By McAvoy Layne….So brief is life, I feel compelled to take this moment to save the world. Necessarily, I will need to call upon everything I have learned from our generation to address this daunting task, but here goes…
How can we avoid a Third World War? We can avoid the scourge of World War Three with two little words, “Howdy, Pard.” We translate these two words into seven thousand languages and promulgate their use worldwide when greeting citizens and diplomats from other countries. Soon enough, we will come to accept the truth that we are all partners, and that there is more good than bad in the sum of us…
Like sunshine on the forest floor, interdependence is our twenty-first-century condition. “Howdy, Pard” can serve to unite us in that affiliation, in our shared humanity, and in a respect for the Universal Brotherhood that fashions our World Family. A recent “Moon Joy View” of us from Artemis Two shows us as we are…
Sophistication in world weaponry dictates that we can no longer exist with a cavalier attitude of us versus them. From here on out, it’s, “How can we help?”
Words can be heartening when backed by action, just as they can work to the opposite effect, as in calling our Defense Department the War Department. Can we see a show of hands for renaming it our Peace Department?
Call me a Pollyanna for whistling past the graveyard, but the day has come for recognizing our kindred spirits and acknowledging our common humanity with a simple, “Howdy, Pard.” For example, in Cuban, it’s, “¡Hola, Socio!” And in Russian, “Zdorovo, Priyatel.”
Yes, there is sunshine on the forest floor, and we are here to spread the warmth. Let us keep the sunlight glowing by sending this declaration off to a dozen different countries, and petitioning them to do the same…
Before long, and hopefully before too late, I shall be reporting back to you in this fine family journal with encouraging early results…
Your Independent Goodwill Ambassador at Large,
McAvoy
Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO
— For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”