Dear Grandchildren,
This little book contains a series of observations about life and living that have been accumulated over a lifetime. Your experiences may be different and lead you to different conclusions. They are arranged in no particular order so if you open the book to any page you can start there. The book was made so you will be able to compare your observations with mine. Your world will be vastly different from the one I know, it may be better or worse. Whichever it is, it will be the only world you will have. I hope some of my observations may help you to make it a better one. You may find that you will agree with some of these and disagree with others. In either case I hope you will take the time to read them on occasion, and to jot down arguments and illustrat ions of your agreements or disagreements. We may thus be able to have a productive discussion over the chasm of time that now separates us. Exploring our similarities and differences may help to increase your understanding of the world around you. Remember that your judgment on any of these will be just as good as mine and in many instances even better. It will be of most use if you are able to justify the differences or the agreements. At the very end of the book you will find an article I wrote in 1974. The Future A Personal View. It was printed in a small publication called Futures Conditional that is now defunct. It was my response to a request to provide a statement on my personal view the future. Since you will see that future, you should be a better judge of the value of the s tatement. It is my hope that you will know me more fully by the material in this book. It is also my expectation that by examining each of the statements contained in it, you may be more able to understand the world in which your future rests.

With the greatest love,
Your Grandfather