August 2026
“At 8:15 AM, I was on my way to school. Someone shouted “B-29 atomic bomber!”
A tremendous flash. It was like one million lights. Everything went white. I couldn't see. I covered my face with my right arm. Heat burned my head, my neck, and my right arm. Then suddenly everything went dark, like the night time. Hot sand dust blew up, it covered the sun.
I couldn't see. My mouth was full of dust.
What was happening? What should I do?
I can't forget that terrible crunchy sand taste. I cried all the way home, but our house was very damaged. When I got there, even though my mother was alive, she could not recognize me. My hair was burnt. I was covered in ash. My clothes were destroyed. That night I was close to death.
Survival depended on how strong you were, and how lucky. My youngest sister had bad head wounds. Our roof was mostly gone, but suddenly, I looked up and saw a small patch of blue sky. Although I was in pain, I thought ‘this is so beautiful.’
That blue sky stayed with me.
It had given me the will to live, and if the heaven’s said, don't worry, there will be tomorrow.”
Those are words from Toshiko Tanaka. A woman who survived the atomic bombing of Japan 81 years ago. Hearing her, expend every ounce of energy to pronounce the words correctly for the English audience, as she pleas for humanity to remember her story and pursue a nuclear free world; I found her testimony lingering in the mind as the business of the month carried on.
Our world is so engrossed by the gamification of tragedy, and the culture of war. That most wouldn't even begin to conceptualize nuclear conflict. Some, remember growing up with a genuine fear of it, but most today have the privilege to live in a world where they never have to consider such horror.
Mrs. Tanaka's words echo in my head this month, not simply because of the power of her specific testimony, but because our world, despite the common misunderstanding, has teetered on the edge of nuclear war for the better part of decades - and now the testing of these weapons has been renewed by our nation as of October of last year, and the imperial madmen of our world, threaten the use of strategic nuclear weapons in their unjust wars.
The idea that has most successfully maintained the support for more weapons of mass destruction, is the notion that because these weapons are so devastating, no one would dare use them. As they would be risking their own destruction. So-called ‘peace through strength.’
As the people of our world, watch their brother’s, sister’s, and children's blood fill the rivers and seas, their lives and livelihoods bulldozed and bombed, their histories, destroyed and rewritten by fanatics. I don't think the strength of the many nuclear countries and their devastating weaponry, makes those people feel safer.
All those weapons do is allow the pedophile-gangster-mafia that pretends to be the governments of our world, to maintain and grow their power through force.
Go back a hundred forty-four years ago, the late 19th century, find someone on the street. Tell them you come from a future where people fly tubes of metal to the other end of the world in less than a days time. Across continents in a matter of hours. To the next town in a matter of minutes. Tell them our doctors have the power to heal the sick, injured, and infirm. Perform successful surgeries on the brain. Grow organs from cells, build and rebuild limbs, birth children safely, and see the elderly to their death humanely. Tell them we get our news from electronic newspapers, and our entertainment from black boxes of light. Tell them we can send a message, with moving images of our face, and the sound of our voice, to the other side of the world via a metal relay, we shot into the sky to orbit the world; that then collects the message, and sends it to the exact location of the receiving end in a matter of seconds.
Quickly you'd gain a crowd. Now, boldly assuming they believe you, or that you've brought evidence to support your tales; that crowd would consider you a sorcerer.
Awe, is too little of descriptor to illustrate the feeling this crowd would be having. They'd consider your society that of the gods of old. A society with the power to harness magic that heals the sick, breaks the barriers of the sea, traveling at will, and conquering the heavens above?How could that be anything but a utopia of the gods?
It is certainly a shocking advance in such a short period of time, and it is true that our society possesses technology that’d be considered magic by the most intelligent of our past.
Would they be wrong to consider our world one of magic?
No, I don't think they would be. This is undeniably a world of magic. Our society is undeniably powerful in a way our recorded history has never seen.
They would, however, be saddened to know that despite our great power we have used it so recklessly. They would be disappointed to know that we do not in fact live in a utopia of Gods, but instead, the same simple world as there’s.
A world of flying chariots and spacefarers, that has more people enslaved in the dirt than ever before.
A world with the power to heal, that withholds that power to benefit from the sick.
A world of magic, that can't seem to find the spell to protect the innocence of the innocent.
A world that's harnessed the power of the sun, only to drop it on innocent civilians to show whose in charge. Melting the world before their eyes in a matter of seconds.
Condemning countless generations to countless aftereffects.
The powers of our society, which I referred to here as magic are not done through the magic wand, abracadabra, Alakazam kind of spell craft of fantasy.
The spell-craft of our world is instead that of the word. It is that of ideas, and the collaboration found through conversation. Any of our societies advancements, or prowess; a medical system with the ability to heal like never before, a communication system that transmit words and presence and seconds, and yes, even our destructive power, all were found through the magic of collaboration.
It's obviously a little poetic, if not pompous, to refer to the advancements of our world as magic; though that is exactly how I see it.
For four years, I have had the privilege to serve in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. In that time, I've seen nothing but collaboration. Collaboration to collectively ignore the fact people are being priced out of their family homes, and many more can't even begin to think of beginning one.
Collaboration, to assist and protect should-be criminal business organizations that have knowingly polluted and poisoned our water and land.
Collaboration, to ignore the fact, our students, teachers and taxpayers are being played for fools as the state education system implodes.
And…
Collaboration, to make this State’s promise to the retirement of many of our state employees whole after it was broken.
Collaboration, to put long overdue regulations on businesses with polluting potential to protect our States’ beauty for generations.
Collaboration to stand up to the political forces of extremity, which threaten the integrity of open, accountable, transparent systems of governance.
Whether the awesomely tragic, devastating collaboration that led to the bomb, and it's aftermath as so strongly spoken to by Mrs. Tanaka, or the simple collaboration of the quiet peoples of our granite state. It is the spontaneous genius found in discussion that moves humanity forward.
We, who live amongst the granite hills of old, should feel especially connected to the magic of collaboration. New Hampshire’s state government, which can be traced back 346 years, to the year 1680, is one which holds the principle of deliberation as constitutional right. Every meeting, committee proceeding, vote or debate; at a local or state level is open to comment, observation, and accountability as a matter of law. Every bill, gets a vote and public hearing in committee and it's due time before the full House of Representatives. Meaning every issue, no matter it’s controversy, gets heard.
What sounds so basic, is in fact quite a unique trait amongst the governments of our world.
We, the people of the state of New Hampshire are privileged to live with our natural rights as human beings to participate in our own governance, recognized by the core structure of government. Our State House and it's 207 year old walls of granite, serve as an everlasting reminder of that. It is called the State House, because it is the State’s House. The nexus for the grievances of the populous. The temple to the structure of our State’s deliberation.
Again, this may be poetic or pompous, but it is nonetheless true. Our inclination to believe otherwise benefits no one but those who seek to shut the doors, cut the cameras, and close the blinds to the halls of power.
If humanity can build flying chariots that reach the stars, ships of metal that conquer the seas and skies, unlock the power of the sun, and with it the power to spark Armageddon at the moment notice;
Then I have a little doubt that our state of one and a half million people can use the power of collaboration, with our advantage of the granite halls built for deliberation, to conquer peaks - which in comparison to the last 150 years, seem quite tame.
A tax system that doesn't serve as a mortgage, pricing you out of your home-state while funding the services and systems that protect this home of ours.
An education system, which provides the students of our State with, not just an education that molds them into another brick in the wall, but one that outputs fully rounded adults, educated with the skills that prepares them for the world ahead as best as possible.
An environment, there for the children of our grandchildren, where society lives symbiotically with the grand system of nature, as opposed to allowing a select few to entirely destroy that harmony. Where our water is drinkable, our air is breathable, and our food is eatable.
A government that works according to the charge of its citizens.
Open transparent and accountable to all it serves.
All these climbs are entirely achievable by us, the ones with granite in our blood. Anyone who tells you the deliberations to get there are worthless, benefits from you not seeing the peaks.
If the State of New Hampshire is to solve the issues before it, then we the citizenry, are encumbered with the duty to reconnect to our history and the principles of our state’s structure of governance in the granite temple founded by the magicians of old who knew society will shift; but if it keeps the consistent thread of peaceful deliberation found in those halls, then it shall nonetheless endure.
The 170th general court of our state, it’s next legislative session - In this moment where our world goes through radical shifts led by faceless people behind closed doors. New Hampshire has the opportunity to set an example by electing the right leadership. Leadership that opens the doors, rings the bell, and encourages the testimony of the citizenship. Leadership that decentralizes power from its own hands, into the broader membership. Encouraging thoughtful, thorough deliberation on the state's, most pressing grievances with all the members involved.
It's not an opportunity to solve every issue in two years. It's an opportunity to put the structures of governance such that spontaneous solutions found in open and free deliberation can and will occur.
No one person, no one political ideology, and certainly no one politician has the solutions to the ails of society. The more in the discussion the better chance we have a finding the solution.
In New Hampshire's legislature, there are 400 members, and our opportunity to serve as the broader example that will save the very nature of a representative government is greater than any others. Putting my own ambitions to participate in that aside; I pray that opportunity isn't wasted by the whims of the affinity to partisan echo chambers.
This will need to be an effort of everyone. That means deliberating with those who at a headlines glance, turn your partisan blinders on.
Call it magic - call it simple conversations - our solutions are found in collaboration.
Humanity, without a shadow of doubt, possesses a magic. It’s up to us, the magicians of our time, to choose what we do with it.
Existence in this world is heavy, made heavier by the pure unadulterated lunacy of the times. Many don't seem to see the tomorrow in the sky, and as a result feel powerless.
Toshiko Tanaka had the horrific display of the worst of human ingenuity before her, yet still 81 years later does not mention the terror of the day the sun fell from the sky without recounting the patch of blue sky she looked up to see.
Reminding her that indeed, tomorrow is in the sky.
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