Music, flowers, and dogs all come in a great variety of forms, for whatever the occasion human life calls for.

Isn’t the most glorious yellow, of any flower, the radiant yellow of the dandelion? Yet we don’t usually see it that way because it outdoes the pure undiluted green we try to produce in our lawns. Dandelions are also hardier than most other blossoms.

When I got out of the army during the Korean war, I had a job for about 1¢ years at Cornell Aeronautical Research Laboratories by the Buffalo airport. Our project was the development of a guided missile for the Army. We were located in a building at the end of some airport runways. One bright spring day I took a short lunch hour walk out on the end of a nearby runway. It had just received a new coat of asphalt. I was amazed to see a spot where a dandelion had forced its way up through the new asphalt. It had actually pushed a piece of the new asphalt that was about three inches in diameter, up and out of the way, to allow this dandelion to grow up through a crack in the concrete below, to bask in the sunlight of the day.

I wonder if any other flower could have done that? I was impressed with what I saw as the height of determination in the urge and surge of life. It was a prime example of that wisdom that says, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” It was an example of the amazing never-give-up of life, which I shall never forget.

As flowers express the beauty of nature in so many ways, music is mankind’s most glorious discovery of beauty. It encompasses all the beauty that moves us, and is God’s gift to humanity. It is an environment of human life. Music is expressed in every way we are capable. Music gives us permission to dream. Without it we would be beastly creatures. It is a ticket to divinity. Other art forms are but the effects of music. Music can carry one throughout the cosmos; it speaks to, and through, the human soul. Music can take many forms, but its heart striving passion gives it its strength.

Even people who cannot produce music of any kind, respond to it when they hear it. It can lift ones aspirations. It is used to inspire patriotism, and religion. It is the most useful tool of any who would try to inspire us to one motive or another. It is even used commercially. One rarely hears a commercial ad on television without accompanying music. It usually strengthens our reactions in movie dramas. When all is said and done, music expresses the hungry soul of mankind, which forever yearns for an ultimate reality or destiny. There is even trinket music when we’re bored.

Dogs come in many shapes, sizes and colors. Like flowers and music they reflect great variation, to please whatever we need. It has always seemed as more than accidental that the word dog is the reverse of the word god. I don’t believe it means they are the reverse effects in our lives, but perhaps that there is somehow a meaningful relationship of their purpose in our lives. Maybe it is because a man is a dog’s god, and dogs know it. Dogs have a worshipful forgiveness toward us. No creature on earth is as ready and willing to be of service to man as a dog. They are only vengeful when trained to be so, otherwise they love all people. A dog will, without question, obey whatever you train him to do.

Those who have never had a dog as a friend, planted, or honestly admired a flower bed, or never felt the ecstasy of a musical selection of beauty … have yet to discover the most satisfying grandeur of being alive. They don’t know what they are missing. May God bless America.