Cryptoquote Solved – 03/23/23

“Don’t wait for someone to bring you flowers.  Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul.”   —   Luther Burbank

(Mr. Burbank revolutionized botany and farming, with his myriad cultivars!  Over 800 in all, consisting of fruits and nuts, grasses and grains, vegetables and ornamentals.  We really should not take Luther Burbank for granted.  But I’m sure that someones are going to try to “cancel” him for his belief/support of Eugenics.  People fail to realize that we, as humans, are continually evolving.  Our older biases are falling by the wayside as we become more enlightened.  And we shouldn’t discredit our ancestors because of their relative ignorance.  Right now the New York chapter of the Audubon Society is discussing dropping the name Audubon from their organization!  Why?  Because John James Audubon owned, and sold, some slaves – now referred to as “enslaved people”.  It’s not right to impose our – current – values on people who did things hundreds of years ago.  Slavery in the America – which did NOT invent the institution – was based on European arrogance, and the actual belief that other races were LESS than human.  Those beliefs have been proven wrong, but they were the prevailing thought processes of those times.  People try to point to the abolitionist movements as justification that these “bad people” should have known better, but that didn’t even start – in the U.S. until 1830 – which happens to be the same year that Audubon sold his remaining slaves.  And, like every movement, it wasn’t universally embraced.  It took time to change the hearts and minds of people.  As “enlightened” as we now claim to be, we are still a superstitious race of creatures, who are more caught up in tradition and indoctrination, than acknowledging science and rationality.  These “cancel” initiatives are an emotional response that mollify the few, at the expense of all of us.  We can acknowledge – and apologize for – past foibles, but we shouldn’t be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  We should all remember these folks for their accomplishments, and forgive them for – what we now know as – their “sins”.  Be well and do good, friends.)   —   YUR

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