There's No Place Like Home

We talk now about the American Dream. We do it because it is such an important part, an integral part, of our national history and of our heart and soul as a people.

One part of the American Dream is the dream of owning one's own place -- land, a house, an apartment or a condo.

We tend to forget that much of the motivation for many of our forefathers and mothers who came to this land from other places -- especially in the beginning of what we now call the New World -- was the opportunity to own their own place, a place to call home. Centuries ago, this was nearly impossible in most of Europe and Asia, and many places in between, because of rigid class systems.

In those days and in those places, either one was born to land or one was not. And that was that. In the New World, it was different.

This comes to mind as we consider true losses -- the great losses in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and other places, in the wake of the recent hurricane Floyd and the great floods it brought.

The loss is greatest in North Carolina, but many people in many other places have lost all or nearly all of what they had. And in many cases, that loss was in the form of a place to call their own.

Some of the dreamers have lost their dreams. And this we should not forget.

But it is also part of the American Dream to begin building a new dream when an old one dies. And so we hope it will be to all of those who have lost their dreams in these floods.