Remembering the message of 1946 with hope for the New Year

[caption id="attachment_16990" align="alignleft" width="326"] A New Year is like a baby with hope for the future[/caption]

Carol Forsloff---Was this year bad for you?  If it was, you aren't alone.  Weather disasters, conflicts the world over, social and economic stress filled the pages of the news every day, with humanitarian issues touched upon, but without the impetus among many to highlight what can be done to make the world a better place for you and me.  But while we worry about our past, if we are like the people in 1946, we will glance behind and know that we have before us a New Year of hope from which we can gain new pathways to peace and understanding.  For 58 years ago, President Truman announced the end of World War II.

Every year in recorded history has seen changes in many directions, and every year people worry that it can't get worse or better.  But we learn, as we grow older, there are things we can change and things we cannot.  And when we learn this important precept, we know where to place our frets and worries and where to place our hope.

Hope, as the poet said, springs eternal.  So 2014 is a year in which we all can hope.  We can hope to make the changes we wish for individually as well as for our communities.  We can use that as a beacon to shine our way to the victory of making that hope materialize into the changes needed to make our personal paths better and also for those others whom we care for everywhere.

Those who fought in World War II had hope when they returned, and when it was announced to the world the end of the war had come, people rejoiced as they looked forward to new beginnings.  What the nations of the world accomplished in those 57 years since has been remarkable in the sciences, technology and human affairs.  While we see where we are lacking, were we to turn back the time and observe the events of yesteryear, we would glow with pride with what we have done.

The Journal of Humanitarian Affairs begins closing the year with the hopes we wish for everyone:  that peace, understanding, goodwill and harmony among peoples be the ultimate goal and that we all lend ourselves to accomplishing that goal one person at a time.

Fly me to the moon, this day in history a nostalgic memory of 1963

Carol Forsloff --This day in history, September 21, 1963,  the nation had a young President John F. Kennedy proposing joint space ventures with Russia, while love was in the air but also political strife.  



While contemporary Americans, of both political parties, claim John F. Kennedy as their hero, his tenure as President brought a rush of exuberance about the possible but at the same time entrenchment in the past about political enemies within and without.

The Red scare was fully alive, with the fear of missiles in Cuba aimed at the U.S. while black folks lined up for voting privileges and the right to attend school in places where many people violently opposed the idea.

Kennedy was that young fellow whose office was bought by his father, who was called a socialist, a Commie sympathizer, someone imposing virtual martial law over the country in forcing integration on white Americans who felt their culture would be damned forever as a consequence.

But life moved on, without Kennedy, of course, his death from an assassin's bullet that left him no longer a target of hate but a hero in decades later.

It was an era where turmoil came in waves following Kennedy's death, where Lyndon Johnson, the heir, was never a match for a young, handsome man whose image remains untouched in its forever young, forever wonderful way.



Fly me to the moon was the Kennedy dream, when men would conquer speace and come together in the adventure, as Kennedy proposed on this day in 1963, even as the space programs today are back-shelved in a recession of an uncertain future.  Space exploration is no longer the symbol of optimism and hope but a past of achievement, of nostalgia instead.

But there are those who remember when adventurous notions were made real, when a young President, despite vilification, set standards that years later people seek to emulate.   Fly me to the moon speaks of the ultimate love, as flying to space was man's ultimate dream and remains that way, decades later.