It's 10:30 p.m. and I still can't get a grip on my ideas. The death of two of my brothers within this month has caused a lot of contradiction and confusion. Brother James was eldest, brother John was fifth in line. I told my father once that he had really raised two families, the first four siblings raised on the ranch, the other three in the city until after he passed. There was a 5-year gap between the fourth and fifth sibling, and I think a little more liberality. Our memories must be distinctly different.

With such an abrupt change I was drawn to reread the extraordinary family history authored by Cousin Tom and Arlene Leonard titled "The Legacy of James Leonard." It is filled with happy memories and extended family photos. I have to recognize the wonderful, talented, and happy group of people Great Grandfather James Leonard (1815-1893) eventually gathered together. As I look at these photos of six generations, particularly mine, until about 1959 when Grandmother Sara Ellen "Nellie" Leonard passed away, it seems almost too peaceful. The memories are colorful and sharp, far cry from my day-to-day efforts to recall names today!

The passing of the things of this world jumps out at me; how truly brief life is, even for the longest-lived. The goal is of course life eternal which shouldn't frighten us. Though cousin Tom is rightly proud of the remarkable Leonard family accomplishments, and our extended family companionship, I keep returning to the fact that most worldly events, and things of my childhood are forever gone, some to the better, some for the worst. To the best, faith and hope prevail. I see six generations have played their roll in a little more than a century, a speck in time.

Grandma's house is a great demonstration of that second law of thermodynamics. (No pretention here, I'm ignorant of physics). Nature continually falls apart. The two places on earth that anchor my memories are the ranch I grew-up on, and my grandmother’s beautiful home, built in 1909 on the Home Ranch by Grandfather James Leonard Jr. in Oxnard, on Gonzales Road. It was the most extraordinary house of its kind I have ever known, without exception.

Following my grandmother's death in 1959 the house received many new lives, at great esthetic cost and final architectural degradation. Not to get too gloomy, but the condition of the great house today reminds me of William Butler Yeats's poem “The Second Coming,” " Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;...". So, for me the great house is a metaphor for all things quietly passing in time. For the oldest of us life is short-lived, sometimes fortunately well-lived as my Grandfather James Leonard Jr. did with his angelic spouse Nellie, in the big house, with large family, on the ranch.

The house was built state-of-the-art. Today only a ramshackle remnant of memories remains on site, although it still evokes Christmas and Easter past, and Grandma's "Butter Sponge Cake with Lemon Frosting."

Recalling these things, I can't escape remembering how time consumes all things, even beautiful homes and bygone inhabitants.
The second law of thermodynamics feasts relentlessly on our democratic Republic as well, but faster even than on an old house. Its foundational Judeo-Christian structure has been abandoned and the center cannot hold much longer. The ravage of moral neglect is taking its toll. Will we also soon be left with only the skeletal remains of the greatest nation in human history?

O.K. - I'm done with personal history.