This holiday season has always been the rebirth of hope. Do we feel it? I’m not sure we do, but then again that feeling has always been subjective. Moreover it is a feeling that we can create. In other words, the internals govern the externals. What we feel inside invariably manifests itself on our faces and in our demeanor. The good news is that we can and do effect change with a positive attitude. Is creating a positive attitude a phony trick we play on ourselves? I don’t think so. I think it is in fact changing reality, rather than creating illusion.

In 1985 I was asked to be a speaker at the International Association of Ferry Owners in London. I became very friendly with another speaker at the conference. He was from the state of Washington. John Case was an industrial engineer, and he had contracts with the companies that convert trees into paper. The machines involved in this work are immense and they work under very high load factors. The stress and vibrations are monitored, and when they are about to fail sensitive measuring devices record that stress and a programmed shut down takes place so that repairs can be made.

His business partner and, lead engineer was working on a monitoring program when he was ensnared in the machinery and thrown into the cutting blades. He was dead in seconds. John told me he was never so shaken in his life. After the day was done John went back to his laboratory and worked through the night until he had a firm idea of what went wrong. Having solved the mystery he created the drawings for modifying the equipment to prevent that kind of accident from ever happening again. This is how John Case dealt with his grief.

We are slowly recovering from a brutal economic assault that was, for the most part, not of the peoples making. We are the ones that were nearly destroyed in the faulty machinery of economics. In many cases our citizens were destroyed, but the game is not over. We will make this country fully functional again. just like a previous generation made America viable again after the Great Depression. We will have to re-think everything, and we will. The answers may elude us for awhile, but they will come.

Having faith in ourselves, and our country will get us to a place that we will be able to look back on and feel reassured. Keep the faith and enjoy the holidays.

All the best

Ernie Fazio and all of us at LIMBA