Last Sunday while reading the paper, I came across an unusual real estate ad. It listed for sale an Anti-Ballistic Missile complex located near the Canadian border in Nekoma, ND. I am familiar with this site and was actually a bit appalled that this was for sale to the general public and not in a preservation status. According to the Cold War Tourist's website, it is the only facility of its kind, responding to Soviet threats to the Grand Forks Air Force Base with nuclear capabilities. Of course it is no longer operational and gauging by the pictures on the Cold War Tourist's site, in need of a major restoration.

As I sat and looked at the picture of this historic site, it conjured up early memories of duck and cover drills in elementary school. Living with the threat of a nuclear holocaust must have wedged itself into my psyche and those around me. I remember “playing war” with a few other children in elementary. We would grab some encyclopedias and look up military items to battle each other with, a version of a role-playing game I suppose. My anti-aircraft gun takes out your Messerschmitt! War must have seemed so remote, so far away, for us to treat it as a game. Our childish minds did not grasp the reality that living in eastern North Dakota placed us on the front line.

At the time, there were over 150 minuteman missile sites connected to the Grand Forks AFB. I don't think this truth ever really hit home for those of us who grew up in the region. We would read in a book that Grand Forks was number 3 on a list of targets for the Soviet Union and laugh about it. As residents of a small town we saw ourselves as so provincial. “Who would ever want to attack us North Dakotans?” We would say. The land of lefse and lutefisk. What is there to attack? Towns with nearly as many bars as churches, some roads weren't even paved, the cafe where farmers congregated in the mornings to discuss nothing more pressing than the soybean harvest. We simply did not understand what was literally under our feet. It was nothing personal. If we had met our Russian counterparts we may have had a lot in common.

Age has brought a new perspective to that scenario, if it had ever unfolded. I no longer laugh that my region of the planet was high on the list of targets. To the people in charge, it is all just a grand chessboard, or like a game of Risk. Place some missiles here, away from the centers of power, where the elite lived in their mansions and high-rises. We meant nothing more to them than collateral damage. We were not people in their eyes but the sacrificial lambs for the glory of the United States.

The cold war was history's largest pissing contest, an attempt to fill the power void left after WWII. Although it was presented as such, it was not to actually protect freedoms or a way of life, but to say, “my gun is bigger than yours and I have more of them”.  The irony is that while I was playing the game of war, so were the people at the top.

The pyramidal shape of the Stanley Mickelson site rises unnaturally from the beauty of the surrounding prairie. Much like the actual pyramids at Giza, it is representative of the goals of the powers that be, made possible on the backs of ordinary people. Although thousands of years separate us from the ancient Egyptians, the average person is still seen as expendable to the ruling elite of the planet. Right now in Pakistan, the Obama administration conducts drone strikes where, unfortunately, civilians are killed on a regular basis. But on paper they are just numbers in another senseless, unauthorized war. The Mickelson site should serve as a reminder to all people, no matter if they are Russian, American, or Pakistani, that the people in charge of our safety and security, really only care about their own safety and security.

Source and for additional information please visit the Cold War Tourist's Website.

http://coldwartourist.com/ 

Raising Peter to Pay Paul

Recently I became a parent for the first time. It's a very exciting time period for me. I love to watch her grow and change almost on a daily basis. But what I'm not loving so much are the reams of unwanted advice. I was warned it would happen but I had no clue how annoying it would be. Not only from people close to me but from the free baby magazines I am now receiving. The magazines irk me the most because they assume that children develop essentially at the same rate. I am finding out that is certainly not the case.

According to the magazines, my baby should be rolling around by now. However, my wee one has a different agenda in mind. She is simply content to look at toys, suck on her fingers, and watch football with her dad. Naturally I began to worry because the two different baby mags state she should be doing this by now. I've tried to show her how to do it, rolling her back and forth. I've put her on her tummy, hoping she would eventually figure it out. But she just gets mad and defiantly sucks on her fingers again. I discussed this with my brother and sister-in-law (they have 4 boys and have seen it all). They assured me that every baby is different and she will just do these things when she is ready.

The advice calmed my merves (a sort of nervousness you only acquire after becoming a mother). But this left me wondering why the magazines and books seem to push certain ideas and subsequently why we end up trying to nudge our children along before they are ready. What goal are we pushing our children toward and why?

The depressing thought struck me that the end result of all that prodding is to form a child who will one day enter the workforce and become a productive member of society. That is the only plausible reason I could come up with as to why we believe our children need to hit these milestones at certain points in their life. We do not view them as individuals, who will develop at their own pace, but as future workers for the corporation we call America. Even in these first few months of their life the expectations are already there. Graduate high school, go to college, and get a good job.

We have forgotten the value of raising a child who belongs, not to the hive, but to fulfilling their destiny as an individual under the guidance of their creator. I'm certain people in Mozambique aren't waiting for their babies to roll over, and worrying, as we do, about their development. I have read that they don't even name their children until their 1^st birthday. They are simply happy that their children are alive and basically healthy.

So many wonder what has gone wrong in our society. I believe one reason is that we don't view people as people anymore. We do not appreciate the various facets that make them who they are. Due to great advances in science and medicine, we forget how truly precious life is on this planet. It is really a first world problem to worry about whether our children are behaving like the rest. We are not content with the fact that they are here and learning to function as a human being (which I can safely say I have not fully mastered at the age of 32).

I don't know what my child will decide to do with her life. It is, after all, ultimately her decision as a free and sentient being. I've heard people say around me that their child has no option but to attend college someday. I believe we really pigeonhole our children when we make statements like these. We think we are giving them the world, when in reality we are greatly limiting what they can do with this life. It reduces them to nothing but a slave to a broken system. One in which we are taught to rob Peter to pay Paul. Where one half works to accommodate the needs of the other half.

So I watch as my baby lies comfortably on her playmat, staring up in wonder at the various toys above her. She seems content for now. I know she will gain more mobility on her time. Until then, I will facilitate her needs and simply be happy that she is here with me. I hope to give her an agenda free life where she isn't sent on a path to support a dysfunctional system.