Dear America,

Do not call my generation stupid.
We were the first group of kids to learn a computer.
Think about that society: A group of kids learned this intricate machine.* Yes, I'm talking about the O.G. Apples with the green type where you had to save with a floppy disk and if you put a magnet to the screen it went purple forever.
Yes those, same kids grew up and created everything you see before you now.
Everyday.

Do not call my generation ignorant.
In a short time span of years, as children, we learned about oral relations with interns and terrorist attacks.
From Clinton's impeachment to the World Trade Centers/Pentagon/Flight93 Somerset.
As children we learned; emphasis on the children part.
Our minds grew knowledgeable of a world at hand long before society gave us credit.
We grew up.

Do not call my generation lazy.
When we were sixteen and just received our license, gas rose to the highest it had ever been in our country's history.
We got underpaid and  disrespected jobs:
cleaning up bathrooms and serving your foot-longs.
The ability to travel on our own, it was our new found freedom.
Like the early travelers roaming new found lands:
Our wings were spread.

Do not call my generation weak.
We are the same group of people who entered college or the workforce with the worst economic fall since the Great Depression.
You ask, "What did it do to you?"
Buried us in more and more debt until it consumed our life.
But, we became enlightened.
We majestically thrived in the chaotic times by finding out who we are, what we are capable of and that life will take us our journeys before we even see it coming.
The light still shines even when you are buried the deepest.
It does not matter what you throw at us next.
We will rise and conquer. It's the world's hidden secret.
I'm proud to live in this time.
I hope you are too.
Never giving up is our morale.

Respectfully,

THE PERENNIAL MILLENNIALS.
cc: *(No HashTag Necessary)

Georgiana Seymour,
            Duchess of Somerset
crowned 'Queen of Beauty'
at the 1839 Eglinton
Tournament,    the first known
                        beauty pageant;

W

European festivals dating to the medieval era
provide the most direct lineage for beauty pageants.
For example, English May Day celebrations always
involved the selection of a May Queen.
In the United States, the May Day tradition
of selecting a woman to serve as a symbol
of bounty and community ideals continued,
as young beautiful women participated
in public celebrations; such as the beauty pageant
held during the Eglinton Tournament of 1839,
organized by Archibald Montgomerie,           13th Earl of Eglinton,
as part of a re-enactment of a medieval joust
that was held in Scotland;                                the pageant was won
by Georgiana Seymour,                                   Duchess of Somerset,
wife of Edward Seymour,                             12th Duke of Somerset,
and sister of Caroline Norton;
                Georgiana proclaimed "Queen of Beauty";

Entrepreneur Phineas Taylor Barnum staged
the first modern American pageant in 1854,
          his beauty contest closed down after public protest;
However beauty contests became popular
in the 1880s;     In 1888 the title of 'beauty queen'
was awarded to an 18-year-old Creole contestant
at a pageant in Spa, Belgium. All participants
had to supply a photograph & a short description
of themselves to be eligible to enter; a final selection
of 21 judged by a formal panel.
Such events were not regarded as respectable;
But beauty contests came to be considered more
respectable with the first modern "Miss America"
           contest held in 1921;
Still the oldest pageant in operation,
  the Miss America pageant was organized
in 1921 by a local businessman as a means
to entice tourists to Atlantic City, New Jersey;
The pageant hosted the winners of local
            newspaper beauty contests in the
Inter-City Beauty Contest & was attended
    by over one hundred thousand people;
Sixteen-year-old Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C.
was crowned Miss America 1921, having won both the
popularity and beauty contests, and was awarded $100

Around me architectural mastery:
sycamores, embankments, enduring ionic pillars.
I round a walkway bordered by trees,
enamel thawing, gliding off their low leaves.
Beneath the late-May’s pounding sun,
through the glittered trees’ reaches,
a gazebo crackles into sight.
Children in their prime, sunbathers, a wistful portraitist
encircle it carelessly:
a leisured chimney; the billows of life.
The foliage escapes into the river,
purplish, palpitating, cyclic creases
receive the dewy notes.
Kayaks licking acacia-gum-edged
ripples sputter and slip
through reverberations
of leveled white-water terraces.
Blackcurrants in clotted cream
slide on the plush lips of a young passerby.
The 8 above a doorway
dances motionless, silent in my periphery;
“Nicolas Cage just sold the spot”
pops from unknown lungs
inside the Circus crowd.

Unacknowledged, half-proud
hands built the Roman baths
alone, closed-in by such grace,
forgotten, then as now.
I wander these ancestral lanes
more or less alone, the same.