{"id":1450,"date":"2008-11-25T09:47:22","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T15:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=1450"},"modified":"2008-11-25T09:52:40","modified_gmt":"2008-11-25T15:52:40","slug":"gratitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=1450","title":{"rendered":"Gratitude"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><font style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal\" size=\"5\" face=\"Times New Roman\">One sunny  day in January, 2009 an old man approached the White House from across  Pennsylvania Avenue, where he&#8217;d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the  U.S. Marine standing guard and said, &#8220;I would like to go in and meet with  President Bush.&#8221;<\/font><\/h3>\n<h3><font style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal\" size=\"5\" face=\"Times New Roman\">The Marine looked at the man and said, &#8220;Sir, Mr. Bush is  no longer president and no longer resides here.&#8221; The old man said, &#8220;Okay&#8221; and  walked away.<\/font><\/h3>\n<h3><font style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal\" size=\"5\" face=\"Times New Roman\">The following day, the same man approached the White House  and said to the same Marine, &#8220;I would like to go in and meet with President  Bush.&#8221; The Marine again told the man, &#8220;Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no  longer president and no longer resides here.&#8221; The man thanked him and, again,  just walked away.<\/font><\/h3>\n<h3><font style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal\" size=\"5\" face=\"Times New Roman\">The third day, the same man approached the White House  and spoke to the<br \/>\nvery same U.S. Marine, saying &#8220;I would like to go in and  meet with President Bush.&#8221; The Marine, understandably agitated at this point,  looked at the man and said, &#8220;Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been  here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I&#8217;ve told you already that Mr. Bush is no  longer the president and no longer resides here. Don&#8217;t you  understand?&#8221;<\/font><\/h3>\n<h3><font style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal\" size=\"5\" face=\"Times New Roman\">The old man looked at the Marine and said, &#8220;Oh, I  understand. I just love hearing it.&#8221;<\/font><\/h3>\n<h3><font style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal\" size=\"5\" face=\"Times New Roman\">The Marine snapped to attention,  saluted, and said, &#8220;See you tomorrow, Sir.&#8221;<\/font><\/h3>\n<p>thanks to Paul Strickland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One sunny day in January, 2009 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he&#8217;d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, &#8220;I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.&#8221; The Marine looked at the man and said, &#8220;Sir, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=1450\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Gratitude<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[954,1170,52],"class_list":["post-1450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-bush","tag-joke","tag-thanksgiving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}