“Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so.” On this date five years ago my daughter Karen was the only one who called me. The horrific Attack on America left us all numb at first, the horrifying scenes unfolding on our TV screens across America and throughout the world too dreadfully shocking, too dumbfounding to our minds and senses to really comprehend! But Karrie called not just because of her concern for me, but because I was the only remaining point of stability in her life, the only one she knew who loved her absolutely unconditionally.

And this was a time when the need to reach out to loved ones was of paramount importance in a world suddenly seeming to have gone mad, and Karrie and I only had each other to reach out to. Had she not called me first, I would have called her. But now my beautiful little girl is gone, and with her went the best part of my life, the very best of the beauty this world will ever afford me, and I have only those thoughts left that find me young, and keep me so.

But only those thoughts of beauty to which Emerson referred find us always young, thoughts not only of love but about an unimaginably immense universe and the stars that speak of such mystery while at the same time speak peace to my soul because they remain the same and unchangeable scene of the heavens to me, nothing of the evil men do can touch the stars and the quail, about a hundred of them, are feeding around my cottage and taking advantage of the water I supply them here in the country as I write, a reminder that some things continue as before, even things like the quail hereabout I have known from childhood, a kindly touch of normalcy in Creation in an otherwise seemingly lunatic world led of lunatics.

We all need such points of stability in our lives, things of beauty that do not change and because they do not change have that characteristic of finding us always young. Of such may be the remembered scent of a field of alfalfa or that of a forest after a refreshing shower that together with the marvelous aroma turns everything immediately as though by magic a brighter shade of green. It may be watching a great old film like Gone With the Wind, Casablanca or a musical like South Pacific, it may a particular kind of music that evokes thoughts of beauty, but those thoughts that always find us young will invariably be about things of beauty else they would never keep us young.

Some find fault with me because I continue to draw from the past in so much of my writing and applying these things I have experienced and learned to the present not seeming to realize those my age are “living history,” replete with the experiences of having lived so much and so long and with a keen awareness of the axiom those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Which is why, of course, during the seven decades of my life I have not known a world at peace, but only the ongoing, seemingly endless conflicts between the nations of the world.

It is tragic in the extreme that whether Republican or Democrat We the People will not be offered a choice of virtuous people for elected office, there will be none who reflect a choice for beauty. The world is now far too dangerous it seems for either truth or beauty to have much of a chance. And neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to commit to a war to win against the enemies of truth and beauty, against the enemies of civilization.

But now the world faces dangers never before known because of nuclear weapons, and barbarians that will doubtless use such weapons against civilized nations in the name of Allah. Columnist Burt Prelutsky reflecting my own writing on the subject today writes: Jihad this! I no longer accept that we are only at war with Islamic fascists or Islamic fundamentalists or whatever the heck we’re calling them this week. I believe that we in the West are at war with Islam, period. I have heard any number of politicians, up to and including President Bush, claim, contrary to all reason and evidence, that Islam is a religion of peace. If you buy that load of malarkey, I’ve got a Brooklyn mosque I’d like to sell you. This is the religion that was founded by the violence-prone Mohammed fourteen hundred years. It was he who established the practice of converting at the point of a sword; a short while ago, two journalists kidnapped by his followers were converted at the barrel of a gun. In 14 centuries, it seems only the technology has changed…

I would ask those who believe any Muslim has a real appreciation of beauty while at the same time being a proponent of this religion of the sword to reconsider. The very ugliness of such a religion that would make women “sub-humans” cannot have any real appreciation of beauty, and contrary to being receptive to those thoughts of beauty that always find one young are thoughts of death and destruction to all who do not bow to their god and glorifies those that commit murder in the name of their unholy god and religion.

Perhaps there really are children of God and children of the Devil, those who appreciate beauty and those that bend every effort to destroy it? Where do the monsters in human guise come from that prey on women and children and foment the wars and other evils men do?

Did God intervene in a Satanic creation red in tooth and claw, in a world given to violence, to wars, death and destruction? Is the “Adam” of Genesis a special creation by a God of beauty?

Humans strange, Neanderthals normal. Humans have twice as many divergent features as Neanderthals. By Charles Q. Choi, from LiveScience.com. Sept 8, 2006. Neanderthals are often thought of as the stray branch in the human family tree, but research now suggests the modern human is likely the odd man out. "What people tend to do is draw a line from our ancestors straight to ourselves, and any group that doesn't seem to fit on that line is divergent, distinct, unusual, strange," researcher Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told LiveScience. "But in terms of evolution of our family tree, the genus Hom(o), we're the outliers and the Neanderthals are more toward the core." Humans are not at the inevitable end of a sequence, Trinkaus said. "It just happens that we happen to be alive today and Neanderthals are not."… "In the broader sweep of human evolution, the more unusual group is not Neanderthals, whom we tend to look at as strange, weird and unusual, but it's us, modern humans," Trinkaus said…

There are well qualified scientists who subscribe to a Creation of Intelligent Design and point to Modern Man, the “odd man out” as a special creation of God, and one that would uphold standards of beauty in the face of so much ugliness abounding, this special creation of the Adam accounting for the sudden and otherwise unaccountable beginning of civilization after so many millions of years.

But whether or not, the looming specter of a nuclear Armageddon haunts the world. And whether Republican or Democrat, whether Christian or atheist should this happen who will be left to declare their side was correct and their side “won?”