Happy Martin Luther King Day ...
His assassination on April 4, 1968 gutted me. I was 9 years old, and I liked him. I loved his authoritative words, his cadences that brought an energy and a hope to me. I knew already that I hated troops in the streets with water cannons. I knew what bullies were.
I wore my Martin Luther King button all summer at camp. It got dented and developed rust at the clasp. The cook at camp was Jonas Wooten, a large black man who asked me why I was wearing that button. I told him that I missed Martin Luther King. We became friends, Jonas and Vivian the kitchen assistant, and me.
Jonas could not talk to me, could not befriend me in 1968 at a summer camp for soft white kids in Honesdale PA, it just couldn't happen, but I used to tarry around the kitchen and his cabin when I was allowed to be going past.
We met up at the piano in the Recreation Hall, that is where I got to be electrified by the blues pounded out on that rickety little upright that tried so hard to play what he needed to communicate, those missing or sticking keys in the upper registers would become percussion sticks, he even sang a little. I heard the blues, and they were mine too, my lost friend in Martin Luther King, and my world got colder when he was murdered and Bobby Kennedy, too.
I was 9 years old. I had my favorite people, I had my favorite cars, I had my admittedly simple prayers that we might all get along. I was bullied in school, much less so at camp but enough. I have a lifelong rage towards bullies, towards selfish angry people that wreck the dreams and hopes of others without a care.
I am 61 years old now, and look my God at what is playing out in this very moment. We are so much better now. Our misogynists are getting mowed down, our racists are getting called out, our ingrained addictions are getting picked off, dammit you can't even drive home drunk and slap the yapping bitch and punch out your son and mess around with your daughter and smoke at McDonalds anymore. WTH? What is an angry white entitled ignorant tool to do these daze?
Ransack the Capitol?
Well, I still love Martin Luther King's (I hear he was a philanderer because he was a human like the rest of us) words. I aspire to them. I aspire to the American Dream. We are amazing. We are an amazing country, and the bullies don't get the half of it. The bullies don't yet understand the gig is up for old white entitlements. That is why they lie and cheat and lie and lie.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
Yes it does.
Colin
Happy Martin Luther King Day
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Happy Martin Luther King Day
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