by Paul Big Bear
Dear Friends,
“What goes up must come down.” Do you remember hearing that little ditty of information as you were growing up? No matter how hard you threw the ball up, it came back down, kick it same results. We made our own bow and arrows and no matter how good the bow you could fire it into the air and it would fly out of sight but it came back down. Thus is nature and science coming together in the guise of gravity, William Shatner, at 90 years of age, recently boarded a rocket and flew into outer space. Imagine that, Captain Kirk rocketing into outer space it makes me wonder if Spock, McCoy, and Scotty were smiling, but I digress, even Captain Kirk came down from his journey up.
I remember a day, some eighteen years ago, when I ascended a stepladder (maybe one day I will have one of my own) to hang our Christmas lights. I had been able to string the multi colored, flashing lights without a ladder, the door wreath and the window decorations too, but, the last decoration, a rope ladder adorned with Santa, a snowman, and an Elf ascending to the roof that hung from the rain gutter to the front lawn where it was anchored required the use of a ladder. As I hooked the (rope) ladder on the gutter I experienced gravity first hand when the ladder taught me about weight, load bearing, and tensile strength. The ladder bent and twisted very quickly and I came, tumbling down.
So “what goes up must come down.” The price of gas, food, clothes, cars, eating out, Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas giving and just about everything else you can think of has gone up, I don’t believe these things are affected by gravity. We are told that transportation is the cause as thousands of cargo ships sitting off the coast of California waiting to be unloaded and transported to those waiting, as prices go higher and higher. All these products that we need and want sitting because they originate in other countries, a large percentage of these goods from China, so as we wait for these goods to find their way to us American workers are out of work, American manufacturing has gone over seas. The pandemic has created a shortage of workers necessary to un load these ships and load the vehicles; trucks, trains, etc and drivers to deliver the cargo. Think of this, I truly believe that when we go shopping if all the products we buy bore labels stating “Made in America” or better yet “Made in the United States of America by Americans” would end this. After all products “made in the United States” would never be stranded on cargo ships off the coast of California. Then we will see if prices are subject to gravity.