1. Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt
2. The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. Allan K. Chalmers
3. Just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings. Elie Wiesel

It's new age hookum, probably, but I cotton to this concept because it explains so much - why I seem to click with some people like we've known each other our whole lives. Why I don't maybe fit in with my own family sometimes. Why I crave like-minded folks. And you're the same way, I bet.

I work with a gaggle of people who are most assuredly definitely without question not in my tribe. Walking out of work today, I thought about how different I am from these people and how much that scared me. It made me feel lonely. I spend 8 hours a day at work and that seems like an awful long time to spend with people who I have nothing in common with except the work we do. It makes getting that work done so much more difficult.

Husband insists that this is the way for 99% of workplaces. "You're at work, you don't have to like them." True. But I am not that kind of person! I like harmony. I like peace. I like to feel that my back doesn't have a giant target painted on it the minute I step into my office.

Elle, c'est bûcher des heures durant, elle peaufine, elle y met tout son coeur. Lui, avance sur la scène chante sa chanson, se trompe, s'excuse en souriant et en disant “Oh well” et la juge lui sourit car il a un je ne sais quoi de présence qui en impose. Elle chante avec ses tripes et encourage toutes ses amies. Elle est adorable dans sa robe flamenco et j'ai un pincement au coeur lorsqu'elle chante Whatever Loula wants Lola gets. Ils ont récolté chacun 3 argent et un bronze.

Elle reste des heures à pratiquer son piano, lui gratte de la guitare comme si demain n'arrivera jamais. Il décide de passer une audition et emporte un des rôles haut la main et rate ainsi l'équipe de rugby (but, mom & dad, I didn't know, à d'autres fiston à d'autres..). Elle sillonne (et nous avec quand ce ne sont pas les parents d'amies ou les profs) la région. Elle a décidé que son sujet d'art oratoire serait la Mésopotamie (enfin, tous les sujets ne lui plaisaient pas et elle dit vouloir apprendre et comprendre l'histoire des civilisations et elle a fait un point d'honneur de parler de l'Irak dans sa conclusion) et pendant des jours elle a répété et nous lui avons servi d'auditoire. Puis, elle a décidé qu'elle ne se présenterait qu'à la compétition de langue française. En anglais, son sujet fut la chasse aux sorcières et décide de ne pas se présenter à la compétition. Elle remporte le premier prix de sa catégorie du district scolaire en français et se prépare au concours provincial. Elle est indignée par la bande d'intimidatrices qui veulent faire la loi durant la récréation ou parfois en classe. Nous avons beau lui expliquer qu'elle ferait mieux de les ignorer, elle pleure en disant qu'elle en a marre d'être gentille. Elle est loyale et pense toujours à partager, il bouffe sa part de gâteau et la sienne et s'excuse après. Il passe de longues minutes à se coiffer les cheveux, se parfumer et on ne cesse de lui demander de relever ses pantalons (ciel, un plombier chez nous!). Il a dépassé la phase “mom do not embarass me”, fait qu'il m'embrasse de nouveau en public et aime de son mètre 80 me prendre dans ses bras et dire qu'il m'adore. Il part pour une semaine participer à un concours de musique et les étudiant d'à travers le pays iront à Rideau Hall rencontrer la Gouverneure Générale Michaelle Jean (Fiston, n'oublie pas de remonter tes pantalons que je me répète dans ma petite tête, parce qu'il doit avoir envie de me trucider vu le nombre de fois que je lui sors la phrase)

Elle a des colères sourdes, il laisse tout glisser sur son dos. Elle s'en fait pour tout, il se fiche de tout. Il rêve de cinéma, de révolution et de musique. Elle rêve de neurologie ou de maladies infectueuses (which specialty mom, which specialty?), elle lit Emily Brontë et entame Midsummer Night's Dream de William Shakespeare. Elle peut passer des journées à lire. Quant à lui, nullement besoin de faire un dessin, sauf qu'il s'améliore vu qu'il travaille ces derniers jours sur la portée des messages subliminaux chez les groupes religieux (me demandez pas pourquoi, je n'y suis pour rien dans cette histoire).

HIer, elle fêtait ses treize ans et n'a demandé que des livres et des partitions de musique et chant comme cadeaux. Lui, était tout doux avec elle et a fini par finir le gâteau ce matin (hédonisme et gourmandise quand tu nous tiens).

Dans un an ou deux, ils auront certainement changé d'avis ou peut-être pas du tout. Juste un seul souhait, pouvoir les voir grandir et s'épanouir.

J'aime particulièrement cette version de La mer de Trenet par Robbie William. Beyond the Sea.  Sur ce, je vous souhaite une agréable fin de semaine et une excellente semaine.  Je passerai la mienne à Montréal.  Mwah :-)

If such a government cannot be overthrown otherwise than by dynamite, then thank God for dynamite.
—Mark Twain, speaking of Czarist Russia

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.

"True compassion," King declared, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King questioned "our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions "of the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

In foreign policy, King also offered an economic critique, complaining about "capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries."

You haven't heard the "Beyond Vietnam" speech on network news retrospectives, but national media heard it loud and clear back in 1967 — and loudly denounced it. Life magazine called it "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." The Washington Post patronized that "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People's Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington — engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be — until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Reader's Digest warned of an "insurrection."

King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor" — appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."

How familiar that sounds today, more than a quarter-century after King's efforts on behalf of the poor people's mobilization were cut short by an assassin's bullet.

Bob Feller waves goodbye for the last time in Winter Haven on March 27, 2008. The greatest Indians pitcher of all time.

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Listening to: Lenny Kravitz - You're My Flavor

I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

—Woody Guthrie

James Reeb was murdered by the indifference of every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained glass windows. He was murdered by the irrelevancy of a church that will stand amid social evil and serve as a taillight rather than a headlight, an echo rather than a voice. He was murdered by the irresponsibility of every politician who has moved down the path of demagoguery, who has fed his constituents the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. He was murdered by the brutality of every sheriff and law enforcement agent who practices lawlessness in the name of law. He was murdered by the timidity of a federal government that can spend millions of dollars a day to keep troops in South Vietnam, yet cannot protect the lives of its own citizens seeking constitutional rights. Yes, he was even murdered by the cowardice of every Negro who tacitly accepts the evil system of segregation, who stands on the sidelines in the midst of a mighty struggle for justice.

So in his death, James Reeb says something to each of us, black and white alike—says that we must substitute courage for caution, says to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murder. His death says to us that we must work passionately, unrelentingly, to make the American dream a reality, so he did not die in vain.

James Reeb answered the call for justice. That's all any of us are asked to do.

Indians 12
Astros 2

Thank God for His game.

"'In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant." —Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey by Mary Chase

Three Sufi sayings:

"I never saw any lamp shining more brilliantly than the lamp of silence." —Bayazid al-Bistami

"I went to a wilderness, love had rained and had covered earth, as feet penetrate snow, I found my feet covered with love." —Bayazid al-Bistami

"I stood with the pious and I didn’t find any progress with them. I stood with the warriors in the cause and I didn’t find a single step of progress with them. Then I said, ‘O Allah, what is the way to You?’ and Allah said, ‘Leave yourself and come.’" —Bayazid al-Bistami

From the Hebrew books of the Bible:

"Ask where the good way is and walk in it." Jeremiah 6:16

Word of the day:

Bimble. "A gentle, meandering walk with no particular haste or purpose."

"I think I can, I think I can" becomes "I know I can. I know I can!"

Nothing sweeter than spanking the $210 million Yankees - a team that has spent $1 billion since they last won the fall classic ... A night to remember at the Jake ... Pulled my '99 Lofton jersey out of the retirement closet ... Clutch-hitting KLove grabs 4 RBIs ... Down goes Wang ... We're handing out high fives and partying with our entire section ... Yankee fans were mocked and then mocked some more ... Jeter nearly falls down swinging at a 96 MPH Sabathia fast ball ... Lebron takes off his enemy hat ... Pronk goes yard ... Victor goes yard ... The kid A.C. goes yard ... My boy Gark goes yard ... Shapiro is a genius.

Soak it up Cleveland. This is your baseball team, the little $61 million engine that could.

I get so sick of ESPN reporting as if there are only 2 teams in the league (NYY & BOS). At least for today, ESPN gets it right ..........

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

"No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time."

"The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day lies in its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities, which produce an emptiness in woman's soul that will not let her drink from the fountain of life."

"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought."

"The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained."

"The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul."

“If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.”

Yes, it is sad commentary on our times that on the internet, you can find that quoted as "f*ck" and "f**k".

Some quotes:

"I want to help you if you have a dirty word problem. There are none."

"Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it."

"I've been accused of bad taste, and I'll go down to my grave accused of it and always by the same people: the ones who eat in restaurants that reserve the right to refuse service to anyone."

“I don't know about you but I enjoy the way our tax money is being spent to arrest, indict, convict, imprison, parole, and re-imprison (marijuana smokers). I'd just piss it away on beer, anyway."

“You can't put tits and ass on the marquee! Why not? Because it's dirty and vulgar, that's why not! Titties are dirty and vulgar? Okay, we'll compromise. How about Latin? Gluteous maximus, pectoralis majors nightly...That's alright, that's clean, class with ass, I'll buy it: clean to you, schmuck, but dirty to the Latins!"

"It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, "I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet," and if he'd just say "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" to every nigger he saw, "boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie, nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" 'til nigger didn't mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school."

"The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."

“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”

"A Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descendant from that tribe. That's what it says in the dictionary, but you and I know what a Jew is: One Who Killed Our Lord. There should be a statute of limitations for that crime. A lot of people say to me, 'Why did you kill Christ?' I dunno... it was one of those parties that got out of hand, you know?"

"Since they condone capital punishment, I want them to stop bitching about Jesus getting nailed up."

"If something about the human body disgusts you, the fault lies with the manufacturer."

“All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.”

"There are never enough 'I love you's.'"

In 2003, long after Bruce's death, New York's Governor George Pataki pardoned him, saying this was “a declaration of New York's commitment to upholding the First Amendment." If Pataki really wanted to honor Lenny Bruce, he would've said it was "New York finally noticing we have a fucking First Amendment."

if you really think that "there's nothing more heroic than laughter at people who love violence," then really, I have nothing more to say, because such cowardice boggles the mind.

Her comment may have come from ignorance of history, or it may've come because I didn't express myself well.

One of my earliest heroes was Dick Gregory. He's remembered as a comedian, but he was a comedian in a time when white and black civil rights activists could expect to be killed for their work. He would protest, then be arrested, then make people laugh. That's a hero.

A few Dick Gregory quotes:

"I am really enjoying the new Martin Luther King Jr stamp. Just think about all those white bigots, licking the backside of a black man."

"I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark."

"Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said, “We don't serve colored people here.” I said, “That's all right. I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.” Then these three white boys came up to me and said, “Boy, we're givin' you fair warnin'. Anything you do to that chicken, we're gonna do to you.” So I put down my knife and fork, I picked up that chicken and I kissed it. Then I said, “Line up, Boys!”"

"I wouldn't mind paying taxes, if I knew they were going to a friendly country."

"In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it's a sport."

"Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine."

"Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss."

"What we're doing in Vietnam is using the black man to kill the yellow man so the white man can keep the land he took from the red man."

“If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it?”

“Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff.”

"The rich rob the poor, and the poor rob one another."

From the 1851 Women's Convention at Akron, Ohio:

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it?

[Audience member: "Intellect."]

That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

"I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy."

"Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good."