Welcome and thank you for visiting our new Substack page!  We are grateful to the Substack team for designing and administering this online publishing platform for writers and readers to support and participate in free speech.  

We are the Sappingtons, a husband-wife writing and editing team, educated at Princeton and Berkeley (east and west coast academia).  To our academic qualifications, we add decades of natural resources experience on the ground (out of academia, in nature).  Our equation at Snake River Music Gardens is Natural Resources + Culture = Economy.

Our messages are principled, non-partisan, non-denominational, basic, constitutional and universal. 

Our initial post is titled What It Means to Be American.  (1) In the broadest sense, anyone who resides in North or South America is an American.  (2) Americans have an entrepreneurial attitude: get out and do; offer products or services into the market.  (3) Americans have courage.  (4) Narrowing the scope to what would qualify you to function as a citizen of the United States of America: Americans read the US Constitution, and know it as the supreme law of the land in our free republic.  (5) Americans get out and engage in live discussions about the concerns of the day—whether in market, pub, café, church, park, or street.  You aren’t a participating citizen if you merely engage with a screen.  (6) Americans vote!  (7) Americans believe in one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Many American citizens have not yet read the US Constitution—yet the Constitution is a brief document of only about 7500 words. The Constitution is our bulwark against tyranny because it makes sovereign you the individual, not a king, emperor, or dictator.  The authority of our government derives from the consent of the governed.  To guard against tyranny, the Constitution sets up 3 independent branches of government—executive, legislative and judicial—to check each other’s exercise of power. 

How does this work?  Our elected representatives, our legislators, pass laws.  Our executive branch, the president and his cabinet, execute the laws.  And our judiciary ensure that all laws and executive actions are consistent with the Constitution.  

As we approach the most important presidential election of our lifetimes, Americans should ask, how has this candidate upheld the Constitution?  We look not to what the media says (opinion) but to the candidates’ actual acts, executive orders and speeches.