You Know the Things We Do...

You want freedom... but you don't want to serve.
You know, the things we do. You have those abilities to travel, to go shopping, shop for food. Your children are able to attend school.

You can go to work. You can attend meetings, get-togethers, perhaps religious services.

You want your time to read, study, write, or any other quiet time thing you do in the peace of your home. Your hospitals and schools are intact.

Yet, you. Yes you the posers complaining as you always have. Everything takes work, but you have yet to accept that truth about life. You have to serve someone, something. We all do, and that's life. That is our rent we pay for living on this earth.

However, you are unwilling to accept that life is just about that. Serving. Paying a debt for freedoms. You forget.

Humans are not that much more superior than our favored domestic animals. We still battle to survive, most of the time we just don't acknowledge it. Many of us in these United States have become oblivious to the basic needs in daily surviving. Reason being is because of decisions made, giving protection that lends freedom to us by others.

Remember... You know the things you do... Daily? You do them, those things mostly uninhibited by an outside source. You don't have someone taking away, threatening your freedom and all you've known. You are not forced to leave what you know. Neither heading to another country... Losing your identity. All your men eighteen to sixty years old separated from families, communities and the like.

Remember this the next time you order that coffee, and it's not arriving fast enough for you. Or the next time you drive somewhere, because you can. Or you're standing in the produce aisle of a food store. And you complain you hate to go foodshopping. If you don't remember your words. I know I will.----Jody-Lynn Reicher

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2023 Holiday Letter from the Reicher's

Well, I didn't think I'd be doing a Holiday Letter this year, but here goes... The Spirit of Norm is in the air. As the wind whips with minus a true snowstorm. In hopes the Farmers Almanac was correct, I pray to the snow gods. Rain ensued the month of December thus far. We have nearly tripled the amount of rainfall usual for December in New Jersey. And I've witnessed its treachery. Storms such as these hit us hardest in July. Then remained fairly intense through til about early October. Our daughters are doing well, Thank God. Their Dad would be proud of them. Our oldest Sarah, now a Junior at UCLA pursuing her degree in Chemical Engineering. She's digging the whole California scene. Which I thought it was for her. She's had some good traveling on her off times from school. For her March 2023 week off, she drove her and a few friends out to Lake Tahoe and went downhill skiing for a first in nearly 5 years. She had to rent the ski equipment. Funny enough when

Sledging the Hammer

"You could have a steam trainIf you'd just lay down your tracks..."---Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' lyrics. This is not the tune that lay in my mind this morning as I reminisced about yesterday's volunteers to help on trail crew. However, as I looked up the proper definition of sledging that song popped up. I say sledging, which is my own take on swinging a hammer that we call a "Double Jack". The Single Jack is six pounds. I know that because our regular crew of five including me and one staff supervisor are handling Harriman State Park Trails, and have to carry about four of those, two shaping hammers, along with a hoist, belay bag with heavy equipment, first aid kit, double Jack, three 18lb rock bars, a lopper, three buckets, three eye to eyes, two burlap straps, two green wrapping straps, two pick Mattox, a roe hoe or two, a bar for either the two ton or one ton hoist, the feathers with pegs for splitting rocks that we drill... s

It Follows Me...

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know.

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