The Threads That Connect Us: Reflections on New York, New Jersey, and the Universality of Humanity

Sometimes a journey becomes much more than a trip. It becomes an opportunity to reflect on who we are, where we have been, what we have accomplished, and how we are all connected as human beings. Over the past two years, I have traveled from my home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, to New Jersey and New York City to visit my son, Tony, and his wife, Danielle. Tony and Danielle moved to New Jersey about three years ago, returning to the area where Danielle was born and raised and where her family has established its roots. Those visits gave me the opportunity to experience one of America's most remarkable metropolitan regions. But beyond the landmarks, restaurants, transportation systems, and bustling streets, I found myself reflecting on a much larger subject: the interconnectedness of humanity. We are all part of a vast network of people, communities, technology, history, and shared experiences. Sometimes we recognize those connections in the simplest moments. At other times, we encounter them in places that change the way we see the world. Remembering September 11 During my first visit last year, Tony and Danielle took me to the 9/11 Memorial, where the reflecting pools mark the footprints of the former World Trade Center towers. Standing beside those enormous pools, looking at the names of the people who died, was a sobering experience. This year, Tony, and I returned to Lower Manhattan, and I had the opportunity to visit the 9/11 Memorial Museum for the first time. Before our visit, we had lunch with a former girlfriend from my Ole Miss days in the early 1980s. We had not seen each other in approximately 41 years. She has spent 38 years working as a flight attendant, while her husband has worked for years as an airline pilot. Reconnecting with someone from an earlier chapter of my life was a reminder of how time moves forward while certain memories remain with us. During that same trip, Danielle's father shared his own recollections of September 11. He had commuted to Lower Manhattan for years and had been close to the events of that terrible day. Over dinner on Thursday evening, he showed me photographs and explained how his company had been involved in insurance-related inventory and documentation. Hearing his account brought the tragedy closer to home. September 11 was not simply an event recorded in history books. It was something that happened to real people, families, businesses, and communities. Its consequences reached far beyond New York City, affecting New Jersey, the entire United States, and people around the world. I think most of us who were old enough to remember that day can recall where we were when we first heard the news. We remember the disbelief, the fear, the images on television, and the uncertainty about what might happen next.

Inside the 9/11 Memorial Museum, those memories took on another dimension. The exhibits, artifacts, photographs, and personal accounts conveyed the enormous scale of the loss. Nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11 attacks, leaving families and friends to cope with an absence that would never truly disappear. Walking through the museum was a somber and deeply moving experience. I found myself thinking about the individual lives behind those numbers: people who had gone to work that morning, people traveling on airplanes, first responders rushing toward danger, and families who expected their loved ones to return home. While walking through the memorial and museum, I also became aware of the atmosphere around me. There was something difficult to put into words—a profound sense of sadness, reflection, and human loss. I cannot explain every sensation I experienced, but I know the visit affected me. It reminded me that history is not merely a collection of dates and events. History is made up of human lives. And when we stand in places where great tragedy occurred, we are reminded of how fragile life can be, how deeply our lives affect one another, and how much we share despite our differences. The Remarkable Things Human Beings Can Build Yet my visits to New York and New Jersey also inspired a different kind of reflection: amazement at what human beings can accomplish. Consider New York City. Its immense skyline, bridges, tunnels, skyscrapers, railways, airports, and transportation networks represent generations of human labor, engineering, planning, invention, and cooperation. During my first visit, Tony and Danielle and I explored several familiar landmarks. We saw the Empire State Building, Times Square, and Rockefeller Center. We ate at Katz's Delicatessen, traveled by subway and bus, and took a ferry across the water. We eventually returned to Grand Central Terminal and caught a train back to New Jersey. This year, I traveled through the Holland Tunnel for the first time on a Lyft ride into Manhattan. I also spent time near the waterfront, where we could see the Brooklyn Bridge and observe the activity around Lower Manhattan's shipping areas. Experiences like these make you appreciate the enormous amount of work required to create and maintain a modern city. Think about the engineering involved in constructing a tunnel beneath a river, building a bridge across a waterway, or designing a subway system that moves thousands of people throughout a densely populated region. Consider the highways that connect communities, the airports that connect continents, and the aircraft that carry passengers across oceans. None of these systems exists in isolation. They depend on countless people working together, often without ever meeting one another. The engineers, construction workers, electricians, mechanics, pilots, train operators, maintenance crews, architects, and transportation planners all contribute to the larger system. Their individual efforts become part of something much bigger than any one person. That is one of the things I find fascinating about modern civilization. We depend on the knowledge, labor, and cooperation of people we will probably never know. A person in Kentucky can board an airplane, travel to New Jersey, take a train into Manhattan, ride a subway beneath the streets, walk across a busy city, and return home again. Behind that seemingly ordinary journey lies an extraordinary history of human invention and cooperation. Our modern world is a vast web of connections, and most of the time, we take those connections for granted. Thomas Edison and the Power of Human Ingenuity Another highlight of my trip was visiting Menlo Park, New Jersey, where Thomas Edison established his famous research laboratory. The site commemorates the work of Edison and the people who collaborated with him on inventions that helped transform modern life. A small museum preserves historical information and artifacts, while a prominent monument topped by a representation of an incandescent light bulb pays tribute to his legacy. Edison and his team helped develop technologies that changed how people lived, worked, communicated, and experienced the world. The phonograph, introduced in 1877, made it possible to record and reproduce sound. Edison's Menlo Park laboratory also played a central role in developing a practical incandescent lighting system in 1879. What impressed me was not simply the inventions themselves, but the process behind them. Innovation requires curiosity, experimentation, persistence, and a willingness to learn from failure. It often involves people building on ideas that others have developed before them. Edison is frequently remembered as an individual inventor, but his achievements also remind us of the importance of teams, skilled workers, and the accumulation of knowledge across generations. The light bulb is a particularly fitting symbol for my reflections on interconnectedness. The electric light transformed homes, factories, streets, and businesses. It changed how people could use their time and how communities could function after dark. Today, we benefit from countless inventions that make our lives more convenient and connect us in ways earlier generations could scarcely have imagined. The same human ingenuity that helped develop electric lighting has contributed to the machinery, transportation systems, communication technologies, and infrastructure that surround us. Standing at Menlo Park, I was reminded that our present world rests on the discoveries and efforts of people who came before us. We inherit their achievements, build upon them, and pass something forward to the next generation. In that sense, we are all part of a continuing human story. Beyond the Stereotypes My travels also reminded me of something that I believe is important in America today: we should be willing to look beyond stereotypes and experience people and places for ourselves. I am a Southerner. I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and have spent much of my life in Tennessee and Kentucky. Like people from any region, I have encountered certain assumptions about other parts of the country and the people who live there. New York City and New Jersey have their own reputations. People sometimes describe Northeasterners as hurried, blunt, or unfriendly. Others imagine the region primarily through television shows, crime stories, movies, and popular culture. But a place is never fully represented by a stereotype. During my visits, I enjoyed eating in local diners and restaurants, experiencing the transportation systems, exploring the waterfront, and meeting people. I found plenty to appreciate, including the friendliness and hospitality I encountered. Of course, no region is made up entirely of one kind of person. New York City is different from the surrounding New Jersey communities, and every neighborhood has its own character. But that is precisely the point: people deserve to be encountered as individuals rather than reduced to assumptions about where they live. We may speak with different accents, eat different foods, and approach life in different ways. Yet we share many of the same concerns. We want our families to be safe, our children to have opportunities, our work to mean something, and our lives to contain moments of happiness and connection. Travel gives us the opportunity to discover those commonalities for ourselves. Sometimes, a conversation over dinner can teach us more about another community than a hundred assumptions ever could. The Jersey Shore, Music, and American Culture My time in New Jersey also included a visit to the Keansburg beach area along the Jersey Shore. There is something enjoyable about experiencing a place that has its own identity, history, and cultural associations. The Jersey Shore has appeared in countless films, television productions, and popular stories. It has also been associated with organized-crime history, although I encountered no such activity during my visit. For me, the region also brought to mind Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen grew up in the Freehold area of New Jersey and developed his musical career in the broader Jersey Shore scene, including Asbury Park, where local venues helped shape his early musical identity. As someone who enjoys music, I find it interesting to visit places associated with the artists and cultural movements that have influenced American life. Music is another form of human connection. A song written by someone in New Jersey can resonate with a listener in Kentucky, California, London, or anywhere else in the world. The artist and listener may never meet, yet a melody or a lyric can express an emotion that both understand. That is one of the remarkable things about art. It crosses geographical, cultural, and generational boundaries. We can be connected by a song, a story, a film, a photograph, or a memory, even when we have little else in common. Family: The Personal Side of a Larger World For all the history, engineering, architecture, and cultural experiences my trips offered, the most personal reason for traveling was family. My son, Tony, and my daughter-in-law, Danielle, are building their lives in New Jersey. Visiting them gives me an opportunity to participate in that part of their lives, spend time together, and get to know more of Danielle's family and extended family. Those relationships matter. It is easy to talk about humanity in broad terms—to discuss nations, cities, technology, transportation, and global communication. But humanity becomes real through the people we know and love. It is present in a family gathering, a shared meal, a conversation about an event that changed someone's life, or a reunion with a friend from decades earlier. Meeting Danielle's family and hearing her father's memories of September 11 helped me understand the region through the experiences of people who actually lived there. Reconnecting with my former Ole Miss girlfriend after 41 years reminded me that our lives contain many chapters, and that people from our past can reappear in unexpected ways. And spending time with Tony and Danielle reinforced the importance of maintaining those connections, even when distance separates us. The highways, railways, airports, and tunnels may bring us together physically, but it is the relationships we nurture that make the journey meaningful. We Are All Part of the Same Human Story When I look back on my two trips to New Jersey and New York City, I see more than a collection of destinations. I see a memorial to the thousands of lives lost on September 11. I see a city built through generations of human labor and ingenuity. I see the legacy of Thomas Edison and the people who helped change the world through invention. I see the interconnected systems that allow millions of people to travel, work, communicate, and live alongside one another. And I see family, friendship, music, memories, and the unexpected connections that make life interesting. These experiences have reinforced my belief that we are all interconnected, whether we recognize it or not. Our lives depend on the work of people around us. Our communities depend on cooperation. Our history is shaped by the actions of individuals whose decisions can affect millions. Our personal lives are enriched by relationships that sometimes span decades and geographical boundaries. We are capable of extraordinary accomplishments, but we are also vulnerable to tragedy. We can build magnificent cities and develop remarkable technologies, yet we remain human beings who experience grief, love, hope, fear, and joy. Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all. We should appreciate the achievements of civilization without forgetting the people who made them possible. We should remember our tragedies without losing sight of our capacity for compassion. And we should approach people and places with curiosity rather than allowing stereotypes to determine what we believe. We do not have to live in the same city, belong to the same generation, share the same background, or hold identical beliefs to recognize something of ourselves in one another. The world is connected by physical systems—highways, bridges, tunnels, railroads, airports, and communication networks. But beneath those systems is an even greater network: the shared humanity that binds us together. I returned to Bowling Green with a greater appreciation for the world around me, the history that shaped it, and the relationships that give it meaning. Travel can broaden our horizons, but it can also bring us closer to a simple truth: despite all our differences, we are participants in the same human story. And the more willing we are to learn from one another, the more connected that story becomes.

Rush: Keeping It In The Family By Tony Smith, Formerly of The Indie Rock Band, "Sleeper Agent," From Bowling Green, Ky.

My son, Tony Smith, posted this (see below) on his Facebook timeline about Rush and our relationship with each other regarding the band. I thought it was a fine tribute to the late Neil Peart also.

“My dad wrote a blog about Neil Peart that I’d like to share and it got me thinking about our relationship and our relationship with Rush. 

———this’ll probably be a TL;DR———-

So, Rush has been the go-to “dad rock” band for as long as I can remember. Often they’ve been the go-to joke for overzealous rockists and squares alike. But, honestly Rush was always my “dad rock” band because it’s the first thing I can remember sharing with my dad as “ours”. I used to sneak into his office when he was at work and marvel over the artwork on his LPs and cassettes. Rush always had the best covers and eventually he played me the music behind the images. It was complicated but catchy; for every 3 minute pop-gem there was a ridiculously indulgent 10-minute-plus heady jam. Over the years, it’s something we’ve shared together exclusively. Every time a modern Rush album or live DVD came out, I’d buy my dad the discs and we’d enjoy them cranked to 11. During the Vapor Trails era we grieved for Neil Peart and the trauma that he went through with losing his family. We went to the Belcourt in 2010 and watched the Rush doc: Beyond the Lighted Stage and it was strange but also fitting to see a bunch of Dads and sons waiting in line, haha. Even a little funnier watching a bunch of grown-men (aka, 70s stoners, now family-men) cry during the sad bits about Peart. When Sleeper Agent got their first “big check” (it wasn’t that big, folks) after signing our record deal, I got my dad 2 tix so see Rush at Bridgestone for Xmas. ANYWAY, Peart was the heart and soul of Rush. He wrote the lyrics and drove the songs. The lyrics were often hammy in a New Age kinda way and his solos and drum kit were absolutely ridiculous... but damn, having Peart, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson in this world made it fun to be a square, a rockist, a dweeb, snob, stoner etc... 😂. We lost a good one far too soon. 

PS: Rush is clearly for everybody. I bet there are Moms and sons, moms and daughters and dads and daughters who had the same experience... I’m just sharing mine. 😘”

Goodbye 2017

"Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes."-Miguel de Cervantes

2017 was a good year for me. The biggest thing I have learned is that I don’t have to be in control because I am the master of my own destiny. I also learned to put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door in my mind and not get caught up in other people’s drama and gossip. I have learned to not react to those figurative “snakes” in life. I learned that’s okay to be me and accept who I am. I am assertive, confident and I am an observant participant in our community and society. I cannot change the fact who I am. The money will always come because I am a professional at what I do for a living. I love God, my church, my wife, son and dog. Also, I love all my family members, friends and coworkers. But some of them are challenging and they are the ones who give me a gift. Their gift to me is that teach me things about myself that I didn’t even know about and they help me to grow as a person. They help me to change for the better. Thanks to all of you that I know and love and have a chance to interact with many times throughout the year whether in person or on social media. Happy New Year to you and your families and God Bless! I look forward to seeing you in 2018!