Today’s the last day of February 2022. I last posted a blog just after the New Year. Since starting the Conserve-Prosper website in May of 2015, I’ve consistently posted at least one blog every month for 80 months. So now I have just a few hours left today to add a blog for this month.

During the month of June 2019, I challenged myself to post a blog every day of the month. Typically writing a blog and finding the relevant photograph could take up to four hours to complete.

It’s been a great privilege to express my First Amendment freedom of speech, particularly in the last few years after retiring from the federal government. We see dictatorships that prevent free speech but does your employer (teacher, spouse, parent or child) block you’re expressing diverse points of view? Perhaps it’s ironic that I am borrowing the “Blogging” photo from a .gov website!

With the crisis in Ukraine, I feel shock, dismay, helplessness and confusion. It brings back memories from 43 years ago as a college student spending a semester in Germany when we visited East and West Berlin before the fall of the Soviet Union. After a week in West Berlin, we passed through the Wall at CheckPoint Charlie and spent three days in the communist country. There were many Russian tourists that we could not meet but our tour guide shared his misery living in East Germany and he desperately wanted to escape to America. The dictatorship government claimed they wanted to prevent western ideas from contaminating the minds of their people. I heard during this time Putin was stationed with KGB nearby in Dresden.

The most amazing memory was on a Saturday evening at 9 pm we walked out near the Wall and could see West Berlin from the Eastern side. The nightclubs blasted disco music and neon lights lit up the sky. In stark contrast, the East Berlin side was dark and quiet with a curfew at 10 pm. It seemed to me that East and West Berlin were at two extreme ends of the spectrum before the Wall came crashing down ten years later.

The fight in Ukraine between a democratic system and crazy Putin’s dictatorship is all about freedom of individual rights such as free speech!

So pray there is a peaceful resolution to this and many other crises. Everyone needs to find a way to express themselves and force free speech around the world. I consider each blog like a message in a bottle hoping some will be read and make a difference in the world. Writing these blogs has made a difference in my life so thanks to everyone who takes the time to check it out and feel free to post a comment.