Richard Franz

When we buy something new like a cell phone, lawn mower or car there is always an owner’s manual that comes with the purchase. Not everyone makes the effort to actually read this manual. After all, it takes precious time away from us that could be spent experimenting and playing with our newly purchased gadget.

“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.