All The Hateful People, Where Do They All Come From?

My favorite tweet about Arizona Governor Brewer's veto of SB 1062:

"Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer makes Christians in her state second class citizens."
-Todd Starnes, FOX News

Yeah, that spot belongs to LGBT, women, the poor, true minorities, or anyone else who isn't a heterosexual Christian. American philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote, "To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance."

As I watch what what is happening in our county today, I can not help but believe that America's brand of Christianity has veered off the path of true Christianity into cultism. A religious cult has been described as a "group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister." The Far Right's attempts to create a religious America in their own intolerant image is not only sinister but dangerous. Arizona's Senate Bill 1062 was not that far morally from Uganda's anti-gay laws. When you try to legalize hatred you have lost any claim to holding the moral high ground. Thank God we are still a country that puts money before our religious beliefs. It may be the only thing that keeps us true to these words from the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

All Dogs Go To Heaven

I'm going to miss those Dr. Seuss feet.

Isis (2000-2014)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Fifty Years Ago Sunday

CBS is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show this Sunday by broadcasting a two hour special, The Night That Changed America: The Beatles, A Grammy Salute, staring Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. I will be recording it to watch Monday morning just to avoid all the commercials that will surely be jammed in between the performances. I can not believe it has been fifty years since the The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. I won't say that it feels like it happened yesterday, just that I'm surprised it was so long ago. To commemorate this big event I have decided to re-share a post I wrote ten years ago about my experience of that night. I hope you enjoy it.

Sunday,February 8th, 2004
Quote
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
-Bob Dylan

It was forty years ago today Ed Sullivan had the Beatles play. I remember seeing them for the first time on Ed Sullivan and I remember exactly where I was when I did. I don't remember where I was because of the event, like someone remembering exactly where they were when they first heard Pearl Harbor had been bombed or when they heard John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, or Bobby Kennedy had been shot. I remember the event (the Beatles on Ed Sullivan) because of where I was at the time.

It was the second Sunday in February of 1964 (February 9th) and I was in a bed on one of the wards of Denver's Children's Hospital. About five minutes before the show started a nurse reached up and turned on the TV set perched high on a shelf on the wall of the entrance to the ward. She then switched the channel to CBS. There were 20 kids in 20 beds. Ten beds side by side down one wall and ten beds side by side down the wall on the opposite side of the room. I was in the seventh bed near the end of the row of beds on the right side of the room. Every kid in that room knew who the Beatles were and could not wait to see them. The room was noisy with the chatter of 20 kids excited by what was about to happen. The chatter kept up as the acts before the Beatles performed. We did not care about them we were waiting for the Beatles. Then Ed Sullivan announced, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beatles!"

I remember leaning forward to see around the kids in the beds between me and the TV. My mother and four other mothers visiting at the time had wandered down to the end of the room where the set was and huddled under it watching the flickering images on the screen. I remember being mesmerized by what I was seeing. These guys looked like no one I had every seen before with their matching collar-less suits, stovepipe pants, pointy boots, and long hair. Then my mother turned her face back to the ward and looked around. (She later said that she turned around because she realized there was total silence behind her. Something she had never heard during her visits before then.) She said urgently to the other mothers, "Look at the kids. Look at their faces."

I pulled my attention away from the screen and looked at everyone else. Every kid was leaning forward like me, some farther forward than others, with mouths open and a look of rapture on their faces. I knew that a moment before I had that same look. I scowled at my mother and sat back, I wasn't there to entertain the grownups.

So, what did I think? With all my vast musical knowledge I decided they weren't that great. Their music at the time would have been considered bubble gum music a few years later. I did not become interested in the Beatles until I heard the songs off the Rubber Soul and Revolver albums. Songs like, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, Eleanor Rigby, Got To Get You Into My Life. But at the same time, something about them that night was mesmerizing. Could it be that every kid in America who watched the Beatles that night subconsciously understood what the Beatles represented? That the times they were a changing.

Oooh, Look, The Hunger Games Start Tonight

Ice, Ice, Baby (Light Shadows 14)

The city is caught in the grip of ice--
Trees, walls, snow, are as under glass.
-Anna Akhmatova (1899-1966)

Martin Luther King Day

Martin Luther King's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech in Oslo, Norway, December 10, 1964

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time - the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, Alabama to Oslo bears witness to this truth. This is a road over which millions of Negroes are travelling to find a new sense of dignity. This same road has opened for all Americans a new era of progress and hope. It has led to a new Civil Rights Bill, and it will, I am convinced, be widened and lengthened into a super highway of justice as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to overcome their common problems.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." I still believe that We Shall overcome!

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much more than an honor to me personally.

Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible - the known pilots and the unknown ground crew.

So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people, are still met with the most brutal expression of man's inhumanity to man. You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of these people will never make the headline and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvellous age in which we live - men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization - because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake.

I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners - all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty - and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.

Doo, Doo, Doo, Looking Out My Front Door

Doo, Doo, Doo, Looking Out My Back Door

Well This Is Cool

Aurora borealis may dip into state tonight, say CU-Boulder experts.