PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

For many of us, every day should be a day of thanksgiving as we remember all we have and enjoy in this rich country, including, most importantly, the benefits of family and faith.

The country also faces a variety of discords, nowhere more evident than in politics where I plied my trade as a lobbyist for nearly 40 years before retirement.

It’s easy these days for me to focus on these discords because, if for no other reason, they are so evident as all sides compete for time and attention, often with no apparent respect for others. It’s always win at all costs.

So, on this Thanksgiving Day, I choose to go beyond politics and list some facts for which I very thankful, one of which is that I live in this country.

I am thankful for:

• My wife who agreed to marry me some 45 years ago and is the light of my life every day.
• Our children – son Eric and daughter Lissy – who have made our lives rich.
• Our extended family, Eric’s wife, Holly, and three grandchildren, Drew, Mason and Kate, who give us pleasure every day.
• My friends – many of whom I met on a golf course – who give me a solid base of friendship beyond “just” golf by nurturing relationships.
• My personal relationship with God, through his son, Jesus Christ, which gives me hope for today and for the future.
• The fact that I have lived – for more than 70 years now – in a country that, for all its faults and fissures, provides freedom and ability “to profit” from real work.

On this Thanksgiving Day, the Wall Street Journal is running again an editorial that has appeared every year since 1961. It is an excellent recitation of the virtues of this country, America.

Its key paragraph is a follows:

“For all our social discord, we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators.”

Here are more excerpts from a solid editorial.

“Any one whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful.

“This is indeed a big country, a rich country, in a way no array of figures can measure and so, in a way, past belief of those who have not seen it. Even those who journey through its Northeastern complex, into the Southern lands, across the central plains and to its Western slopes can only glimpse a measure of the bounty of America.

“And a traveler cannot but be struck on his journey by the thought that this country, one day, can be even greater. America, though many know it not, is one of the great underdeveloped countries of the world; what it reaches for exceeds by far what it has grasped.

“So the visitor returns thankful for much of what he has seen, and, in spite of everything, an optimist about what his country might be. Yet the visitor, if he is to make an honest report, must also note the air of unease that hangs everywhere.

“For the traveler, as travelers have been always, is as much questioned as questioning. And for all the abundance he sees, he finds the questions put to him ask where men may repair for succor from the troubles that beset them.

“His countrymen cannot forget the savage face of war. Too often, they have been asked to fight in strange and distant places, for no clear purpose they could see and for no accomplishment they can measure. Their spirits are not quieted by the thought that the good and pleasant bounty that surrounds them can be destroyed in an instant by a single bomb. Yet, they find no escape, for their survival and comfort now depend on unpredictable strangers in far-off corners of the globe.

“How can they turn from melancholy when at home they see young arrayed against old, black against white, neighbor against neighbor, so that they stand in peril of social discord. Or, not despair when they see that the cities and countryside are in need of repair, yet find themselves threatened by scarcities of the resources that sustain their way of life. Or, when, in the face of these challenges, they turn for leadership to men in high places—only to find those men as frail as any others.

“So, sometimes the traveler is asked what will preserve their abundance, or even their civility? How can they pass on to their children a nation as strong and free as the one they inherited from their forefathers? How is their country to endure these cruel storms that beset it from without and from within?

“Of course the stranger cannot quiet their spirits. For it is true that everywhere men turn their eyes today much of the world has a truly wild and savage hue. No man, if he be truthful, can say that the specter of war is banished. Nor can he say that when men or communities are put upon their own resources they are sure of solace; nor be sure that men of diverse kinds and diverse views can live peaceably together in a time of troubles.

“But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere—in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.

“We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.”

Good, optimistic words. So, I read them, plus reflect on my own reasons for being thankful – better pursuits than focusing on the failures and fissures of politics.

The bottom line: Be thankful for all we have. Focus on that on this Thanksgiving Day.