Realtiy sets in

First of all, I have not forgotten when the Americans were taken hostage and its impact on me.  That has played into my attitude about taking this trip to Iran.  My mother and I had spent a lot of time and money on my storage during that hostage taking so that I have not forgotten it. Most of that time period I associate with either the Pope, the death of the pope, the Jim Jones affair in South America, the death of Gig Young, and finally the taking of the American hostages. All that time period was full of havoc and chaos but did directly involve me in ways that nobody could suspect.  I am not a bit surprised that after all this time it was necessary for me to finally learn of Alexander the Great, who literally meant nothing but a paragraph in a history book. My, does this ever prove how times change when we finally take time to learn something about ourselves. Who would have believed it?

That was also the time when I picked up a brochure from the Institute of Children's Literature to take back to Michigan with me.

At that time I was busy studying George Washington and his environs at the time.  I did not know nor care that there was a bust of Louis XIV in the Corcoran Museum there in D.C. All I had seen was the huge portraits of Washington that were displayed.

So to learn about all these historical characters I had to wait until I lived in Arizona to discover them. What a thing to learn.  A French king and a Macedonian warrior King.  Who knew?

Living in Arizona now makes it difficult for me to travel to the East Coast and much more difficult to travel to Europe or the Middle East.  However, I am somewhat content that I can eventually go to California, Nevada, or the great Northwest.  Travel at my age becomes increasingly difficult because like it or not, mother nature has decreed that our physical bodies change as we age, and I feel that change all the time now.

Why and how all these historical personalities became important to me when other people would rather that I spend more time in the present than in the past....so who is to say or understand except that one makes it important only so long as it is a truthful and rewarding comprehension of one's own self.  As I learned all that I could know about each one, I found it easier and easier to see them as the human beings that were self exposed to me.  I came to know them in ways that authors, biographers, and historians can never present fairly and correctly.  That is its importance to me.  To be able to sift the truth from the false jargon that is spouted and distributed. Just as when the truth is presented in a jury trial, we learn that basic biases and prejudcies affect others in ways that we cannot possibly understand or know. For one person the truth is easy to see but for another it is difficult due to the clouding of their own minds due to their preconceptions.

The trip to Iran in the spring will cost nearly $7,000 dollars.  It is only worth it if I am healthy and can enjoy it.  I am planning on signing on if I can manage both the expense and the travel arrangements.  Time will tell.  I will look into it.