b'Jan and I slipped along the rooms edge and found 2 open seats in the back. By this time she was standing in front of the crowd holding up an aged fence post with a few strands of rusted barb wire still stapled down its length. The old hardwood post was cut from a Bois darc tree by her dad nearly a century ago somewhere along the Oklahoma border. Elegantly aged, the old fence post seemed to come alive, complete with beautiful arrays of multicolored lichens.And then, the storytelling began. Tallgrass gone, another long winters countWe both never thought it wouldve come to this. People cant imagine what its liketo teach a room full of adults about what this ancient fence post is saying to us? I can feel my dads big, strong, warm hand still radiating from the hardened wood. Young kids can see, feel and hear this old post. We see aliveness within the colorful lichens. We know the humble questions to ask the tree for its permission. We know sharpness is required of the ax to cut the wood. We care for the land. We only dig small David Prince courtesy of EMS ISD holes. We know the worth of a good fence, a tallgrass prairie, and the care of our livestock. But many adults struggle with this type of learning.Weve known all along to share these teachings from our ancestors. They were freely given to us to learn and live by. It is our duty to pass along the responsibility and our lifetime commitment to share this fence posts story with young ones. It is meant to keep us all alive.But somehow, educating children about these simple basic principles is being diminished. Rules, regulations, and petty political grievances between colonial warring factions of race, creed, and color have chiseled and stripped away mental health, freedom, happiness, productivity, safety, and creativity from whole generations. The melting pot is boiling hot. The future is nearly screaming at us. We know our childrens children are likely to face some perty tuff hurdles to climb. They need our full and collective attention asap, if we expect them to carry on.'