maybe grains

If it is legit, the following website helps feed the hungry.
All you have to do is know big words.
Check it out:
www.freerice.com

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yesterday, I listened to National Public Radio (as I usually do) on the way to work, and they were talking about Martin Luther King more than usual because he had been invoked by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

There was also an interesting segment on Dr. King's image on wall murals and talk about a statue of Dr. King which would be from China while only it's base would be from America.

And there was also talk about how Dr. King was important not only to American's but around the world. I know that's true and I feel like I am the only person aside from stonecarvers and priests who knows that Dr. King has already been added to the statuary of Westminster Abbey in London on a panel dedicated to modern martyrs.

This is the statue prior to being added to panel over the left shoulder entry doors.

That's when I had the thought that he is almost more important to other countries than he sometimes is to us.

"If physical death is the price I must pay to free my brothers and sisters from the permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive. "

Maybe we sometimes have too much of something to appreciate it as it should be appreciated.

And maybe sometimes we have too little.
An article I saw proclaimed that Booker T. Washington was even more important than Martin Luther King.
Well, I have to say that Mr. Washington was brilliant and very much to be honored and revered.
These days, people have forgotten or have never studied him.

Most people have never read Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery or remember that he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, later to become Tuskegee University. His book is wonderful. He was a great man. I wish that he was given more attention. I think more blacks would have aspired to education and more whites would have aspired to making it happen if he was studied sincerely, but he seems to be fading into distant memory.

(His birthplace in Virginia is a national monument and the website says thousands of schoolchildren visit there annually. I'm glad I checked. I feel better about it now.
http://www.nps.gov/bowa)

Was Carver more important that King? I am not qualified to say.

I just wish there was someone who provides as much leadership and inspiration around today.
In some ways, we are getting to that promised land King spoke of. In others ways, because we have an unfortunate natural predilection to keep to our own, true equality may never exist. But the way we see... changes more every day.

I've received an honor

http://bungz.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-very-first-blog-award.html

I'm going to have to follow through on the responsibility that goes with it when I am not studying for my safety talk. Give me a week?

Thanks, Bungi!

darling Clementine

Clementine tangerines from Spain have landed at the grocery store.
It's enough to give you hope. For less than five dollars you get a box of them and eat them all day long.
These exotic treats peel easily, have one seed (or sometimes none) and range in taste from tangy to a subtle and romantic flavor like perfume.

Folks don't understand them sometimes because they aren't like other tangerines.
They aren't bursting with juice and they don't have the same acid bite. People don't stop to appreciate the individual virtue of the clementine for those very reasons. It's a shame.

They are as delicious as they are unassuming. I wouldn't mind eating them every day all year long if it were possible.

But the two-week sale has ended, and today when I went into the grocery store, a box of clementines was 7.99. Ouch. (That is a painful portion of an hour's pay.)

So I bought two bags of Florida tangerines for $4. Ah well. It's all good.

Show yourself

This year, I promise to love my fiance, openly, daily.

It is an act that fills me with fear but the world has been showing me that people who know me, as well as many people who don't, are supportive and understanding.

I came to terms with my sexuality, my "orientation" in an era when killing, beating and harassing gay people was more or less hunky-dory.

I went to the Take Back the Night march and waved a sign and hollered through the streets with my friends. I have been writing politicians and putting money to the cause of equality for many years.

I bought my love her engagement ring and family that runs that small antique store smiled at us and were very kind.

I was walking through a parking lot and two young women walking towards me took each other's hands. I smiled. I felt their nervous energy and their strength all at once. Their public touch is what I marched for before they were born.

I know the people at my job... at least in my section, are accepting. I'm very much not an "in-your-face" kind of person but I am not going to worry about what I say when Joey calls me during the day. They won't fire me because it is illegal to do so in the county I work in.
I think playing it cool and letting them see how hard I work first was a good strategy.

I will work to let go off the fear that any of my quirks and faults may be attributed to my homosexuality and instead I will trust that my faults will be weighed along with my competency, devotion and integrity.

I am 42 years old. It only took me half of my life to get here. I AM PROUD that I was part of the change that has taken place in the world in the past twenty-some years.
My work here is not yet done.

I AM A LESBIAN, NOT BY CHOICE AND NOT BY MISTAKE.
I'M HERE, STILL HERE, BECAUSE LOVE IS THE WAY AND THE MEANING OF LIFE IS LEARNING HOW TO LOVE EACH OTHER. MY LIFE HAS ALREADY CHANGED THE WAY PEOPLE THINK. IT'S NOT TIME TO STOP. IT IS TIME TO REFLECT AND RE-COMMIT.


I dedicate this entry to the friends and family who give me strength: Joey, Dad, Cynthia, Genevieve, Cristy, Derek, Sandy, Virginia, Judi, Geri, Kathy, Barbara, Julie, Lisa, Jana, June, Troy, Randy, Ana, Pat, Vicki, Molly, Kim, Rhett, Angela, Roxanne, Billy, Jess, Maya, Debbie, Pam, George, Tom, Mike, Jerry, Dominique, Terry, Melissa, Stephen, Erin, Regis, Joe, Mary, Ana, et al... and also to the people of the future who will be able to be themselves whether or not they realize that it wasn't always so.