The Greatest Demonstration for Freedom in the History of Our Nation

You know, now that I'm an old woman, and not a little girl of 12, when I look at Dr. King, I can see how he is just carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. And although it's not nearly enough, what I want to say, from this distance of 43 years, is, "Thank you. Thank you for the better world that I have lived in. And, most of all, thank you for the better world in which my G/Son will live all the days of his life. Thank you, Dr. King."

Maybe we all need, certainly I need, to pick up a little bit more of the world's weight, so that no one person ever has to bear so much all alone. I won't, pace Mr. Frost, be gone long; you come too.

Thank You, Miss Parks. I Kiss Your Feet

Wiki says: On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Her action was not the first of its kind. Irene Morgan in 1946, and Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, had won rulings before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Interstate Commerce Commission, respectively, in the area of interstate bus travel. Nine months before Parks refused to give up her seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to move from her seat on the same bus system. In New York City, in 1854, Lizzie Jennings engaged in similar activity, leading to the desegregation of the horsecars and horse-drawn omnibuses of that city. But unlike these previous individual actions of civil disobedience, Parks' action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store.

I massage your seamstress hands with thyme-infused beeswax. I send reiki to the tired muscles of your calves. I ground and send courage to your frightened center. I whisper the thanks of many daughters into your ringing ears. I bring you hot soup (full of astragolus, garlic, mushrooms, and chicken broth), in jail. I bring you clean hair in the court-room, fresh underwear when you face the police, and the warmth of magic when you try to go to sleep, afraid of what they will do to you. I bring you the scent of lavender and rosemary from my garden and the warmth of all the wool that passes through my knitting hands.

I was not born when you refused to give up your seat on the bus. But I will bless you always. Thank you for making my world a bit more just. Thank you for the example that you set. May we, who come behind you, imbibe a bit of your courage.

So I Guess the Real Point Was to Get to Say: "Kenyan!"

Other anti-colonialists:

George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
John Adams
Everyone who signed underneath the words: Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor
Ghandi
J. Ann Tickner
Cynthia Enloe
bell hooks
The People of Cyprus
The People of Greece
The Poles
The Russians who resisted Hitler
The People of Algeria
Albert Raymond Forbes Webber
Geronimo
Tecumseh


You get the idea.

Picture found here.

Well, Really, I Don't Mind If I Do Bug Ya.

Dude. I know that this is going to come as a shock to you, but . . .

For example, in an audio commentary I noted the blatant paganism at the 2006 games in Greece where the ancient gods were not so much depicted as curiosities of mankind’s religious history with the possibility of a few moral axioms derivable occasionally from these myths when approached as literature. Rather, adoration of these entities was approached as a viable system of belief around which humanity could draw ongoing sustain inspiration moving the world towards cultural unification.

. . . but worship of the ancient Gods and Goddesses IS a viable system of belief around [sic] which humanity can (and does) draw ongoing sustaine[ed] inspiration, moving the world towards, if not cultural unification, then peaceful coexistence.

Am I buggin' ya? I don't mean ta bug ya.

But, in the end, as is so often the case, it's really all about racism:

Though there are numerous jokes that could be made about these two, the important issue is the role guardian spirits and orcas that transform into white bears play in American Indian mythology and belief systems. From as much hoopla that is being made about so-called "native populations" of the Pacific Northwest, one would assume that not Whites lived there or at least ones that did not go around with their shoulders slouched and their heads hunched for simply being White. Since Whites pay taxes too and are less likely to be on the public dole, shouldn't they get some kind of honorable mention for contributing to the culture or at least the economy of the area?

Enjoy your long, slow, walk into extinction. Our grandchildren will no more understand your paranoia than they understand why doctors used to bleed sick people.

More Like This

Sometimes
- Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

What's Wrong With Arizona?

America, you're breaking my heart here.

My New Name For A Blog

Or imagine if it were women protesting male politicians. Nah.

What She Said

Damn. This is so good, it will blow you away.

Picture found here.

It's Always Some Little Girl, Looking All Alone, Surrounded By Grownups, With Her Hair Done Up. But It's Different, This Time.

This morning, driving into work, coffee mug in hand, news radio on, I was informed that several of the streets that I normally take were blocked because the Secret Service was taking the lovely young daughters of President Elect Obama from the stately and patrician Hay Adams Hotel to Sidwell Friends private school, where they were beginning the new semester.

And, I'm old. In my own lifetime, I traveled the South with my family and walked past the Colored Bathroom into the Women's Bathroom, sat at lunch counters where "colored children" couldn't sit, watched my dad attend the March on Washington and the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King. In my own lifetime, the Misses Obama wouldn't have been allowed in either the Hay Adams (as guests) nor at a prestigious DC private school.

And so, on 20th St., N.W., DC, this morning, I just broke down in deep, gasping sobs. Sobs for Thurgood Marshall. Sobs for little Linda Brown of Brown v. Board of Education, who wanted to go to school with her white playmates, Mona, Guinevere, and Wanda. Sobs for all of those who gave so much to make America live up to her promise.

Today, two little African American girls traipsed off from one of DC's finest hotels to one of DC's finest schools. We routed traffic all around the city in order to make it happen (because George and Laura Bush are jerks.) And, for just a minute, I am proud of us. I am proud of how far we've come in just one lifetime. Go, America. You go, Girl. That was pretty cool.

Thanks to the folks at Eschaton who helped me find the pictures that I was remembering.

Take Those Nooses Down