{"id":85,"date":"2009-09-20T17:21:38","date_gmt":"2009-09-20T22:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/?p=85"},"modified":"2009-09-20T17:21:38","modified_gmt":"2009-09-20T22:21:38","slug":"where-there-is-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/?p=85","title":{"rendered":"Where There Is Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Part of my daily web-surfing routine involves browsing a site called Neatorama (www.neatorama.com<\/a>).\u00a0 It has all kinds of “neat” things from the internet.\u00a0 This week the headline Normandy Photos:\u00a0 World War II and Today<\/strong> got my attention. \u00a0I’m a photography enthusiast but it was the contrasting photos they chose that pulled me in.\u00a0 On the left is a 1944 photo depicting a scene of horrific and traumatic war-time destruction.\u00a0 On the right is a modern-day shot of the same location:\u00a0 rebuilt, clean, enticing.<\/p>\n

I followed the link and took my time examining the 100+ photos<\/a> that contrast the aftermath of war with scenes of today.\u00a0 It was humbling and sad and encouraging.<\/p>\n

Picture after picture I was more and more impressed that it had been rebuilt.\u00a0 The buildings and the lives.\u00a0 Out of that hopelessness and despair and devastation, it was rebuilt.\u00a0\u00a0 It made me think that as long as we, as a people, have hope, what can we not do?<\/p>\n

I have to think that many of the people living in the rubble did not have hope.\u00a0 Or they only scraped together the fragments and dust of hope.\u00a0 But it was enough to drive them forward.<\/p>\n

Tom Brokaw wrote an amazing book entitled No Greater Generation<\/em>, which I strongly recommend.\u00a0 He makes the case that the generation of World War II is the greatest generation not only because of what they accomplished, but what they survived.\u00a0 And what they built after the war was over.\u00a0 I grew up surrounded by people of that generation and there certainly was something different about them that I understood without reading a book.\u00a0 It was their strength.\u00a0 And I think before the strength, came the hope…the belief that no matter what today is…tomorrow will be different.\u00a0 Better?\u00a0 Who knows?\u00a0 But we won’t know unless we press forward into tomorrow to find out.\u00a0 And it certainly doesn’t stand a chance of being better if we don’t work at making it so.<\/p>\n

I have never been through a war nor anything comparable to what those folks went through when their homes, towns, regions, nations and lives were destroyed.\u00a0 The closest was when Kalamazoo, Michigan was devastated by one of the worst tornados on record (http:\/\/www.vanishedkalamazoo.com\/tornado\/tornado.htm<\/a>).\u00a0 I remember thinking, after the tornado, that “life was over”.\u00a0 I could not see the way back to “normal”.\u00a0 Being a worrier by nature, the tornado had a huge and lasting impact on me.<\/p>\n

Kalamazoo was rebuilt.\u00a0 Just six years after the tornado I started a 13-year stint working in the downtown that had been wiped out by the storm.<\/p>\n

Our ability to use hope as a fuel to move on, survive and rebuild amazes me.\u00a0 Of course while the storm is beating against the walls, hope and strength are difficult to muster.\u00a0 But history can teach us that life “after” is possible.\u00a0 Better.\u00a0 Worse.\u00a0 Different.\u00a0 Life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part of my daily web-surfing routine involves browsing a site called Neatorama (www.neatorama.com).\u00a0 It has all kinds of “neat” things from the internet.\u00a0 This week the headline Normandy Photos:\u00a0 World War II and Today got my attention. \u00a0I’m a photography enthusiast but it was the contrasting photos they chose that pulled me in.\u00a0 On the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}