avast! ye evildoers ~ ~ pclef.net

JIMMY GIUFFRE

...this is the sound of boundaries breaking...

saddened to learn this past sunday of the passing of Jimmy Giuffre, the great musician and teacher. the youtube clip above is from "Jazz on a Summer's Day" and this music accompanies the opening credits and serves as the very first musical number in this classic document of the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival. In a way, it's the jazz equivalent of Richie Havens opening up the Woodstock movie--something truly unique, from someone not quite famous, but arresting your attention in a novel and unheard way. The Jimmy Giuffre Three consisted, in the version above (I can't tell who the bassist is in the clip below), of Jim Hall on guitar and Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone. Incidentally, Giuffre had greater renown for his clarinet playing-in the studio recording of this song he alternates between the two instruments (as he does in the clip below). This is their version of the folk song "Train & the River"...a folk song? dig.

Jimmy Giuffre 1921-2008

...

GETTING UP WITH IT

...30 Helens agree...

I woke up early this morning and played music for an hour...I highly recommend this practice to anyone who plays an instrument...it's a pretty reliable guarantee on getting it going with a good mood...

the above youtube clip (hat tip to andrew sullivan's site) added to my pleasant humor in a big way...

hey if you've got the grannies on your side, there's no stopping you...

...

PANTS ON FIRE

...Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, classy as ever...

Now my opinion's probably about as relevant as a raccoon fart in a cave full of fruit flies, but I'm just saying that, if proven to be true, an adulterous relationship between a 15-year old girl and a married father of two (at the time, allegedly) might be judged by many as just a wee bit less morally sound than, say, injecting one's self (or having one's self injected by another) with human growth hormone or steroids while engaging in a professional sports entertainment business...

oh they persecute this poor man...

(ha. ha. ha.)

...

LIFE GOES ON

...

TO THE CLAN

As I Walked Out One Evening

by W. H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

[my family is gathering today at my sister's house in massachusetts...for reasons of baby age and automotive limitations my own family cannot join the group...so I send this lovely loving poem about love and loving, by the great WH Auden, to those I love most, now a tangle of lanky child limbs and boisterous noises, cloistered under a happy roof in lexington...all in all a belated way of wishing a very happy 40th birthday to our only sister, little Lizzie...I join them truly, in spirit...]

...

FOR EMILY, WHEREVER I MAY FIND HER

...a very swinging chick...

I recently ordered two "hotlicks" DVD guitar lessons from the late/great Emily Remler, based on an excerpt I saw recently where she breaks down the bossa nova classic "how insensitive" ...I'd been working on the song myself and she made it seem so easy...so I plunked down my scratch and after sitting through the first one, I've got to say that I came away amazed and inspired. I'm about to start taking advanced guitar lessons this weekend and I couldn't have found a better source to get me motivated to take my playing to the next level. Emily's philosophy: forget picking technique drills fancy scales and chords--FIND THE GROOVE. she prefaces each and every example by counting on the 2 and the 4--working with a metronome. very practical, very unglamourous but extremely useful. her own particular style comes from the 60s work of wes montgomery joe pass pat martino and herb ellis. a fine player, and despite the 1980s fashion sense, she was pretty cute too...a very hip new york chick, died way too young (32)...she could've been one of the greats. I'm grateful that she memorialized her great teaching abilities with these videos. I have quite a collection of guitar instructional videos, and her bebop/swing video is one of the very best I've seen in any genre...she even gets into a little pep talk at the end, about music and what it means to her, how it should be fun and organic and come from the soul, and in light of the fact that she died so young I indeed found myself quite moved...her heart was definitely in the right place...

and give her credit: can you name any other great female jazz guitarists? it's not easy being a pioneer...

...

I WON'T VOTE FOR HER IN NOVEMBER

"Whorishly with the psychopomp
we play and plead—and say
nothing of this later."

-from "Hypocrite Women" by Denise Levertov

Here’s why:

At this point, she is mathematically disabled from ever winning enough legit pledged delegates to win the nomination according to the basic rules regarding delegate count. In order to do that, she’d have to win, by most estimates, 70-80% of the remaining states. 80% of North Carolina? Never going to happen. Therefore, the only way she will become the nominee is via super delegates, those senators and governors whose support will be had via backroom deals, promises, secret handshakes and the like. The only criteria they might have for supporting her would be electability, NOT voter support. The argument regarding popular vote is moot. It was moot for Al Gore and should be moot now as well. Such a decision would not be (ironically enough) democratic. It would be Soviet machinery come to life.

She is going to take us there…yes, there, the Rovian place where it’s not about the issues, but rather about our fears, our differences, all of our small-minded prejudices regarding religion, sexual orientation, race, upper/lower classes, rural vs. city, the gamut. This not speculation. She has already deployed these tactics in her primary campaign.

Bill. I was a fan of President Clinton while he was in office. If ONLY he could have had the balls to: A. tell the media that his private sex life is none of their business, and B. once the news was made public and confirmed via third parties, not only admit to it, but also express the obvious truth that there is NOTHING WRONG with getting a blowjob. If it’s someone other than one’s wife, then that’s up to everybody else to decide if it’s OK or not. And he might have reminded some of us about that stuff regarding living in glass houses etc. But he didn’t. True, he did some good things while in office. The Lewinsky/Tripp/Starr debacle prevented him from doing more. But now he’s getting back into the White House for Act II? With no mandate and no job title and no agenda? Does anyone has the slightest idea how much this will help McCain? All he has to do is say the words “Lewinsky” or “Tripp” or “Starr” and the memory of those tedious years will come back and many will say oh fuck it at least McCain has a nice-looking wife and doesn’t look like his back could take the strain of copulation. He will be the definitive “how bad could he be?” candidate for these times (the last one having been guy-you'd-like-to-have-a-beer-with George W. Bush).

Entitlement. She was promised this, right? For staying loyal and keeping her mouth shut after the Lewinsky affair? First Senator then President. Nobody ever expected that a better candidate would come along. She won’t have it. She simply won’t have it. And she will take the party down into a burning stack of ashes if she has to. And hand the election over to a doddering one-term guy who will allow her to run again in four years. At everyone else’s expense…

New York State. When I heard her describe the after-effects of 9/11 on New York City, when she said “my city” I wanted to hurl a brick at the television. This Scranton-born, Chicago-educated, Arkansas-dwelling person had somehow adopted NYC as hers? When? She’s all about upstate. She doesn’t come around. And most of us could do without her. It’s hard to feel those potholes when you’re riding in a stretch limo…

Health care vs. Bosnia. Lately I've been reading and learning more about the early 90s, when she was all consumed with her healthcare initiative. About her lobbying to have the plight of the Bosnian refugees put on hold so as not to take away media attention from Hillarycare. Thousands died. Sure, they finally were sent aid, but not on their timetable--on Hillary's...

Who will I vote for then, if faced with the choice between Clinton and McCain? Let me state clearly that I still expect Obama to be the candidate. No reason why he shouldn’t be. But if that unhappy option is presented: I’ll still vote for Obama, naturally. Absentee. Write-in. Hillary would probably win New Jersey without me. And if not, then she's got no one to blame but herself...

...

DON'T CRY FOR ME PENNSYLVANIA

...where's the red and the blue?...

I have certainly been neglectful in feeding this blogspace with content. happy with the new guitar, happy with recent visits from family, happy with the blooming spring weather, happy to be over the flu and headcolds, happy that allergies (so far) haven't been much of an issue, happy with cute little smiling baby boy and my little girl's recent foray into teeball and other pursuits.

what I should complain?

I resisted the urge to post the lyrics to "anti-pope" last week. I mean why feed the beast? the media was typically lame in its treatment of the infallible hitler youth pontiff, typified for me most acutely in their abandonment of their opposing viewpoints model, designed to extract the maximum argument from their 30-second spots. but not this time. instead, it was typically two priests..."and now father francis, you say you love the pope and that he's a wonderful leader and kind man...but you father diego, you say you love him more...please continue gushing"...

it was like asking two vice presidents to comment on their CEO. again and again. except the CEO was in charge of a company that had raped thousands of children and enabled a Rwandan genocide.

I resisted the urge to post on the ludicrous ABC debate last week. I think I might have harrumphed about the flag lapel pin question, but really that whole thing was just a joke. It ought to be emblematic, in the future, when media critics discuss the death of journalistic standards in this country. and no surprise that one of the principals, george stephanopoulos, got his training and his career bona fides with the Clintons...

which brings us to Pennsylvania. thank you Howard Dean and your backroom cronies for giving us six weeks of non-stop media nonsense surrounding the bumpkin sensibilities of the Keystone State voters. and thank you media titans for giving us six weeks of soft pampered punditocracy who all claim to know this rural non-bitter demographic. like many, I can't wait for this one to be over. and hey, if they want Hillary, go ahead and vote for her. I cannot fathom the logic of any democratic voter who, at this point, with a clear winner in their midst, would vote for the other one, except because of the color of his skin and because they are gullible enough to fall for the old identity politics of the Clintons. I'm a woman! We have to dance backwards! Sure Hill, you're so oppressed...allow me to congratulate you on winning Pennsylvania ahead of time. that's right: Pennsylvania. the second least-black state in the nation. Pennsylvania, one of the largest over-50 populations in the nation. so if you're old, poor, white and gullible, you know what to do...

go ahead and vote for the one who just put an ad up showing nuclear explositions osama bin laden the great depression and pearl harbor...you fall for that you're a pussy chickenshit nimrod. you think the terrorists give a shit about the rolling emptiness that is central Pennsylvania? I'm telling you that the second they catch a whiff of the pervasive cowshit smell, they'll be wishing they hadn't blown up new york city and with it all those choice cab driving jobs...

so let's all dance in a circle tonight, light bonfires and celebrate the fact that mrs. clinton can only persist in her futile and self-aggrandizing campaign. let's at least recognize that she is providing maximum cover for mccain, who just "regretted" seeking the endorsement of John Hagee, the wacko Texas preacher whose public comments have condemned catholics, muslims, gays, women and jews...mccain doesn't want to be "anti-anything"...which I guess means he's pro-everything, right?

thanks to Hillary this little snafu gets nearly zero coverage, while we attempt to explain to our uneducated populace who the weather underground was...

y'all have fun with that....me, I'm happy happy happy....

...

AN AMAZING POEM ABOUT SEX...

...and mortality. my new favorite poet at the moment. hey let's all buy one of Robert Hass's books and try and make a poet rich for once. whaddya say?

Privilege of Being

Many are making love. Up above, the angels

in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing

are braiding one another’s hair, which is strawberry blond

and the texture of cold rivers. They glance

down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy—

it must look to them like featherless birds

splashing in the spring puddle of a bed—

and then one woman, she is about to come,

peels back the man’s shut eyelids and says,

look at me, and he does. Or is it the man

tugging the curtain rope in the dark theater?

Anyway, they do, they look at each other;

two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious,

startled, connected at the belly in an unbelievably sweet

lubricious glue, stare at each other,

and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder pathetically

like lithographs of Victorian beggars

with perfect features and alabaster skin hawking rags

in the lewd alleys of the novel.

All of creation is offended by this distress.

It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes,

rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it,

it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so that

they close their eyes again and hold each other, each

feeling the mortal singularity of the body

they have enchanted out of death for an hour or so,

and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man,

I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realized

that you could not, as much as I love you,

dear heart, cure my loneliness,

wherewith she touched his cheek to reassure him

that she did not mean to hurt him with this truth.

And the man is not hurt exactly,

he understands that his life has limits, that people

die young, fail at love,

fail of their ambitions. He runs beside her, he thinks

of the sadness they have gasped and crooned their way out of

coming, clutching each other with old, invented

forms of grace and clumsy gratitude, ready

to be alone again, or dissatisfied, or merely

companionable like the couples on the summer beach

reading magazine articles about intimacy between the sexes

to themselves, and to each other,

and to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels.

--Robert Hass

hear him read it here...

From HUMAN WISHES (Ecco Press, 1989)

...

POLITICAL LIMERICK FOR THE DAY

What of the Dennis Kucinich’es?
Those specialists in last-place finishes,
They’re barred from debatings,
So the media gets ratings,
As our national discourse diminishes.

-Peter O. Clarke

[it would have been refreshing to hear the candid straight talk of the stocky congressman from Ohio at last night's ABC debacle...flag pins? are you fucking kidding me? ]

...

ON BITTERNESS

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into
you. -Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially
under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous. -William
Proxmire, US senator, reformer (1915-2005)

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more
hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever
been committed in the name of rebellion. -C.P. Snow, scientist and writer
(1905-1980)

Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.
-Lewis H. Lapham, editor (1935- )

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change;
the realist adjusts the sails. -William Arthur Ward, college administrator,
writer (1921-1994)

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented
cages. -Jacques Deval, writer and director (1895-1972)

Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are
about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they
mean they are going to make money out of it. -Brigid Brophy, writer
(1929-1995)

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life:
the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the
suffering of mankind. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and
author (1872-1970)

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented
with ourselves. -Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer (1821-1881)

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the
outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language
is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared
aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted
idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such
thing as "keeping out of politics". All issues are political issues, and
politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and
schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
-George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of
morality by religion. -Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach,
but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate
(1872-1970)

I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes.
If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you
are opposed to is totally evil. -Norman Mailer, author (1923- )

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or
its officeholders. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East- to know
who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did
not build them- who were above such trifling. -Henry David Thoreau,
naturalist and author (1817-1862)

There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the
unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters
humor. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question,
explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn,
dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw,
provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand,
look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward,
circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of
answers. -Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist and author (1955- )

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in
the web of duty. -Stephen King, novelist (1947- )

True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over
motive. -Mignon McLaughlin, author (1915-)

Modern technology / Owes ecology / An apology. -Alan M. Eddison

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are
hatched. -Guy de Maupassant, short story writer and novelist (1850-1893)

An epoch will come when people disclaim kinship with us as we disclaim
kinship with the monkeys. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist
(1883-1931)

Lots of people think they're charitable if they give away their old clothes
and things they don't want. It isn't charity to give away things you want
to get rid of and it isn't a sacrifice to do things you don't mind doing.
-Myrtle Reed, author (1874-1911)

Atheist n A person to be pitied in that he is
unable to believe things for which there is
no evidence, and who has thus deprived himself of
a convenient means of feeling superior to others.
—Chaz Bufe, The American Heretic’s Dictionary

The crucial disadvantage of aggression, competitiveness, and skepticism as
national characteristics is that these qualities cannot be turned off at
five o'clock. -Margaret Halsey, novelist (1910-1997)

The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to
give, not our kind. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)

I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town.
A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself. -Emily Bronte,
novelist (1818-1848)

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as
what language he shall speak. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. -Rudyard
Kipling, author, Nobel laureate (1865-1936)

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? -George Eliot (Mary Ann
Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

Whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to
dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious. -Letitia E. Landon,
author (1802-1838)

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my
measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old
measurements and expect me to fit them. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel
laureate (1856-1950)

It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave
my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid?
-Richard Bach, writer (1936- )

Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you
cannot save the whole of mankind, you have failed. -Jan de Hartog,
playwright and novelist (1914-2002)

Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect
them in others. -Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

Nothing produces such odd results as trying to get even. -Franklin P. Jones

The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and
industry, "Thus far and no farther." -Ludwig van Beethoven, composer
(1770-1827)

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even dread all notions with
which they are not familiar. Hence it comes about that at their first
appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and madmen. -Aldous
Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of hell, a
hell of heaven. -John Milton (1608-1674) [Paradise Lost]

Endless money forms the sinews of war. -Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman,
orator, writer (106-43 BCE)

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
-Robert Graves, poet and novelist (1895-1985)

If one sins against the laws of proportion and gives something too big to
something too small to carry it -- too big sails to too small a ship, too
big meals to too small a body, too big powers to too small a soul -- the
result is bound to be a complete upset. In an outburst of hubris the
overfed body will rush into sickness, while the jack-in-office will rush
into the unrighteousness that hubris always breeds. –Plato

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man
inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. -Nathaniel Hawthorne,
novelist and short-story writer (1804-1864)

A man who is 'ill-adjusted' to the world is always on the verge of finding
himself. One who is adjusted to the world never finds himself, but gets to
be a cabinet minister. -Hermann Hesse, novelist, poet, Nobel laureate
(1877-1962)

Knowing what / Thou knowest not / Is in a sense / Omniscience. -Piet Hein,
poet and scientist (1905-1996)

For money you can have everything it is said. No that is not true. You can
buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not
sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but
not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not
faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The
shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot
be had for money. -Arne Garborg, writer (1851-1924)

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his
creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who
is but a reflection of human frailty. -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel
laureate (1879-1955)

Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the
expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes.
-Murray Edelman, professor, author (1919-2001)

No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're
looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs,
we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
-P.J. O'Rourke, writer (1947- )

The butterfly flitting from flower to flower ever remains mine, I lose the
one that is netted by me. -Rabindranath Tagore, philosopher, author,
songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941)

Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are
invented nonsense. -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988)

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain
other sets of people are human. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare. -Sun
Tzu, general (6th century BCE)

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. -William James,
psychologist (1842-1910)

We are all equal before the law, but not before those appointed to apply
it. -Stanislaw J. Lec, poet and aphorist (1909-1966)

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its
prisons. -Fyodor Dostoyevsky, novelist (1821-1881)

Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)

Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an
insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to
discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with
the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to
nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the
suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.
-Rudolf Arnheim, psychologist and author (1904-2007)

Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.
-Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them
afterwards. -Baltasar Gracian, philosopher and writer (1601-1658)

"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough." --Aldous Huxley

Guns guns
They torture all the women and children
Then they've put the men to the gun
'Cos across the human frontier
Freedom's always on the run
--Joe Strummer

...

THE GIANTS UPON WHOSE SHOULDERS I STAND

..wes montgomery...the great one...I don't just consider him the greatest jazz guitarist of all time, I'd say he's one of the top five jazz musicians of the 20th century...the more I study his playing, the more astonished I am by his achievement...

...grant green...the soulful tone...something about that dry, rich, deep tone he got...something to do with the ES-330 he played, which differed from its semi-hollow cousin by not having a solid beam running through it, so it was just a small hollowbody. with single coil 'soapbar' pickups...just a great player with seemingly bottomless well of melodic ideas...

...tal farlow...the sign painter...huge hands enabled impossible chord voicings, and he could play at ridiculously fast tempos (a skill he honed with red norvo and charles mingus in their celebrated 50s trio) and swing hard...one of the greats, and a truly humble man...of all these guys he's the one I'd have liked to have spent an afternoon with...

...joe pass...the virtuoso...played with ella and oscar peterson...but probably most notable for his solo work...it's hard enough to play solo chord melody, and to swing while doing it...joe pass would do this effortlessly, and improvise at the same time...amazing...

...lenny breau...the boy genius...probably chet atkins' favorite guitarist...his deft grasp of artificial "harp" harmonics is the best I've heard...

...the forefather...charlie christian, discovered by john hammond and made famous through the benny goodman small groups, practically invented the vocabulary, was an early adopter of using a magnetic pickup to amplify his guitar electrically....he always played with a clear swinging tone...all in all he managed to turn the jazz world upside down before succumbing to tuberculosis at age 26...

...the "dirty guitar player" howard roberts...a mighty swinging player...you can practically smell the cigarettes and booze in the lounge when his records are playing...a great educator too...

...martin taylor takes the joe pass solo chord melody fingerstyle approach to the next level...an amazing right hand...

...django reinhardt, probably the greatest guitarist of the 20th century...

..bill frisell, the modernist...plays solidbodies as well as archtops, with repertoire that includes everything from standards to hank williams tunes...the funkiest americana you ever will hear...get "east/west" to hear what I mean...hey check out the charlie christian pickup on his tele!

the new axe has got me thinking about repertoire and has begun a review of the major statements in the genre of jazz guitar...there are many other names--kenny burrell, barney kessel, pat metheny, pat martino, jimmy bruno, hank garland, on and on...these are just the ones who I feel strongest about this morning...

...........................................................

now that was a lot more fun than writing about Obama or the pope, wasn't it?

short version: Obama was 100% correct. people ARE bitter. they DO identify with the emblems of guns and god and they DO resent the immigrant class. why wouldn't they? they've had their jobs shipped overseas. they've been lied to by their government. they've had their children shipped off to an unnecessary war, where many have been killed and thousands more are psychologically ruined. people don't like to admit they've been fooled. so they look for scapegoats and cling to the only things that still belong to them, even if their paltry inventory consists of nothing more than a fraudulent religious culture and rifles.

the pope is a defender of child rapists. anyone care to dispute this obvious fact?

...........................................................

so there you have it: jazz is superior to ignorance and child rape. have a good day!

...

THE HONEYMOON AIN'T OVER

...still in the throes of orgiastic dissipation...

another lovely angle...gee don't it look swell vs. the color on my living room walls?

with a new set of med/lt thomastik-infeld flatwounds, it has very sweet tone...playing more blues than I'd expected too...

...

THE LITTLE WOMAN

...photograph by caroline veronica, age four...

after two days of looking at pictures from dealers and advertisements, here's one of the genuine article, the guitar that arrived yesterday, right on time from UPS...

I love this guitar...sounds great plays great looks great. its size is very similar to the epiphone joe pass models that were about in the 80s/90s. but the appointments are much more intricate--rosewood tailpiece and knobs and bridge, abalone fretmarkers, gold hardware and binding everywhere you look. it arrived with the intonation set up (and in tune after traveling from oregon) and except for raising the neck pickup it played well as is right out of the box. very comfortable neck, nice 'c' profile and 1 11/16 at the nut. nothing really I'd change about it. I suppose I could swap out the plastic nut for bone, and I've had my eye on these art deco grover imperial tuners, which would lend a little "new yorker" vibe to the instrument's look while improving tuning stability (I put grovers on my other ibanez and it was a good idea), but lacking a pressing need, I'll play the guitar as is for a while...

I know what I'll be doing this friday night....

...

MY OLD FLAME

....just look at that flame...

question: why is it that some ups package deliveries relate in-progress data on the "tracking" portion of the ups site, while others track no info once the billing is received? my new guitar has been in the location "us" for most of the week...and today's the delivery date--shouldn't I at least see an "out for delivery" notice?

of course all this wondering will cease utterly as long as it arrives safe and sound, but since I do tend to order a lot of stuff online and so forth, it's a natural question when some deliveries provide full information, while others--even an expensive, heavily-insured shipment, don't.

...an advertisement from 2005...a steal at 80,000 yen...

I love the shape of this guitar. reminds me a little bit of a tal farlow model, or even a small L5....

...

I CAN'T WAIT TO GET OFF WORK TO SEE MY BABY

...there's something about blondes...

the new jazzbox is due to be delivered tomorrow and I'm jumping out of my skin....so the only rational thing to do is post pictures to look at. right?

hopefully it arrives in one piece. the seller claims it will arrive in tune! we will see. all I know is that if it is indeed intact, there'll be some blues in the house this weekend.....

...as displayed at NAMM...

...

WRIGHT OR WRONG?

CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL STORY / SOURCE...

chicagotribune.com

Factor military duty into criticism

By Lawrence Korb and Ian Moss

April 3, 2008

In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.

In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)

The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief's medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.

What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated.

While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.

Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?

After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America's biggest cities.

This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments he made over the last three decades.

Since these comments became public we have heard criticisms, condemnations, denouncements and rejections of his comments and him.

We've seen on television, in a seemingly endless loop, sound bites of a select few of Rev. Wright's many sermons.

Some of the Wright's comments are inexcusable and inappropriate and should be condemned, but in calling him "unpatriotic," let us not forget that this is a man who gave up six of the most productive years of his life to serve his country.

How many of Wright's detractors, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly to name but a few, volunteered for service, and did so under the often tumultuous circumstances of a newly integrated armed forces and a society in the midst of a civil rights struggle? Not many.

While words do count, so do actions.

Let us not forget that, for whatever Rev. Wright may have said over the last 30 years, he has demonstrated his patriotism.

Lawrence Korb and Ian Moss are, respectively, Navy and Marine Corps veterans. They work at The Center For American Progress. Korb served as assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration.

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

...

DON'T WATCH THE OLYMPICS

...oh no we sure don't mind the widespread gang rape and enslavement of children, just as long as we can watch some guy from Finland do a pole vault...

I am so happy this morning to read that both England and France have had major protests cropping up and that as of today French officials have extinguished the Olympic "flame" several times already due to protestors meddling with its progress. I wish I could be there myself with a big bucket of water to toss on that empty symbol, whose extinguishing certainly gives the lie to this whole prefabrication about the never-ending flame--don't they now have to return to Mount Olympus to relight the torch? Such nonsense.

I'm not suggesting that the athletes shouldn't go and compete. Already some marathoners have opted out simply because Beijing's air pollution is so oppressive that they consider is unsafe for long distance running. Fittingly ironic. No, the athletes are the least of it. Let them go and launch their javelins and jump high and run around in circles. What difference would it make to keep them home? The USA opted out of the Moscow games in 1980 and it didn't make a spit of difference. But if enough people (especially the young) can grasp the idea that the Olympic games are a highly optional exercise in false nationalistic bravado consisting of meaningless contests populated by naive young athletes, whose primary function is to generate billions of advertising dollars, and therefore TUNE OUT, then the message will be clear--the big dollars at stake--the marketing tie-ins, the brought-to-you-by-VISA spots, the cynical Bob Costas medals-by-country counting, the entire enterprise will then be potentially forfeit. Because to watch these games, located at great expense as a PR initiative for the pernicious government in Beijing, is an overt forfeiture of who we are as a country, or more to the point--who you are as a world citizen. If you decide to watch, it says that you really don't care about those murdered and silenced Tibetan protestors, that you really don't care about the rape and murder of millions in Darfur, that you really don't care about the principles behind Tianmen Square, that you really don't care about human rights abuses, nor about free speech, nor about anything other than the mindless satiation of your own simplistic mind, which must be titillated by some form of corporate sporting event at all times.

But if we can somehow cut into the ratings in a significant way, by not watching the games, then we the United States, the largest most lucrative media market in the world, can send a message to the games organizers for the future--because if the games organizers have any interest at all it is lucre--and if they (and NBC) know that by picking China (or how about Iran? Pakistan? Zimbabwe? Libya?) they will forfeit 30%, 40%, 50% or more of their American viewership, then we won't need to have this sort of well-deserved protesting and flame-extinguishing anymore. And maybe then the Olympics will have a fighting chance of living up to the hype surrounding it as some sort of moralistic we-are-the-world-because-we-play-sports feel-good event, and not just a money-grab for big business, on the backs of millions of oppressed people, which is what it is now.

But first they must be shown. So please do not watch the games this summer. At all. And tell your friends why. Believe me, they will not be missed by you. But you will be, by them.

...

THE WATERS OF MARCH

...aguas de marco...

a music video for a Sunday...if I had to pick a favorite music video, this would probably be it. first of all, it's one of my all-time favorite songs, regardless of genre. musically I think it's perfect. I've been trying to learn it on guitar for years...I can play the chords, but the song structure is so slippery and circular, yet it definitely has its logic...then again it's the work of antonio carlos (tom) jobim, the duke ellington of Brazil, the great beethoven of the bossa nova. and here he is mugging and grinning, singing his great composition with the beloved chanteuse of rio dj, elis regina (I wouldn't call her a diva, because that would merely be a continuation of the currently widespread misuse of the word--divas are opera singers--but I digress) .

I love that it is 1974 and she is holding a cigarette without irony or self-consciousness. I love how jobim, not a pretty voice (but a skilled singer), makes the performance incredibly musical through his sense of rhythm and his perfectly voiced phonetic harmonies. I love that there is whistling. and laughing. and the dancing around the microphone. I love the microphone. and the out-of-tune piano solo. and while I've heard lots of other interpretations of this song, in both english and portuguese, it is so much better sounding in the original language.

the song is about the end of the summer season in brazil, when the rains come at the end of march--"aguas de marco" = "the waters of march"... it is also about life. and from the looks of these two late great artists, joy...

translated:

Waters of March / Aguas de Marco

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

It's a sliver of glass,
It is life, it's the sun,
It is night, it is death,
It's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms,
A fox in the brush,
A knot in the wood,
The song of a thrush

The wood of the wind,
A cliff, a fall,
A scratch, a lump,
It is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free,
It's the end of the slope,
It's a beam, it's a void,
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And the river bank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of the strain,
The joy in your heart

The foot, the ground,
The flesh and the bone,
The beat of the road,
A slingshot's stone

A fish, a flash,
A silvery glow,
A fight, a bet,
The range of a bow

The bed of the well,
The end of the line,
The dismay in the face,
It's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike,
A point, a nail,
A drip, a drop,
The end of the tale

A truckload of bricks
in the soft morning light,
The shot of a gun
in the dead of the night

A mile, a must,
A thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme,
It's a cold, it's the mumps

The plan of the house,
The body in bed,
And the car that got stuck,
It's the mud, it's the mud

Afloat, adrift,
A flight, a wing,
A hawk, a quail,
The promise of spring

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
It's the joy in your heart

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

A snake, a stick,
It is John, it is Joe,
It's a thorn in your hand
and a cut in your toe

A point, a grain,
A bee, a bite,
A blink, a buzzard,
A sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle,
A sting, a pain,
A snail, a riddle,
A wasp, a stain

A pass in the mountains,
A horse and a mule,
In the distance the shelves
rode three shadows of blue

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone,
The end of the road,
The rest of a stump,
A lonesome road

A sliver of glass,
A life, the sun,
A knife, a death,
The end of the run

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of all strain,
It's the joy in your heart.

...

LETTER FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies--a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some -such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle--have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger-lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation. Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.

[the italics are mine]

...

LET FREEDOM RING

...on the 40th anniversary of his assassination...

"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. *We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only."* We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

...........................................................................

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening because I have some very sad news for all of you. I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight."

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort."

"In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization -- black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred for one another.

"Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

"For those of you who are black and tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States; we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

"My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: 'In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black. . . .

"We've had difficult times in the past. We will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

"But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of the world.

"Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."

--Robert Kennedy, announcing the King assassination in Indianapolis, just eight weeks before his own assassination. That night, violence and rioting engulfed 126 American cities. Machine-gunners were deployed on the roof of the Capitol building.

There was no rioting in Indianapolis that night.

...

THE RETURN OF GAS

...I'm not going to say anything right now except just look at that flame!...

did I? did I drop the bomb? did I push the button? did my Wes Montgomery obsession get the better of me?

um. kinda.

...

OUR CANINE FRIENDS DEMONSTRATE THAT IT'S REALLY JUST A POSE

...doggy treats, please please please more doggy treats...

worth a thousand words etc. can there be any pride to be had by demonstrating that one's pet can be made to mimic the prayerful pose of a (shinto?) priest? not damn likely. except for one thing--the dog at least knows that there will be a reward for posing himself thus--a tangible, probably edible reward. the other guy, who can say? he is so deluded in his approach that he is confusing the cutesy aspect of a stupid pet tricks moment with the very act by which he defines himself spiritually.

God seems easily amused.

[hat tip to princess sparkle pony....]

...

YANKEES WIN

...first of the lasts...

a very satisfying evening...timely hitting, good pitching, good defense, strong bullpen showing. joe girardi looked good managing from the bench. the strong blue jays team was just not quite good enough. meanwhile, everyone else is focused on the red sox and the tigers. let 'em. I'd rather quietly go about my business and start racking up wins. it appears that girardi ran this team in spring training and everyone is in shape. giambi looked good. meanwhile, down in florida pedro pulled his hamstring after 50 pitches. here's to strong legs and timely small ball. and joba...

...