Ron the Yarnspinner

  Sheepskin   It’s that time of year again — caps fly into the air, tassels are flipped, and families gather in bleachers and auditoriums to cheer for students crossing a stage into the next chapter of life. Across the country, thousands of young people are graduating high school and college, clutching diplomas and degrees that symbolize years of effort and, for many, enormous debt.   For decades in America, this moment — holding that piece of paper — has been treated like a passport to success. A college degree was supposed to guarantee stability, a good job, and upward mobility. That belief really took root after World War II, when the GI Bill opened the doors of higher education to returning servicemen and women. College became the gold standard — the mark of credibility and progress. A real door opener yes sir.   But something’s shifting. Ask any recent graduate staring down the barrel of student loan payments while struggling to find a job in their...

  Decoration Day   Decoration Day. Do you remember it? My grandmother was always sure to put out her flag. It had 48 stars back then.   Every year, flags are raised. Mine will go up as well. Flowers are laid gently on graves. The solemn sound of taps echoes across cemeteries from coast to coast. Memorial Day arrives with pageantry and our nation pauses to remember. But beneath the rituals, America is burdened   with   contradictions buried deeper than its dead. Few Americans realize that Arlington National Cemetery stands on land once owned by Robert E. Lee. The Union seized his family estate during the Civil War and began burying its fallen in his front yard—a   spiteful message as symbolic as it was strategic: rebellion would not be honored, and its legacy would be rooted beneath the weight of national loss. The very soil of the Confederacy became the bedrock of Union memory.   Yet just a year after the war ended, something else qui...