November 28, 2004

• PEOPLE WHO KNOCK ME OUT
  (See sidebar for others)

  Helen Keller and Martin Luther King, Jr.

  First of all, I’ve been meaning to mention that I’m having such a good time doing this series because I’m learning a lot about people already familiar to me and some I’ve never heard of before. It’s kind of like being back in school and not having to be graded. When I was deciding on the person(s) for today, I was actually going to go with Bernard Kouchner, the French humanitarian who co-founded Doctors Without Borders among many other things until I discovered he agreed with starting the war in Iraq. I also considered Jack Kerouac, but I’ve mentioned him already in past blogs, or Garrison Keillor whose radio show always cheers me up when I happen upon it while driving around on Sundays. But I chose Keller and King because they had something fascinating in common. The lives of both these famous Americans were shaped by the very nature of their being – one born African-American in a country unfortunately still suffering the disease of racism today, the other left blind and deaf by an illness before she was two years old. In spite of being in this world with the deck significantly stacked against them, they rose to the occasion. Helen Keller was born in 1880 in a small Alabama community to parents who had supported the Confederacy. She was blessed by acquiring a teacher who taught her to read, write and speak, but then took that gift and went on to graduate with honors from Radcliffe College and receive degrees from Harvard and other universities. She lectured throughout the world and served on councils and foundations for the blind and deaf, and sometimes for causes like socialism and women’s rights. She also wrote an autobiography, The Story of My Life, and several other books that gave hope and inspiration to many. When she was already 49 years old, another Southerner was born in Atlanta, Georgia, his father and grandfather both Christian ministers. Like Helen Keller, his name is a household word today, as he took the circumstances of his life and turned them into a fight for social justice and civil rights that eventually led to the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Four years later, on April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed while in Tennessee to support a strike of black garbage men. He was 39 years old. Two months after his death and many miles away in Connecticut, at the age of 88, Helen Keller also left her legacy behind. For both of them, the words on King’s tombstone ring out, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.”
  

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  Deep Thought: “I think the things you remember most are the little things, like that little space guy I kept tied up down in the basement. That little guy was only about five inches tall! He used to beg me to untie his rope, but I knew he’d just run away if I did. I think the cat finally got him, but the cat had little burn marks on him, from where the space guy shot him with his little gun, before his ammo ran out. I remember things like that. “
  Today I am grateful for: Wood ducks
  Guess the Movie: “When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.” Answer: Groundhog Day, 1993. Winner: swawg.
  It’s Time for Americans to Support Peace Instead of US War Machine
  by Bill Dunn
  I look high and low for a sense of outrage at what America is doing in Iraq and see only tepid glimpses. But of course, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
  On the day when some 500 people marched for peace in Madison, about 80,000 made it to the Badger game against Minnesota. Bucky triumphed, as did death and destruction in Iraq. We claimed the coveted Axe and hammered Fallujah with 500-pound bombs. Yes, “we.” It’s being done in your name and in your children’s. (Rest of article here.)
  End of Day: 10:46 pm
  + = Yummy breakfast out this morning.
  - = I can’t believe I’m blogging this late so off to bed.

  • 10:43 am
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