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Our nation will always have its pessimists, incapable of imagining a bright future. It will always have its enemies, foreign and domestic, who hope the United States will not or cannot survive as a nation. There will always even be people who are neither pessimists nor enemies, but who have resentment and/or distrust of success, wealth, and achievement. These people, too, will not want to believe that the United States, as a nation, will or can survive.

I, on the other hand, am not among any of the aforementioned types of people. I believe the United States, as a nation, will not only still exist 100 years from now; I believe it will be stronger than it has ever been.

One of the reasons I believe this could be that I am old enough to realize how short a time 100 years really is. Just last evening I was searching the popular website that allows viewers to see street views of city streets around the world. After my virtual visit to my childhood neighborhood, I decided to visit my parents' childhood neighborhoods, as well. I remembered the name of the street on which my father was born 97 years ago, and I remembered my father's and my grandfather's both saying it was a very short street.

Before I clicked on the street I realized that 97 years is a long time, and there was a chance this street had become a site for a shopping mall or corporation. When I clicked on, however, there it it was - a very short street with a very few, very old, houses on it. There was also some vacant property between the cluster of houses and the other end of the street. I tried to guess which, if any, of the houses may have been the one in which my father had been born, and the one in which my grandfather, who was born in 1881, had grown up. Guessing, however, didn't make any sense; because that's not how history is supposed to be recorded. My point is that the very short street in the suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, still exists. There is no shopping mall. There is no corporate conglomerate. There aren't even any woods that have grown in place of buildings that no longer exist.

Besides being mature enough to realize how short a time 100 years really is (I can remember the days when people believed there would be flying cars in the year, 2000), it is, perhaps, having grown up in historical Massachusetts that has given me particular respect for, and awareness of, the durability of a nation that has been built on, and with, the principles which gave birth

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