Martin Luther King Day With Blue Sky At Village Creek Thinking About An Unstoppable Woman, A Hotpepper & A Grammar Challenged Queen

You are looking at an impoundment of part of Village Creek, at least I think it is part of Village Creek, although the main branch of the creek is to the left of the water in the picture. This impoundment may have something to do with the system that puts water in to the cool canals of Interlochen.

But. What is really important about this picture is something else that is shows.

Can you see it?

Blue sky has returned to my zone of North Texas.

And it is almost 60 degrees.

I really was starting to suffer my first bout of SAD of this winter. If I remember correctly I had several bouts of Seasonally Affected Disorder last winter.

I never was a SAD sufferer when I lived in Western Washington. A place with way more SAD type days than North Texas has. I guess I had developed a tolerance for drippy, gray days when I was a Washingtonian and Texas has caused me to lose my immunity.

Texas has caused me to lose so many things.

I heard from my favorite Unstoppable Woman today. The Unstoppable Woman is just about my favorite person I ever worked with to make a website. So many people do not communicate well. The Unstoppable Woman knew exactly what she wanted and was able to explain exactly what she wanted. It made it all so easy.

My other favorite Unstoppable Woman, Elsie Hotpepper, well, it goes without saying you really can not stop the Hotpepper. Even if you are foolish enough to try. Anyway, Elsie is safely back from her long weekend of tropical island saloon hopping.

And then there is the Queen of Wink. Near as I can tell her Wink Realm is growing evermore chaotic. I am not even certain that the Queen is still the Queen and has not been replaced by a King, who is now keeping the former Queen prisoner in the Wink Tower.

I got the oddest message from the Queen of Wink this morning, going on about her grammar errors, which the Queen called grammatical errors, as she complained, out of nowhere, about me being a Grammar Bully. I don't even know what a Grammar Bully is, let alone how to be one. And then, in her message complaining about me being a Grammar Bully, the Queen made at least one rather bad grammar error. I'd point it out, but I don't want to be a bully.

So, there you go, my exciting Martin Luther King Day. So far.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Before moving on to the day's activities.....and checking out some of the holiday sales....stop and take a moment or two to reflect on the life and times of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., the greatest voice and figure of the civil rights movement, and someone who should be in the list of everyone's Ten Greatest Americans.

Had he lived, he would have been 82 years old on Saturday, the same age as my mother, who's birthday was last week as well.

Dr. King was murdered at age 39.....a life cut tragically short.

And he was one of too many of our countrymen who's life ended as a result of gun violence.

The Dawn Of Martin Luther King Day In Texas Thinking About Going To Fort Worth's Stock Show

I went to bed early Sunday night and yet still somehow managed to sleep in late after a long night of very strange nightmares which I will not go into detail about because my memory of the nightmares is sketchy.

My chicken football fajitas turned out good yesterday. Much better than the football game. I erroneously thought the Seahawks were scheduled to start getting beat by the Chicago Bears around 1 in the afternoon.

I did not get back to my TV until a bit after 1 in the afternoon yesterday. By then Seattle was behind by 3 touchdowns and the second half was under way. By the time the 4th quarter was ready so were my fajitas.

I did not last long watching Seattle play football before the boredom syndrome kicked in. How do people keep watching these games through all those commercial breaks? I think I suffer from a bad case of FADD, Football Attention Deficit Disorder.

Changing the subject from football back to my dire existence in Texas. As you can see looking out my computer room window, it is yet one more gray sky winter morning. Currently nothing is precipitating from the sky. And it is again a balmy 13 degrees above freezing.

I have no idea what lies ahead for me on this Monday Martin Luther King Day. If it were warmer I might consider going to the Fort Worth Stock Show. I've only gone twice. It can be interesting. Saturday's Fort Worth Stock Show Parade drew a smaller number of parade watchers than what shows up when it is not cold. It has been several years in a row now that it has not been warm for that parade. If I remember right, ice cancelled the parade a couple years ago.

Well, it is time to go for my morning swim before it gets any later.

Martin Luther King Jr; His Legacy and His Work Goes On

There is irony abound in this Martin Luther King Day. One year ago Dr. King's birthday was a celebration, with this nation about to inaugurate its first African American president. We gave ourselves a collective pat on the back; we felt that we may have at last gotten to "The Promised Land" that Dr. King talked about the night before he was assassinated. We thought that, indeed, we have were really there- that the content of ones's character should be all that matters.

But we're not quite there yet, as the events of the past year have told us. We have a president how has been attacked by some on the lunatic fringe as being racist, or a man who was not even legally the president because (they claim) he was foreign born. There have been some, even in the hall's of Congress, who have treated this President with disrespect....Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina even called President Obama a liar on the House floor.

We are closer to the goal of Dr. King's dream, but aren't quite there yet.

And this past week Haiti, a nation of descendants of former slaves and the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, was devastated by a 7.0 earthquake. The de facto head of the conservative movement in the United States told his radio listeners not to help the hundreds of thousands of those affected. And the nations most popular tele-evangelist had his viewers believing the Haitian people got what they deserved because 200 years ago Haiti's leaders made a pact with the devil.

Racism is dying in America....but it ain't dead yet. Americans of all backgrounds have given from their hearts during this crisis, even while we are recovering from the worst economic downturn since the 1930's. As I've said before, the United States is a good, benevolent.....but very human and flawed....giant.

This morning I watched the two hour documentary King on The History Channel. It was hosted by Tom Brokaw, and covered the life and career of Dr. King, and was a warts and all portrait. Something that has been forgotten with the passage of time (and this film was a reminder) were the problems endured by King in his last years. Yes, King leadership helped bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act. But when Dr. King brought his movement north to Chicago and the the inner cities north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and started to focus on the poverty of America's underclass, he met resistance from America's white middle class, and even from some former liberal allies. Dr. King's opposition to the Vietnam War alienated him from his ally President Lyndon Johnson, as well as from white Middle America. J. Edgar Hoover led the charge to label King as a communist, and many in the United States started to believe this smear. Some younger African Americans felt King's non violent approach was too soft; some started following more miltant leaders in black American like Stokley Carmichael.

But Dr. King stood by his principles, and never abandoned his tactic of non violent confrontation. His way was that of Mahatma Gandhi.

And it was like Gandhi, that he died- a nonviolent man cut down by a gunshot.

The best, the brightest, and the greatest. What is it in our nature that leads us to try to extinguish our own guiding lights?