The ageless hope of Viginia Lee Burton to her children

Of course I like the idea of what a kid’s story means to you –not necessarily about what the author meant it to be.

We know that Virginia comes from a very educated Ivy League family: MIT and Harvard. My bet was Virginia very plugged into our culture at the time –and she was very aware of what was going on in the depression. So was she trying to tell a little story to her child explaining what was going on with the depression –and the ending of the story, was she trying to tell her son Michael that in any horrific event such as the depression –there can be a happy ending.

My bet she was writing up and sketching this story for two years prior to the copy write –that brings us to 1937. This was the year that we were seeing the second downward leg of the depression. We were still in very high unemployment and the economy disvalued worker wages at this time. So, was she trying to tell her kids about working harder and harder for less –with the economy not valuing the human spirit, which pushes us into mistakes -much family and national anger and infighting –that no matter how hopeless it looks like today –it will all end up in the happy story with everyone living in a comfortable job and living situation.

Was she trying to give her kids hope in those disparate times through the story of mike mulligan and the steam shovel–give all of our kids the message of hope in those truly horrible times?

You will note that Germany, Great Britain and then the USA drove themselves out of the depression through deficit spending; they all had to create the ideology of hate and extreme nationalism in order to justify deficit spending in military hardware in preparation to war. So we got a huge failure in the global economic system ending in global war. Right, the political leaders would rather instigate a war with another country than have the public blame the politicians for the economic damage because of a failure of leadership.

So you now understand the political necessity for all wars!

What you got to do not is to effectively create funny money on a grand scale –a global federal reserve. What we’ve got to do is create a massive global public works program on a scale the world has never seen before –you got to create a planetary educational system and you’ve got to create planetary infrastructure and energy modernization program. You got to drive the whole world into security and stabilization with all of our common needs.

You know you crazy ass people are going to spend the money anyway –either in the machines and instruments of war, death and destructions –or you are going to have to give Hope to the world that there is going to be a good future.

So where are the ideals of Virginia Lee Burton today?