And so the busiest time of the year is upon us.  With Halloween but a memory we all have a traditional to-do list this upcoming season.  Election Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and all the festivities of Christmas, each one of these dates bring about a sense of duty, responsibility and a good share of memories.

Veterans Day, there are no words that can express the gratitude for those who serve this great nation of ours.  These men and women are aware first hand of the blessings America offers and risk life and limb in order to protect these freedoms throughout the world.  Go out of your way to shake the hand of one of these heroes.

If  Freedom of Speech  is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led like sheep to the slaughter.  G. Washington

Election Day this year is focused on the more “routine” elections.  It’s not a presidential year but it still holds the promise that the voice of the people is to be reckoned with.  Sadly, there are many who are so disillusioned with the workings (and corruption) in our present day system that they opt out of participating in the vote.  It is these who must be reminded of the many nations throughout the world who never had such a privilege as ours, or even the sacrifices of the women’s suffragettes here in the USA.  VOTE it’s the least you can do!!

The month of November ends with Thanksgiving.   This holiday was proclaimed by President George Washington to be a day of prayer and public thanksgiving in gratitude for the successful establishment of the new American republic. Although in today’s society our national leaders have forgotten that prayer is a essential right of the American people, this privilege is one of the most important freedoms we as Americans are blessed with.  In the words of Governor Morris, one of the writers of the US Constitution, “Liberty and justice simply cannot be had apart from the gracious influences of a righteous people.  A righteous people simply cannot exist apart from the aspiration to liberty and justice.  The Christian religion and its incumbent morality is tied to the cause of freedom with a Gordian knot; loose one from the other and both are sent asunder”.   In these words we find the explanation as to why this country has been blessed since its inception.  We have so much to be thankful for, not just on Thanksgiving but everyday.

May God continue to bless the USA…

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863