Another MLK day and once again I’ve forgotten to send my “Happy Civil Liberty Assassination Day” cards. I’m never sure quite what to write in those things either and whether it’s cool to add other civil rights leaders slain in the line of, um, doing stuff.
There is a bit of --- irony? Hypocrisy? One of those two, in recognizing a man who’s most quoted speech has to do with looking forward to the day when he’d just be some guy (ok, he was a bit more eloquent about it, but, you know, he’s dead and I’m not, so I don’t feel too self-conscious about my ineloquence). Just saying.
In this town the street they changed to MLK used to be called Logan. It was named after the Wolverine, I’m sure. That’s a bit of a joke. There’s no way they’d name anything after the U of M mascot this close to MSU even with Hugh Jackman mutton chops
I used to work in a bar out on south Logan. With the factories gone the neighborhood isn’t quite gentrified but there are hubs of newer businesses, I’m thinking maybe there were public and/or private subsidies.
In Portland they changed the name of a street where it met up to go through the hood. Closer to the downtown area it was two four lane one way streets; Union and Grand. An old joke was a Judge asking an accused prostitute why she was soliciting on Union, “I thought it was grand”. In Portland they gentrified the living sweet swaddling bejesus right the fuck out of the hood; cutesy multi-colored facades and boutiques.
When Bush and the like were all hell bent on revenge for the 911 attacks there was some rhetoric about honoring the brave men and women of the flight that crashed in the field (I want to say flight 57, my memory could be off. The one where the passengers and crew chose crashing prematurely.). That’s hypocrisy not irony. This folks chose to protect as many people as they could, seems like honoring their memory would not involve sending young men and women to a sovereign nation to get shot at. All the other bits and pieces aside, regardless of how you feel or don’t about the war in general, it’s still not a homage so much as an excuse.
It’s like attacking in the name of Jesus or Gandhi or any other pacifist. Sure, you can raise a rabble, but it’s not for the benefit of the dead. MLK was a pacifist. I’m thinking MLK would have had an opinion on gentrification as well, though it’s a slippery slope. I’m not sure that spreading that kind of cash around is necessarily a bad thing for a local economy; in theory it doesn’t have to kick the current residents to the curb; in practice it often does. A bit above fair market value was the offer on the table in Portland. There was some noise but not a lot.
I’m sure the first African American president will have some sort of grand middle of the road ceremony thing today, though, today is, of course, a postal holiday and, if memory serves well, which would be a coincidence, the date itself has little to do with anything, or much to do with nothing.
I saw that some ex-governor of Montana (Schweitzer if memory serves correctly) is already throwing his hat in the ring and is tentatively looking for the Democratic nomination on the Anti-Hilary and Anti-Obama platform. In eighteen months or so I’m sure hookers will testify the guy does everything prematurely. Question is whether or not the GOP will be able to out self-sabotage. The last two attempts, with pretty attractive candidates, they had to bring on tea party running mates; it’s like bringing your mom along on a date you were hoping to round third base on. It would appear they didn’t even wanna cop a feel.
If there really were a viable third party up in here, the iron is about to be hot.
I got grand whelp and beagle duty later in the week. I’m still looking for a run into the great unknown. Just an expression. Not a lot of places unknown on this continent, though, again, my memory is not a finely tuned instrument, or rather it’s tuned to E flat and though I know the circle of fifths my poor pretty head has to use its fingers to transpose. I mean, sure, you could drop me off in Northwest Territories and I’d probably have to wait for the drugs to wear off before I figured out where I was, and, you know, death valley has some places that’d take me a few to get my bearings.
Even so, there is a pattern to things; to get lost proper the pattern has to be unrecognizable or you have to ignore it on purpose. The horizon, the air, the type of trees and the height of them, the critters on the ground and the critters in the air. It’s a more reasonable goal to get misplaced than lost.
There’s a tie in there, you get to make it for yourself.
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