Ralph Worlein

A long time friend and woodcarver living in Wichita, Kansas carved this beautiful Foyer Table. He would like to sell this piece to make room for his next project. Contact me at worlein@cox.net with any questions. Please put "Randy's table" in the subject line.....I have a spam problem! Thank You!

Living in the United States in these times is stressful. Our government has instilled fear as a means of ruling the citizenry, fear of everything and everyone. People turning on the morning television shows (with the exception of C SPAN) receive a dose of what we as citizens should be frightened of today. Your food is poisoned, your medicine tainted, lock your doors and don't speak to strangers. There is a good chance you will be blown up any minute, advice on what to pack into your car for the emergency you definately will have and, especially on a slow news day, one of the banes of this era, crisis counselors. How did we ever live without them? What misguided people we must have been to think we, with the help of our families, could solve our problems.
The thing I do fear, as should others, is what our form of government has become and the way in which it is evolving. It is no longer understood that the only reason for a government is our own shortcomings when forced to live in close proximity to one another. Once a society is formed one person or a group of people with leadership capabilities will rise to the occasion to settle disputes and other problems stemming from humans living together, a price we must pay for our own very nature.
I try to look at our leadership as one would that lives in another country. We as a people are so conditioned by living in the midst of our own culture that we cannot view it subjectively. What would a person see when looking at their own country in such a light? Starting with the top post in the government, the President, I see a person who cannot attain that office without great wealth, a person that must ingratiate themselves to every minority, business, and religion by making glowing promises which could never be fulfilled, a person that by their very character must be willing to have each mistake, dallience, or spoken phrase scrutinized and used against them by another person and political party seeking the same office.
Below that office is the Congress which consists of wealthy lawyers supposedly elected to represent the thoughts and will of the people. Once a noble calling where a man elected by their peers would do the bidding of their constituents and would be allotted a three dollar per month living allowance for their trouble. What once was a selfless, noble undertaking for a short period of time and then returning to their private life has evolved into a career, one that by building good will with corporations and special interest groups guarantees even a further career by representing those very groups after leaving office. Corporations twice served, citizens not.
Each state of the union has their own governor and legislature and although subject to the same lures of graft and corruption as the federal government, it is on a smaller scale. When first formed, the United States government consisted of a loosely bound federation of individual states and it was realized that local leadership was much closer in tune to the needs and desires of their citizens. People residing in a western or central state are actually very different in their makeup, in their way of life and values than an eastern state and vise versa. Now much of the finances needed to tend to each states' needs are collected by the federal government and small amounts are meaded out to the states at great expense. Threats to withhold money is used as a means by the federal government to ensure states do not ennact laws that may deviate from national desires and goals. This is a far cry from what the founders of this country had in mind. A case of common good, common bad.
In it's course to become a world power the United States has deviated from the very principles on which it was founded. Government is not to ennact laws abridging a citizens' right to eat, drink, smoke, or raise their family in their chosen way as long as no harm comes to another, nor are they to be able to rely on the government for a handout after making bad choices and using poor judgement...common sense should dictate this fact. Citizens are not to be taxed at every step of their lives so this country is able to spend such taxes subjugating other sovereign countries, spreading their military across the globe to ensure that their form of government is in step with our own in the guise of protecting our national interest. The phrase "national interest" is more often than not the interest of United States' companies.....financial interest. I find this quite unconcerting as we were taught that a government run and dictated to by companies is fascism. In fact in Mussolini's Italy their form of government was called "corporatism" before adopting the title of fascism.
So ends my rant. It is just that I want my children and their children to be proud of their country and not be as so many of the citizens are today....my country,right or wrong. I am haunted by the thought of US citizens marching into concentration camps chanting "Yes, but it's still the greatest country in the world!" Nothing is out of the realm of possibility.

As my sister and I pulled up to the roadblock on 54 highway just outside Greensburg I wasn't sure how we were going to talk our way into town but I was determined and succeeded. It didn't hurt that our last relative now living there is the mayor, Lonnie McCollum. It had taken two days after the tornado destroyed the town to find out if he and his wife had survived but still could not contact them and as we discovered later, their telephone numbers for family members were gone as well as everything they owned so they could not take advantage of the hastily erected cell towers at the edge of town.
Lonnie and I took a tour of the town, or what was the town, and listened as many of the citizens stopped him and asked questions about plans and what the future held for them. Every face I looked into was full of pain and desperation, every person was going through the wreckage of their homes and businesses and I deducted from listening to their conversations that the search for personal items occured over and over. It is either keep busy or think and there was only one subject on everyone's mind.
Dump trucks traveled in a contiuous loop to the landfill outside of town and several streets were passable but you could only drive at your own risk as you still had to drive over debris. Driving past the landfill it was apparent that the destruction had reached even there which would mean the tornado had to have been two miles wide or more.
One thing that was constantly brought up was the fear of being forgotten before being able to stand on their feet again. I agree....one more natural disaster or a bad week in Iraq could push their plight off the national news only to be heard of again in a human interest piece...."Greensburg......a year later" or some other innocuous title. I certainly hope that is not the case.
I do have to say the initial response from state agencies and private groups is very heartening. Every county in the state and every organization seemed to be represented.

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