Eric?

You win.

Just so you know.

(Confused? Ask Tania!)

ADDENDUM the First:

Laundry.
Bills.
Took Grandmom to the pharmacy and grocery store.

Oh yeah! Went to visit Kim and Mike and Hannah.

YAY HANNAH!

Not much but sunflowers.

But the sunflowers do look really nice.

It’s the last Saturday in August in Morgantown, so that means it’s a Mountaineer game!

My morning was so bad I came home and went back to bed. (I rushed to get things together, only discover that the post offices in Star City and Morgantown are CLOSED. This does NOT make me happy.)

Now the skies have cleared, the temperature is 81–perfect football weather.

We’re going to grill out soon, and enjoy the day while listening to the game, including sitting on the deck watching the drunks! Woo!

ADDENDUM the First:
Halftime Score is
WVU 24 – Villanova – 7

Also?

Virginia Tech LOST
Pitt LOST
and most importantly

Michigan is LOSING! Go Utah!

ADDENDUM the Second:
Pat White breaks a stadium record, with five touchdowns for the day!

Go Pat White!

Michigan is still LOSING! Ha Ha Ha!

ADDENDUM the Third:
Car and foot traffic are picking up.

Come on UTAH!

ADDENDUM the Third:
48 to 21 WVU!

Congratulations Coach Stewart!

ADDENDUM the Fourth:
Utah 25 Michigan 23

Hope the rest of the season goes the same way!

The local news paper, referred to often as the Diminishing Pest, is most likely the worst paper in WV.

Why?

Yesterday, on the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington and of Martin Luther King Jr’s seminal “I Have a Dream” speech, Barak Obama was nominated as the first black presidential candidate for a major party in the history of the United State of America.

The top headline on the front page of the Dominion Post?

“Work to begin on WVU day care”

The next headline?

“Woman dies in single-car accident” (with a picture of the woman’s body being removed from the car.)

Any mention of this historical moment?

Nope.

What a bunch of Jim Wrights.

Why won’t this weirdo leave me alone?

Stop invading my privacy!

(Amazon, Amazon, Baker’s Catalog, Origins, Nathan, Aveda, Janiece, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon)

It’s been awhile since we went to the recycling center. And it’s been almost as long since I did more than pitch empty boxes down the stairs and then kick them out of the way when I went by.

Luckily, I had a better solution that to stop ordering loot.

However, I really do need to go to the recycling center.

Just not Saturday.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: “For Whites Only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

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!

Now that I got the sidebar widgets working, I’ve been playing with some of the different widgets available.

I really like the new tag cloud. It’s kinda fun.

I listen to the news when I walk after work. I just like knowing what’s going on in the world, and the news gives me something to focus on other than how tired I am of walking in circles.

There was a horrifying segment on mass graves in Iraq. Over 7000 missing persons reports were filed in Baghdad between 2005 and 2007.

Seven thousand civilians have disappeared.

What struck me the hardest was a comment by a man who’s brother is still missing.

“He is not a dead person, yet he is not a living person, either.”

It struck me that this is Schrödinger’s cat at it’s most horrible, and I wonder whether these situations were what Schrödinger had in mind at some point.

Schrödinger lived through both World War I and World War II–and in fact left German because of Hitler. When he created his example of Schrödinger’s Cat, I wonder whether it was the situations of the families after WWI and during WWII that brought this to mind.

How horrible for these families to have no closure. To be living Schrödinger’s dilemma, not knowing whether their loved ones are alive or dead.

And this situation has been repeated since WWII, and throughout history.

Because the post that is going to go up one minute after this was is depressing, here’s something a little more cheerful.

How can a happy cat not make you feel just a tiny bit better?

Well, someone was somewhere.

A puppy mill in Parkersburg was closed and 1000 dogs and puppies have been rescued and are looking for adoption.

Human Society news and video

Parkersburg Humane Society Update

WCHS article and video

ADDENDUM the First:
My sister-in-law sent me pictures of some of the puppies.

The grocery stores have local peaches now, so I had to pick some up. Since we grilled out on Saturday, I decided to make bourbon peaches. In theory you make them in the oven, but they’re perfect to put on the grill to cook while you’re eating dinner.

(more…)

FYI, Wabi-Sabi is live blogging the convention from the WV delegates section.

ADDENDUM the First:

Defective Yeti is also live blogging the convention. From his living room where he is ensconced with a legal beverage.