Regarding Traditions

View from lanai by Henry

The annual pilgrimage to St. Augustine, Florida from Dublin, New Hampshire now complete, leaves me wondering whether another will come.

Tradition is the word Henry has adopted as I have adopted him as a grandson. His annual departure from home, then the return home, grounds him in a place that is not home.

A special place holds stories while a place within holds dreams. Being grounded within is a whole 'nother story - not bound by place nor time like the essence of tradition itself.

On the cusp of becoming nineteen, dreams dance in the mind even as feet stand on the homeland. Dreams, at some magical moment, grow wings to lift off from safe ground that has made all the difference when it counted most. Sometimes lifting off takes time - but like family, friends, and local community- time is on his side. When the time to fly is right, the urge to go will come. In the meantime, traditions continue to hold steady until no longer needed.

Breaks with tradition come without notice -- his midnight swim in the pool announced after-the-fact --my pronouncement that after age eighteen those root beer floats (a long-standing tradition with each grandchild) have run their course.

"Next year, I will buy you a root beer float", said Henry. That is no small thing! A cherished tradition was claimed in that expressed sentiment. Tradition is, after all, sentimental when smells and sounds and sights can be tasted and heard and seen with eyes closed from anywhere.

My Memere offered her version of root beer floats on every visit to her home--a smaller pilgrimage across town-- but nevertheless to another world that in my mind remained unchanged over her lifetime. Her tradition was in that first crunch of sweet corncakes topped with peppermint "old fashioned" candy like the last sip through a straw of root beer with traditional vanilla ice cream.

It had been a long time between bites when I found the treat again last summer in my grandmother's homeland, Quebec, Canada. I am the age she was when she passed away (!) but time -- like tradition-- exists between reality--yummy treats--and memories that linger like there is no tomorrow.

Serving up tradition is as sentimental as it is grounding. Stories baked in tradition often begin with the words: I'll never forget . . .

I'll never forget those root beer floats with my grandkids!

Listen:Two minutes of Beech Trees in the wind negates Two Hours of State of Union Bluster . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgbk0U2gYLY

Video by Reverend Traceymay Kalvaitas Dublin Community Church, New Hampshire

https://dublinchurch.org/

Pass the SALT

For all the many and different cars I have owned from age seventeen (the iconic VW Beetle) to age seventy (the less iconic VW Golf), in between I had a "Saab story" and the only car I ever slapped with a bumper sticker. It was during the so-called "cold war" between the US and then USSR. Up for negotiation was the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). Self-explanatory, yet hotly debated between the two major superpowers following years of a mad build-up of weapons of mass destruction.

Pass the SALT followed me everywhere, eliciting lots of attention, which is why I have never subjected myself and my cars to another bumper sticker since. I am thinking about this because today we are right back where we started in 1972.

Back in the Nixon era, believe it or not, his administration was in favor of arms limitation and a reduction in nuclear weapons. His counterpart, Brezhnev, represented the Russian Communist party.

Then, like now, I attended rallies on brewing issues du jour. This particular one felt more urgent than say, building the Seabrook nuclear plant on the coast, because it mattered globally when- pre-internet- we had yet to grasp the full implications of the word global.

Fortunately for everyone of us, the two parties passed SALT which effectively insured limitation on building nuclear weapons for the next thirty years! This treaty was re-negotiated in the intervening years, using other acronyms, while strengthening the original treaty for another twenty plus years. That brings us to to the twenty-first century and back to the beginning:

With New START set to originally expire on February 5, 2021, Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin negotiated a five-year extension in January 2021, just days before the treaty was set to expire. While proposals to extend the treaty informally fluctuated in Fall 2025, there has been no credible attempt by either Putin or Trump to extend the current nuclear arms control regime.*

As of February 5, 2026, for the first time in over fifty years, there is NO treaty in place banning or barring nuclear weapons globally which we now understand means the whole world and everyone in it! We need more than a catchy bumper sticker to call this out.

With the emergence and rapid (ongoing) buildup of China’s nuclear arsenal, our military planners will now debate how many systems and weapons the United States will need to maintain mutual assured destruction (MAD), not with one but two nuclear powers. *

MAD! Indeed . . . and we all should be mad about this major issue du jour that deserves our (and the media's) full attention. Look up everyone. "The sky is falling"!

Daybreaking over the San Sebastian River in St. Augustine, Florida

To learn more:

*https://michaelmcfaul.substack.com/p/the-tragic-end-of-the-new-start-treaty

https://armscontrolcenter.org/statement-on-the-expiration-of-the-last-treaty-restricting-the-worlds-two-largest-nuclear-arsenals-new-start/