Snapshot of a Pre-WWII Childhood/Post-WWII Adulthood

A few days ago I received a set of books from the childhood of two family relations of mine. In order of pulling them out of the cardboard box:

• The Illustrated Bible Story Book by Seymour Loveland, (c) 1935 by Rand McNally, edition of 1938
• Harbrace College Handbook by John C. Hodges (The University of Tennessee), (c) 1941, 1946 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.
• The Yeats Country - a guide to the places in the West of Ireland associated with the life and writings of William Butler Yeats, (c) 1962, 1963 the Dolmen Press
• "Survival Under Atomic Attack," February 1951, Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 20-111
• Walk In His Ways by Marian Black, given on 17th July 1943
• The Story Road by Gertrude Hildreth (Teachers College Columbia University), (c) 1952 by The John C. Winston Company
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Illustrated by E.A. Wilson, (c) 1941 special contents of this edition by the Limited Editions Club, Inc., given on Christmas 1945
• So That's The Reason (Bobby and the Old Professor, Book I) by R. Ray Baker, Photographic Illustrations by E.N. Stanger, (c) 1939 by The Reilly & Lee Co.
• Housekeeping in Old Virginia, Edited by Marion Cabell Tyree, (c) 1879 by John P. Morton and Company, a reprint of the Original (c) MCMLXV, Favorite Recipes Press, Inc.
• Song and Service Book for Ship and Field, Army and Navy, Edited by Ivan L. Bennett, Chairman of the Editorial Committee, (c) 1941 by A.S. Barnes and Company, Inc.
• The Fields of Home by Ralph Moody, Illustrated by Tran Mawicke, (c) 1962 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., (c) 1953 by Ralph Moody
• Poems to Inspire by Nick Kenny, (c) 1959 by T.S. Denison & Company, Inc.
• One Hundred and One Famous Poems With a Prose Supplement (Revised Edition), An Anthology Compiled by Roy J. Cook, (c) 1958 by Contemporary Books, Inc.
• Reading-For-Men, (c) 1958 by Nelson Doubleday, Inc., given on 19th December 1958

Two bluejays in the trees, a female jogger and her canine companion passing by on the street, a moment alone with my thoughts, a warrior for peace, contemplating and connecting with others to secure ships to shore during an economic maelstrom and still find ways to conduct commerce to keep violent dissidence at bay. Foment revolutions of innovation rather than chaos and anarchy.

You, me - we have all the problems here before us. We have solutions hidden in attics and vaults, used and reused and resold and repackaged. We can repeat ourselves without knowing when, how or why and feel we've accomplished something new.

A name is not an answer. A symbol is not the thing it stands for. We approach the situation and apply salve rather than rub salt in the wounds unless smelling salts are required and then consciousness is raised for all.

Is Afghanistan South Africa, with Soweto and Swaziland coming and going as independent states within a state? Are protectorates an answer? Should self-rule include division of territories or complete reconfiguration? Permanent nomadic tribal zones? A Somali war zone? The semi-permeable, porous membranes between Syria and Iraq and between the U.S.A. and Mexico are not solutions, unless you want the feel-good measures of failed policies of the past.

How do you, in times like these, when people will work for any company that pays for their standard of living standards, let the apple cart seller keep pushing the military-industrial complex down the cobblestone street offering wares to anyone with ready cash so that small-scale, regional conflicts do not escalate into disruption on the global scale, every country getting a piece of the apple pie cooked up by unseen chefs that everyone knows about? How do you declare war on an enemy who does not exist? How do you avoid giving legitimacy to a group of people who want to declare you as their sworn enemy? How do you give them the inch they want without giving them the itch to take the next mile?

A people is faceless. A person has a face, a voice, a dream, a wish, a past, a present and a future in thoughts and action. How do you give the person the power for self-sufficiency? A person is a node in a social network. Which do you feed first, the node or the network?

A soldier given orders to find a perp will follow orders until ordered otherwise. What if the technology and business of soldiering was poured into farming and villaging, fighting famine and poverty? Could we still justify the government expense of such an endeavour? Could we overcome tribal resistance to interference in the hills of Kentucky and the Afghan terrain by applying new technology to improve the lives of tribes and clans without disrupting the life they want of being left alone? Could we find profitable crops to replace marijuana and poppies? Or do we legitimise the illicit drug trade by authorising growing zones, knowing a portion of the global population is susceptible to drug experimentation and abuse, no matter how much we teach abstinence? Is there an approach that satisfies liberals, moderates and conservatives in all walks of life at one point in time? One solution with many faceted applications?

Are we finally past fighting wars on grounds of religion or religious grounds? Can we get past using personal beliefs to mass bodies against one another? Or is that the only way to do so?

Millions of people out of work looking for help without wanting to resort to government aid. How do you spend a dollar somewhere else to generate four over here? How do you play with exchange rates to put debts into play? The EUBRICUSASEAN alliance cooperating on/competing for setting up an alternative/green power/Internet grid in Afghanistan? If you can do it there, you can do it anywhere. Another alternative, with Afghan tribes like native American (American Indian) reservations building gambling casinos in the middle of the U.S.A., sharing the profits with professional developers. If the so-called Christian West can condone taking money from gambling heathens then can't the Muslim East take money from gambling infidels?

I don't know. I'm just asking questions I'm digging up from a box of old books. The solutions are up to all of us to work together and figure out.