a series of holidays….from America’s unofficial national holiday of Super Bowl Sunday, to Valentine’s Day, and Presidents Day, and all month long we commemorate Black History Month.  Every 4 years we get an extra day too. 

As I think about each of those individually and collectively, I keep seeing the same themes….we have come a long way as a country, still a long way to go, lots of good times to smile back and remember, lots of bad and sad times too, and overriding it all, a reminder that it’s the journey, not the destination that counts.

It’s the people we spend time with, the places we see, the things we do to pass the time and mark the years off the calendar that matter most.  

That even in the darkest and most barren days of the depths of winter when for most of the country Spring is still too distant an idea, that we can choose to find things to celebrate while we wait for greener and sunnier days.

As I type this during the sometimes odd feeling interlude between Christmas and New Years, I find myself getting more contemplative about the year ahead and reflective of the year now coming to a close.  

Both for individuals and for the country and world as a whole, some years are forgotten, some are a blur, some are chock full of cherished memories and great accomplishments, others stained and marred by heartache, loss, and tragedy, but most years have some mix of all of the above.  

No one can accurately predict what a new year will bring, but here’s what I do know….2024 will be a decisive year.  

It will either be a year where America emphatically rejects fascism and authoritarianism at home, or allows it to continue to grow.  

It will either be a year where America continues to soberly accept its leadership role in world affairs or decides to step back from the stage and hastens its own decline in the process.

Here’s what else I know about 2024, both for ourselves individually and for our country.  It will be what we make of it.  

Now, people like countries are not in control of their own destinies entirely.  

There is chance, luck, the decisions of others, the lies we tell ourselves, the truths we accept or reject, the effort we put in or choose not to put in, and the self-defeating fears that keep us from taking action, that all play a part in how our days and years turn out.  

I truly hope and fervently wish that 2024 is nothing but a good and prosperous year for everyone the world over, but the reality is for most people it will be like any other year….a mixed blessing of good and bad, darkness and light.  

Let us all resolve to make a daily commitment to do our best to leave the people we interact with each day better off than we find them, to treat ourselves and each other with as much kindness and gentleness as we can muster, and maybe, just maybe, a year from now we can all reflect back on the truly amazing year that was 2024.      

I don’t know about you, but in my house we’ve developed over the years a division of labor when it comes to decorating for Christmas….my wife and kid handle the inside stuff and I handle the outside.  

Now, to be fair, we all get input on everything, inside and out, but since I’m the one doing the work, I get final say on the outside, and vice versa.  

On that note, the wife and kid put in recently that they have grown disenchanted with the lights I put on our front bushes because they don’t feel they are bright enough and don’t show up well enough.  

We’ve had them for at least 5 years and have never been particularly bright, but they get the job done in my opinion, and I’m a firm believer that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  

(I’m also cheap and don’t like to spend money on things I don’t have to, even if it’s an inexpensive strand of lights.)  

But the whole convo got me thinking, and since I’m always thinking about our country my brain of course made a connection that I thought I’d share.  

Christmas lights have continued to improve and evolve over the years from plain white lights, to multicolored lights, to smaller bulbs, from strands where the whole thing went out if one light blew to strands that stay lit even if a few of the bulbs are blown, to LED bulbs, icicle lights, light projectors, pre-lit trees and wreaths, trees that have foot pedals to change the lights and what they do, and the list goes on.  

Why have we had all of this advancement in Christmas lights?  Because the free market encouraged and allowed for new innovations.  

Our democracy has been crying out for the same freedom to innovate, and it’s long past time we make it happen.  

Throughout our history one value and outlook that we all shared, regardless of political leanings, was that the end goal was to keep building a more perfect Union, to be better today than we were yesterday, and better tomorrow than we are today.    

The goal was never to freeze things as they were, or take us back in time, or accept the old mantra of “well this is how it’s always been done, so that’s how we have to do it”, yet that’s exactly what both parties would have us do.  

The only time either one is semi-interested in systemic reforms is when they are the party out of power, but once they win again, they lose interest and would rather focus on keeping power.   

When our country was founded the only example upon which to design our system of government was the British system, so our founders took inspiration from them.  I cannot fault them for that. They truly didn’t know better.  

But now, after almost 250 years, we know of many tried and tested steps we can take to innovate our republic away from a confrontational/zero sum style of elections to a more consensus building and collaborative approach.  

Why should we care?  Because so many of our societal and governmental problems are going unsolved for decades longer than they need to, and in many cases are symptoms of this root problem…how our system is designed to work.  

Right now it’s only working for the two big parties, to maintain their hold on the electorate, while keeping problems alive to campaign on and raise money off of, instead of solving the problems once and for all.  

If we can innovate how our leaders are elected, and how they do their work, we will all get a better product at the end of the day, including the entire world.  

It’s not about whether America was great, is great now, will be great again, always was great, etc….it’s about “are we maximizing our potential as a nation, as a people, for ourselves and for the planet?”    

For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to explain them each because I do so elsewhere on my website, but below is my grown up Christmas list for innovations that would finally start to get us all way better elected officials, and by extension a more perfect Union, across the board.  

1. Expand the US House of Representatives to 1,000 and build a new larger Capitol Building if necessary
2. Independent Redistricting Commissions to eliminate gerrymandering once and for all
3. Final Five voting (combining top 5 open primaries with ranked choice voting)
4. National Popular Vote for President & eliminate the Electoral College
5. National Presidential Primary Day
6. Take the money out of politics/public financing of campaigns
7. Line item veto constitutional amendment
8. Ease ballot access rules for new parties and independents

So when you’re putting up or taking down or just admiring some lights this holiday season, think about our country’s elections system and system of government.  

If we can do better than dim bulbs in the one, surely we can do better than dim bulbs in the other. 

And if anyone needs me, I’ll be out at stores looking for new lights to keep my constituency of 2 happy.

I thought I’d try and take a slightly humorous approach this month, because given the state of the world, sometimes you just have to laugh to keep from crying.  

With a little over a week before Thanksgiving, if you’re already having anxiety about how to survive the experience with family members who you have deep disagreements with over politics, religion, football, etc, instead of avoiding those topics altogether, if you happen to find conversations turning heated or awkward because you’ve ran out of benign topics like the weather, consider de-escalating the situation with some historical perspective to lighten the mood (I recommend a comical delivery just to be safe). 

But before I discuss how to do that, let me explain my thought process.  

One of the most regrettable truths about our human existence is that relationships get ruined and damaged from issues of the day that years later looking back no one would argue over.

For example, would anyone today seriously argue in favor of keeping slavery?  Or in favor of denying women the right to vote?     

Abraham Lincoln used to tell a lot of humorous stories with a message in them, and one that he used to tell is about how one time he saw these two drunken men arguing at a tavern and it turned into a fist fight that spilled outside into the field.  

In the course of the fight they each took off their overcoats and threw them on the ground.  

At the end of the fight (which didn’t have a clear winner), they both picked up a coat and stumbled away, but without realizing it they had each taken the other man’s coat.  

Lincoln used this story to point out how both major parties over time could wind up trading positions on issues, no matter how stridently they used to uphold their old position. 

Now let’s say you’re sitting at dinner and your cousin brings up one of today’s hot button issues.  

Everyone freezes and the room gets quiet. You notice your aunt giving your cousin a look.  

That’s a perfect time to chime in and say something like “instead of talking about that, let’s play a game and try to think of what the most controversial topic was from Thanksgivings past.  What do you imagine the most controversial topic was around the Thanksgiving table in the year ____?”

By the way, did you know the first official Thanksgiving was proclaimed by President Lincoln in 1863 so that we all celebrated it at the same time, because from 1621 until 1863 all of the states celebrated it on different days?  On that basis I would have to imagine that in 1863 the Thanksgiving proclamation itself was even controversial!

My favorite fact about that first official Thanksgiving was that all along the front lines, while the Union soldiers were celebrating, the Confederate soldiers held their guns out of respect, even after 2.5 years of terrible war to that point.  

Whatever happens with your Thanksgiving this year, I hope you remember to keep your cool and appeal to the better angels of your own nature, because 50, 75, or 100 years from now, the issues causing hurt feelings today won’t even be on anyone’s mind. Now pass the gravy, please.

I have heard this phrase over the years and hadn’t heard it again for a while until a few weeks ago when I saw it, and it’s been on my mind as I observe the world around us, our country, and my own existence.  

The simple fact is that a lot of times in life we don’t always get to ‘choose our hard’.  A lot of times it’s chosen for us, and we have to do the best we can with what we have, and most of us do.  

But in a lot of ways in life we DO get to ‘choose our hard’, both personally and as a nation.  

For me, I came to the realization a few years ago in my early 40’s that I’m probably going to be sore every day for the rest of my life, so do I want that soreness to be from being out of shape and sedentary, or do I want that soreness to be from exercising?  

It’s a daily mental struggle but I’ve chosen the hard of exercising every day, and today as I type this I’m on day 1,306 straight of exercising at least 30 minutes every single day, starting at the end of March 2020 during the pandemic.  That’s the hard I’ve chosen.  

Another hard I’ve chosen is to be registered to vote as no party affiliation and to go through life as a centrist independent the last 20 years and counting.  

Our country has to face a lot of hard choices as well, and as I’ve said before, inaction is a choice as well.  The one most prominently on my mind at the moment is the choice of how to deal with mass shootings and gun violence.

Yes it’s hard to choose to deal with gun control issues.  Yes it’s hard to deal with electing politicians who will actually work together on this and other issues.  

You know what is also hard?  Having to continue to live with the daily fear of knowing it could be the last time you see your kid alive when you drop them off at school, or the mall, or the bowling alley or at a restaurant.  Yet that seems to be the hard my fellow Americans have chosen.  

Is it hard to be engaged as a citizen, to be current on the issues, to keep an open mind, to be involved in political causes and campaigns, especially when you’re working full time, have kids and other obligations taking up all of your free time it seems like?  Yep.  And for many citizens, just taking the time to vote every year is all they can muster and that’s fine if that’s truly the best they can do.  

But you know what’s also hard?  Choosing to check out, not care, be self-absorbed, and see your country’s democracy and rule of law develop cracks and falter over time due to apathy on the part of the masses, and maybe one day waking up when its too late to realize that America has become as FDR said about people in faraway lands that had “yielded their democracy”.  

The focus the last 3 weeks has been on the House of Representatives and the vacant Speaker of the House position which just finally got filled.  

For 3 weeks we did not have a functioning branch of government because of a small minority of extremists.  

For 3 weeks the focus was on the GOP for not being able to unify behind a single person for the job.  The Democrats kept quiet, playing the seemingly smart play from a partisanship standpoint of allowing the GOP as much rope as they could handle to hang themselves.  But was it smart?  Was it truly what was best for the country as a whole?  

When you come from a mindset like me of putting Country Over Party, what was best for the country during those 3 weeks?  Which ‘hard’ should the Democrats have chosen?

The Democrats had several options.  First, they could have voted for McCarthy to keep the job and thereby made him beholden to them to keep the job and hopefully bring him back more towards the center and get more bipartisan bills passed and simultaneously make the right wing nutjobs like Gaetz irrelevant.    

Second, they could have said they would support a different more centrist or moderate Republican that would do the same thing that they trusted more than McCarthy to work in a bipartisan fashion with both parties to advance legislation.

Now, instead, the GOP took 3 weeks to pick a new Speaker entirely on their own who is arguably more right wing than McCarthy was, less experienced of a legislator and politician, and more beholden to the right wing.  How long will Johnson’s Speakership last?  

The right wing chose their hard of vacating the Speaker’s chair and then had to deal with the consequences.  The Dems chose their hard of not lifting a finger to try and come to a bipartisan solution, in the hopes that they can run on the issue next year and win back the House.  

It was a cold blooded, politically calculating, and quite frankly craven choice….why pass legislation today that can help the American people when they can ‘possibly’ get control in 14+ months and ‘possibly’ pass legislation then….the mindset being ‘the American people can wait while they play partisan games’.  

You know who can’t wait?  The Ukrainians and Israelis who are in need of our financial and military assistance as they fight the forces of evil and terror in the form of Russia and Hamas.  

My fellow Americans, there are going to be a lot more hard choices ahead for all of us, both personally and as a nation.  I truly hope we all ‘choose our hard’ wisely. 

When I started this blog several months ago it was fairly easy to come up with topics for the first two months because I already had things I wanted to say and share, but for my third post for July I was kind of at a loss.  

As a result, I spent the month sitting back and reflecting, taking everything in during a busy month of getting together with friends old and new, road trips across different parts of the country, doctors appointments, and in the course of all of it, along Interstate 29 in North Dakota passing endless fields of gorgeous corn, I came away with what I wanted to share.

I know we are all bombarded daily with news and social media telling us how divided we are, how in peril our democracy is, how the planet is doomed, and it’s all very true of course, but what was so refreshing this past month was being reminded of the wonderful and good qualities of my fellow Americans.  

I am the first to say for years that we all have far more in common than we do that divides us, and this last month I got so much re-affirmation of that belief that I want to share a couple of the examples.  

See The Country For Yourself

First, if you ever get the chance to travel our great country, I urge you to please do so.  Every single time I do it, and I’ve now been to 48 states in 47 years of life, it reinforces that long held belief, instilled in me by my father, that if you take down the road signs and town names, you wouldn’t be able to tell which state you were in most of the time.  

It’s another way of saying we are all so similar, with similar needs, desires, fears, troubles, joys, strengths, and weaknesses.  In short, traveling helps you see things from different perspectives, develop and keep an open mind, and teaches you grace and humility.  At least for me it does.  

When we were driving over a week through Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa, through hundreds of miles of corn fields ready for harvest, you can’t help but feel a deep pride in your fellow Americans who do all the work to make those beautiful sights happen year in and year out over the centuries, to feed the country and the world.  

That moment that struck me on Interstate 29 south of Fargo was the thought of “faith”.  Not so much a religious faith, but just a simple, human faith that those farmers must have that there will be a tomorrow, a chance to grow and sell their crops in a free country, to raise their kids in a strong democracy, where people of different backgrounds and beliefs come together to solve problems and work together.  

All too often, politicians try to tell us that if we don’t listen to them or do things the way they want and when they want, that we are somehow doomed, but on that Midwest drive in mid-July, my faith was restored that while yes there may be dark clouds over our country, and they may be there for a while, that our country is going to endure and succeed over the coming years and centuries, because I believe in the American people.  

We might not fix all our problems as fast or as proactively as we could, and we may have some ugly fights ahead of us, but in the end it’s impossible to see us being anything other than successful.  

Good People Are Everywhere

The second big example of the reaffirmation I got that we all have far more in common than we do that divides us was several things that happened during a two day drive from Idaho to Arizona helping a dear friend and her daughter move.  

We were driving two of the biggest Uhauls you can get, both with car carriers attached, and both of us had issues at times with getting into jams with the trailers at gas stations and hotels.  Each time it fell to me to try and fix it, and each time, while I would have eventually gotten things straightened out, Good Samaritans came out of nowhere to help direct me in which way to turn the wheel and speed up the process.  

One person that helped was from South Asia, another was a middle aged white couple who said they’ve been towing trailers for years and are always happy to help folks.  The husband I believe he said his name was Mark and had on a USMC hat.  The third Good Samaritan was a much older man who was so patient and kind with me while trying to turn around in a tight hotel parking lot and loved it when I thanked him and asked him to give me “five” for being so helpful.  

I don’t have any idea what any of their politics were, and they didn’t have any idea what my politics were.  For all I know, and for all they know, they or I could have all been far right, far left, or somewhere inbetween.  But if we did know, would it have mattered?  I truly hope not.  If our political outlooks didn’t agree, would they have still offered to help?  I truly hope so.  Would I have still accepted the help?  Heck yeah!  

Be The Reason People Believe That Good People Exist

During the same moving trip I was in a truck stop convenience store just to get some caffeine to help keep me going and my purchase was only like $2.78.  Of all the times I’ve been asked if I wanted to round up for charity or donate $1 I’ve said no like 99% of the time, but for whatever reason, when the little grizzled old lady behind the counter asked me halfheartedly if I wanted to round up to help local nonprofits in that area, I guess I was caught in a weak moment and said “sure”.  About the same time as I’m walking away another employee came over and I heard the cashier say to her with such awe and reverence and gratitude “he’s a rounder”.  Not only did hearing that make me smile and feel good about myself, but I could tell that it made her day too that someone actually said yes when she asked, because she probably asks a thousand times a day.  

Final Thoughts

There is no doubt that America as a country and Americans as people in their own day to day lives face many difficult challenges and problems today and in the future.  It’s always been that way and always will be.  It’s just how life is.  We might not be able to control the challenges and problems we have to face, but we CAN choose how to face them.

The easiest and probably most understandable thing to do is to turn toward the darker side of human emotions and view and outlooks, but the better choice, and yes harder choice at times, is to intentionally turn towards the light and focus on the positives and the silver linings.

For even in our worst times, whether personally or as a nation, there are good things happening too, and we need to all (including me) do a much better job of remembering that and taking stock of those good things.  

People used to always be amazed at how FDR could possibly be so optimistic and rosy about America’s future during the Great Depression and given his own physical disability, and his answer was always “how could I not be?”

You may be reading this and wondering how, given the state of our country and the world can Perry be so positive and optimistic about the future of our country and the planet, but I say to you, travel the country and your answer will be the same as mine….how can I not be?

“Who do you play for?”

Of the many movie lines that have stuck in my brain over my lifetime, that is one of the more prominent ones.  

When I started my website a month ago I said I would only be doing one blog post a month because I want them to be meaningful, relevant, and inspiring.  

I have been thinking for weeks about what I wanted the topic to be for my second blog post, knowing that it would coincide with the 4th of July.  This weekend while starting to cut the grass those words hit me as I put on my old worn out Yankees cap and headed out of the garage….who do you play for?  

The irony of thinking of lines from Team USA’s famous hockey coach Herb Brooks while going out to endure Florida’s scorching heat brought a wry smile to my face for the first pass or two of the front lawn, but it really is such a fitting tie in with my worldview of putting country over party.  

There’s so much that’s been said over the years about the 4th of July and our nation’s declaration of independence, and rightly so, because just like that miracle on ice 43 years ago, what our fledgling nation did in 1776 was audacious, inspiring, and timeless.  

Both put the greater good over individual goals.  Both were Davids taking on Goliaths, and won.

During the 2004 movie Miracle, Coach Brooks played by Kurt Russell is constantly asking players who they play for, and they say “Boston College”, “Minnesota”, etc.  It isn’t until he puts them through a grueling practice after a game they should have won that one of the players finally gets why he’s been asking them who they play for and says he plays for the United States of America.  Here is the clip:

Years ago when my daughter was taking karate her instructor told us all that his two favorite holidays were the 4th of July and Thanksgiving, because they were holidays that all Americans could celebrate together, regardless of their backgrounds, religious beliefs, etc.  That really stuck with me.

So this year, while you’re celebrating our nation’s birth, I ask you to think about how we all have far more in common than we do that divides us, about how throughout our history the big things we’ve accomplished we did them together by putting differences aside, about how a declaration is just a starting point….it’s up to all of us to do the hard work and put in the effort so that this thing we call the American Experiment will continue to flourish for generations to come, and in the rest of the days of the year ahead, long after the fireworks are done, keep asking yourself “who do you play for?”