I tend to like people who speak well.

People who are educated and have mastered language. People who can conceive and develop a thought. People who can play mental chess and foresee several moves ahead, who understand consequences, who keep their eyes on the prize.

But then there are the plain speakers who get right to it, cut to the chase. They navigate alternative verbiage and turn words into law and law into action.

In my long life I’ve seen both kinds. Sometimes, too rarely, in the same person. The person who can speak plainly, to the people, but can explain at length the ideas behind or embedded in the words.

I have seen politicians who promise the world, but do not deliver. Who say, “I didn’t mean it, I was joking,” or “in two weeks,” followed by another “two weeks.”

Spokespersons who say, “What he meant was…”

People who say, “I’m for peace, and should get the Prize,” as they start a war, and say, “It’s not a war, it’s an ‘action.’”

I’ve read a bit of history before I was born, when it was still available to be read, the Crash in ’29, the Great Depression in the ‘30s, FDR and the New Deal when America quickly healed itself and became more nearly what it meant to be.

The War got hot then cold then hot, the young Kennedy revitalized the government, and when he couldn’t be stopped by any other means, and they really tried, they shot him to death. LBJ continued the Great Society but was stopped by another war.

America in the famous ‘60s, the excitement of waking up to youth and hope and democracy beyond lip service to a misunderstood word.

We all marched with Martin. Well, not all, but I did. And Martin and Malcolm were learning how to bring both ends together, so the Establishment shot them both.

It was a decade of shooting. Students on campus. The imposition of fear to subdue democracy and re-write the meaning of words.

I was there through it all.

I taught school to make a living. Elementary education, then High School and College English. My students and I learned together.

I saw each new generation rise.

I saw subversion. Politicians tried the phrases that would work.

How hard it is to progress through the weeds. To follow a train of thought and change direction when it goes astray.

I have been forced to swear allegiance to words misunderstood by the enforcers.

I look for those to lead me who mean what they say and know what they mean, and then do the words.

We just had an election.

2026 is the Year of Change, the Year of Hope, the Year of Us.
There are a lot of words in all directions.

Martin Luther King, remember him? was a Word Master. The Power, the Establishment, which minoritized him, realized that his words live on, and they cunningly made him a Saint.

You can quote a Saint selectively, bow to his altar, but then be misdirected.

But the funny thing about life is that it wants to go on living. The same with words.

Unexpectedly, the Tidal Wave of Youth which swept the election shows at last that life and words resist inertia.

Youth was always there, now realizes itself, its voice, its power.

I have always said that the hope of the world is in its youth.

At last!

I am young again!