By citizenship we earlier thought of a ship. On a ship everybody takes part and works where suddenly or gradually the importance of doing that work arises. There are those on the crew, who have preset duties and assignments, like a job, and there are those who are passengers. Yet, on a boat, which sails over open seas where the depths of what carries the boat is immense and incomprehensible, below a sky that stretches upwards and outwards forever, on a boat, everybody is a sailor.  To sail as sailors on a ship is to realize that nobody is to be left behind and everybody is vested in the safe journey. The roles and gigs come and sooner or later each individual realizes their own might and responsibility.

Citizenship is that way.  It is a nation within which one is a citizen.  Together, citizens realize the nation which travels through unknown and uncertain terrains.  Not always is the climate amiable, and the sea calm, yet it is of common realization that it is a company, a company of men and women and children too.  How should this nation, this ark, sail through these seas.  Sometimes, the sea is turbulent, and yet, the company must stay together, not by some single call that rings hollow, but by that each by each knows what they are, what they must do, and with whom the company is kept.

The moment to be and to act, but also to not throw, such is always the present moment.  The present moment is the moment in which the truth of who each is is realized. There is no other moment more important than that of the now.  Yet where there is a moment to look into the future, that temporal equivalent of the horizon at sea, one must.  Where there is a moment to look around to those fellows beside us, also striving for the safe passage, one must, for then fellowship is possible.  And where possible to look back and know in our hearts we have made it so far, we must as well, for how else to know what we have done, where we have erred, where we have triumphed, myself and ourselves, then.

The sovereignty of nation is a truth that principles our ordering of nations one alongside each other.  It is that idea that protects each people of each nation, that makes each nation a refuge and sanctuary, despite all the differences between peoples in different places.  It is in this principle in which is found the the possibility of the resolution of differences, in being together beside one another, nation and nation, across the world.

Today, we must learn to keep our company together and strong and healthy. Though problems seem to be various and multiple, each can be dealt with each by each, with the care and resolve to face them with the bravery and rationality which we all have. Matters which are beyond our knowledge should not face our confrontation whereby errors could be much, but we are so many, and we shall guess that our own will continue our works in accordance with what is right, what has been established, and what is known.

On the boat, we dare not make foolish attempts, but nevertheless, as learning we do, we will as a crew and as a company hold on to courage with the thought that our love for one another will let duty and service be realized as we believe in that such as citizenship.

Speech 1

To this moment upon the great currents that through these recent years have generated waves upon waves so drastic they have been, what cause have we as Americans to rise above? These times see anew these fresh things so novel at first yet so scary then in those moments when we cannot accept that we have not known it all.  To recall the times before we with error assume that those who came before had not borne the violence of what threatened their pure existence, but did survive to speak little again of it.  We note that the past was not wrought with less than our blood and toil, yet we are carried by our dream to ideate before the memory of history and speak little of how laboriously the work was done over so many minutes and hours and days.  Where we have been nobody could know, for what lies ahead needs us to recall the strength and endurance of all those who came before, we should know for ourselves again and again that here we shall know ourselves. In this mirror we can be who we have always been before, in our great grand father and his wife, in all those whose reality we do in our own times by our own blood and toil we shall know again. 

Conflict does not escape us today. It is not one problem, but with the momenta of thousands or even tens of thousands of each and every problem that rolls through the landscapes which we recognize to be that of our own. So then today the works remain to last for times longer than we could stand, but fear not for all these times before were faced with troubles nobody had known nor seen before.  For the few who stand tall who must for all those who cannot lead, know that the nature of conflict is simple.  It is simply that we must believe in what we have been throughout the centuries reaching for freedom we became brave and strong. Our minds are not feeble but stronger than we each could know.  Those who stand tall must believe that they will always have the strength to lead, and for those times when they cannot, they must prepare those who will.

Affecting us all are the turning of eddies and tides presenting themselves as oh so benign but yet so many are they we cannot but work together.  What effective measures were there yesterday or a century ago, before these times that have seen things those days did not meet?  The affection we shared with each other could still be in our tomorrows, and we must remember all the children not yet born, and let our dream for them carry us as the memory of past lends us strength.  Near the end we are not in this instant.  Nor in any instant that we shall reach the goal, like the horizon it is far away.  Near this next moment we are, but we cannot assume and act on presumption that no action were possible nor that all actions were possible.  Who are there and what have they done for the good of works for those whom we are?  Present are manifold in disguise that were merely thoughts yesterday, but in our democracy we have raised them, all that which will make continuation our future for America.

Let what matters guide us.  So many questions seem to plague us but only a few are relevant if we should light the steps ahead and make the trail, however small which should converge into a larger path.  When we begin to recognize each other, and through arduous efforts discover what is right, what is in accordance with ethics, with the dream of the American Dream, we should have raised ourselves a little.  Never before did we think falsely that we do not know our society, its structures, its principles, its governance, our roles, our history.  And never before did we imagine falsely that we could not work together.  In the idea of order we have dwelled, and made, enacted and won.  Perhaps these times before the new challenge that breathes on us with its noxious breath we should still be with all that we have created upon the notion that a nation, freshly born, could be built.

Was then a thought we of America becomes a civilization and what then now?  We are neither from whither nor whence, but of this here we have become.  And we are good.  The nation began seemingly so simply, yet what genius did arise on those moments that surprised the world.  For that civilization did not raise itself on a single day, so too all it will stand for will encounter the moments of doubt, the challenges of whim, the thought of beyond.  So too we shall when it is not presenting us with the fight of survival think and consider deeply the worth of other civilizations.  The spirit is higher when it knows better that it is not alone, striving for what is possible beside the others that strive for the same if different.  All life on earth shall be missed were those threats that threaten were.  So today society has for itself a common goal - to save our planet, and so we must abide.  It is not the whatever that should be, but the search for those others who are beside us, in the gaze towards the best despite that we are here amongst differences, that we shall rescue that social existence that shall save the earth.

If so triumph be sought, then we will have made another step in the book of history.  Nobody knew before finding through the impossible that the impossible could be bridged, that the pass were possible, but we did know after.  Through the trials in which we erred and lost, we discover that what had held us true before will still be in front of us on the path so long and so long, and so hard and so hard, already forgotten in the future we must reach.  

Braved through the immensity of oceans our forefathers did come, carrying the dream of who we are, as a people we triumphed in that journey and that knowledge was passed down from parent to child, over the centuries we still do know, what impossible we did pass through, to reach this land to toil through the days and months the hot and the cold to make for ourselves the food and the house.

Whatever before did face us, we were not overtaken by fear and doubt, but encountered both with steadiness and doubly reason.  For what we did know before was that we must strive, and then no ocean is impassable, and then no wind too much for the boat shall not turn.  Issued in everything everywhere around us in this land are the most and the extraordinary very historical.  This here and this thing we have wrought by our own American Dream.  The pavement we have paved, the schools we have raised, the citizenry we can see in our brothers' and sisters' eyes.

For the world this nation was built.  In hope that we should achieve the freedom realized yet true to the ethical grounds that held our predecessor nations in Europe and elsewhere.  We brought only the best to this nation, in hope to achieve even greater for the pride of those before will be carried on our sleeves and our breasts.  We do know that milestones were celebrated by those who lent us all the support a parent to a child, and that trust that we shall endure and recall, that good is in those worlds we now only visit by luggages of things bearing good news.  Present are problems surrounding us here, and them there, and many people everywhere.  We will be all that we can be, we will do our best, and tomorrow shall come imbued with each knowledge we did earn along the way, so so many events when recorded will bring us a wistful smile, recalling in our hearts in silence that we too like the Americans before are Americans.

Ann Lee

March 17, 2023

 Whether identity is owned of course had been a subject of interest lately. More and more we see famous people appearing in many faces, in magazines, in newspapers, on the web.  Of what could be said about this?  It sometimes hark back to the earliest intention.  Where it is shared by the originator, willingly, willfully, there is something shared between those who share an identity.  It is like work held in common, for the understanding is to be had that the identity is being created and made together.

Lately, increasingly, the concerns have been raised, not so much in public media that minds so much and so much, but amongst people who discovered themselves in conflict.  It appears that most cases of identity appropriation do not begin in trust and common interest. Perhaps more significantly, it does not have the outcome of shared work.

We cannot look at this type of actualities as one that should be dealt with with vengeance.  Yet, where it becomes known as a crime, in the particulars of an incidence, we should still examine what had been made in that which we would so early call theft.

There is such a thing as a common future.  It may require us to look very far away, into the future, and ask us to forcefully imagine that future in common, which is ours together.  This is a reality in the event of conflict we have yet to understand completely.  In a fight, perhaps a friendship and trust could be discovered. Something is known through that rare interactive quality.  While oftentimes we must seek collaboration, too in these times of conflict, we must seek cooperation in any interaction.

Yesterday, life seemed so good.  It was so easy, and everything was so conducive to leisure and rest.  Of course, it is a good memory.  It was good, and it could be that way again.  So this is a period where something known by those before is becoming known to us young generations.  If we imagined that history is as clean as its books, and no blood ever shed on our soils, we are not innocent but ignorant.

To imagine tomorrow, we must learn to hold close that dream that has been what kept us together all these centuries.  We must hold it close like a secret that we should tell a lover when they are sleeping.  We must know in the trust we build with each other, we need not talk about it incessantly, or even at all.  There are sometimes contradictions in what we do and say over time, but where together we know the goal, we must not be Scrooch that will not part with a biscuit or a drink.  We must grow bold, in our venture, to make a great leap into the future.