The Dream

And when this happens, when we allow freedom 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!
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
I bought a jacket yesterday that didn’t fit, so I brought it back to the store this morning. My route took me past where the annual MLK Day march in St Paul, MN ends. I saw many people gathered around the auditorium with signs and the news stations’ cameras filming.

I’m so glad that we have a federal, state, and local holiday to commemorate Dr. King and the values he tried so hard to instill into this country.

Joe was born in Alabama in 1938. His father is black and his mother is part white, her father was white and her mother was a young woman who worked for her father. Joe’s dad “stole” her when she was 15 and he was 17, because her father wanted her to work in the cotton fields instead of sending her to school.

Joe’s family ended up moving to Cleveland, OH after World War II where his father worked in a steel plant for over 30 years and his mother was a homemaker.

Joe joined the Air Force in the late 50s. When his squadron had to stay in hotels, he would have to stay in a “colored” hotel or sleep in his car if none was available. He would have to eat at separate restaurants. Use “colored” bathrooms.

I remember watching on the news George Wallace blocking the door to the University of Alabama to prevent black students from enrolling. I was eight years old and even as young as I was, I knew it was wrong to prevent fellow human beings from getting an education.

It’s a different world, but not so different really. Racism is more subtle now. No one would block entrance to a school to a black person, but they would try to prevent him/her from getting a job by changing the qualifications. They would try to prevent him/her from voting by requiring voter IDs. They would try to prevent him/her from getting medical care by raising the price of insurance so high, they couldn’t afford it. The list goes on and on.

But the basic truth is that there are white people who fear anyone with a dark skin.

More work needs to be done.

I quit smoking on July 1, 2000.

I was thinking the other day that I’ve quit smoking for over 10 years.

During that 10 years many stressful things have happened, putting our old house for sale right when the real estate market was beginning to crash, buying this house, packing and moving, Ray’s illnesses, my travelling for my job, losing my job, finding another one, and the most stressful thing of all, Ray’s death and its aftermath.

Yet, I never felt the need to have a cigarette to take away the stress.

I think what keeps me from smoking again is knowing how awful it is to quit and I never want to go through that again.

One of my new year’s goals was to start cleaning out stuff. I started today on my CD/DVD bookshelf. I had a ton of DVDs I’ll never watch (they were Ray’s) or have any interest in. I buy DVDs and then don’t watch them, because I think watching TV is a waste of time.

I’ll never get rid of my Sex in the City DVDs of all six seasons. I see that show on TV sometimes and even though I know every line from every episode, I never get tired of watching it. Ahhhh!!

I finally went through the shelves and took out probably 30 DVDs and put them in a Goodwill bag for donation. I have part of the day off tomorrow, because Joe is having a colonoscopy, so I might use that time to go through my books. I listed several books for sale on amazon.com today.

I watched “Hoarders” last night and whenever I watch that show, I feel guilty for having the stuff I do. The other thought I have while watching that is, “How can people live like that?” But hoarding is a mental illness and those people don’t see their hoard as a problem for the most part.

Finally, I walked on the treadmill this morning for 45 minutes and my left did not hurt. I think my knee muscle build-up and balance program is working.