{"id":2286,"date":"2016-11-23T21:18:19","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T21:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/?p=2286"},"modified":"2016-11-23T22:41:21","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T22:41:21","slug":"one-foot-in-front-of-the-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/?p=2286","title":{"rendered":"Valuables"},"content":{"rendered":"

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin wrote, \u201cWe stand at the crossroads, each minute, each hour, each day, making choices. We choose the thoughts we allow ourselves to think, the passions we allow ourselves to feel, and the actions we allow ourselves to perform. Each choice is made in the context of whatever value system we have selected to govern our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

                                                                                         ~<\/p>\n

The detective called to say we had a meeting at the police station with the State Attorney\u2019s lawyer about a recent burglary; our fourth station visit since the end of October when we returned from a trip to discover the crime.  We arrived on time for the meeting, as the station\u2019s time-stamped surveillance video could attest. The lawyer said the man who admitted to the burglary had pawned jewelry at two shops.<\/p>\n

We accompanied the detective to the first pawn shop. I felt a nanosecond of elation at the sight of my five-stone garnet pyramid ring followed by shock at also seeing a stolen gold and peridot ring and gold ankle bracelet. As the pawn shop clerk handed the detective a thumb drive with a copy of the surveillance video that showed the perpetrator in action, I wondered what else the thief had pocketed. What else? I\u2019ll have to take another look; but it is so hard to see what is not there.<\/p>\n

The next order of business was to \u201cpay\u201d the pawn shop for the stolen property. That\u2019s how it works, explained the detective, unless we opted to leave the items at the shop. Leave them up to 10 months while the case worked its way through the courts. We paid up.<\/p>\n

Next, we drove to the second pawn shop with some hope of finding a silver pendant \u2013 the one with the image of four female faces representing the four girls in my family. But, figured a clerk, the owner must have locked it up somewhere. We would have to come back. A few days later the detective text me a photo of a rectangular pendant and two silver necklaces from the shop that were mine.  As a courtesy, there was no charge by the pawn shop owner.<\/p>\n

The detective did what he could, and he did well.  We wished him a Happy Thanksgiving. As to ever seeing our stolen TV and other jewelry, we could count ourselves uncommonly lucky if we do.<\/p>\n

                                                                                             ~<\/p>\n

Surreal life beyond the burglary goes on. We sit under a surveillance camera in the waiting room of a blood lab with a dozen people - Blacks, Hispanics and Caucasions of all ages; most hunched over cell phones that also monitor their locations.<\/p>\n

In one corner, Fox News blathers its version of the truth as befits the coming age. No mention of the rise of campus incidents where, under the guise of taking back America, bullies hurl the name of the president elect into the faces of those they deem to be the attackable \u201cthem.\u201d The bullies protest, \u201cHey, just the name, so where\u2019s the crime?\u201d Shades of the winning campaign. No point telling those stories on this TV station. \u201cThem\u201d are just immigrants, gays or \u201cbitches.\u201d  For Fox, their days are numbered. <\/p>\n

With hundreds of hate crime reports being investigated, it's a struggle to accept the \"values\" now in play in our society. Escape beckons, if only to be technically removed from the assault of headlines and sound bites; harder than it might seem given ever-present squawking screens. One thing is certain as the cameras roll: What Ben Franklin called a \u201cpowerful regulator of human conduct\u201d appears more and more to be among the missing.<\/p>\n

 by Reggie Morrisey<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Patriot<\/a>

Patriot Dream, a pastel by Vincent Mancuso<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin wrote, \u201cWe stand at the crossroads, each minute, each hour, each day, making choices. We choose the thoughts we allow ourselves to think, the passions we allow ourselves to feel, and the actions we allow ourselves to perform. Each choice is made in the context of whatever value system we have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2286"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2288,"href":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286\/revisions\/2288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reggiemorrisey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}