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| Civil Rights Memorial, Montgomery, Alabama |
Forty-four years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, April 4, 1968. I was seven years old, in 2nd grade and we were living in Pineview, Georgia. Dad was assigned to three small country Methodist churches and during the week, he commuted to Atlanta to attend seminary at Emory University. Mom stayed home with the four of us while Dad was gone 3 days/2 nights every week. My parents, to this day, when talking about Pineview, say that is the first place where they truly practiced missionary work. Just let your imagination run wild and you might be able to come close to what my family experienced as Yankees living in the deep south, and not just Yankees, but a Yankee minister's family to boot. Rev. King's life and death symbolize to my family the ideology my parents struggled to teach others and managed to deeply instill in my siblings and me, the ideology which to this day continues to resonate strongly with my family. It is because of this that yesterday's election quagmire here in Anchorage has been so difficult for me to acknowledge let alone accept. If you do not live in Anchorage, here is a link to explain (as best one can anyway) yesterday's election scenario:
http://www.adn.com/2012/04/04/2407382/municipality-aclu-investigate.html. How it is possible to run out of ballots in so many different places is simply unbelievable. That Anchorage might still be a community which allows discrimination is extremely disappointing. This all goes against my soul and I will never stop fighting for the right to vote and equality for everyone. Interesting thing is, those are things Martin Luther King, Jr., was also fighting for 44 years ago. Maybe that is how many years this beautiful city and state is truly behind the rest of the United States. I do not know. However, I will now stop discussing the election for tonight, but believe me when I tell you, it will not be far from my mind for a long time to come.
Sam is doing quite well today, he enjoyed a couple hours at the shelter and then came home to work more on his Japanese lessons. He is getting closer to being ready to converse with others and was very pleased with himself as he received an 81% on completing the first of three sections today. Good for him! Tomorrow he will probably rest most of the day. Going to the shelter two days in a row is generally too much for him anymore. Last night he told me he might start working with the cats instead of the dogs. That made me really sad for Sam, yet very happy for the cats. My only thought was...well there is one way to drive Sweet Pea nuts. All those other cat smells on his clothes? She will go bananas. Might be kind of entertaining, actually.
Ciao!
