Today we celebrate the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a man best known as a crusader for justice on behalf of his people, and he is worthy of being remembered just for this work. Yet 42 years after his death, with a black man elected President, hasn’t Dr King’s work been accomplished? If we take some time on this day to understand the what Dr. King was about, both as a preacher and leader, we can see that the calling he gave us is never really finished.
Monthly Archives: January 2010
Popular Front
President Obama has finally taken a more populist tone on the economy by proposing that the TARP money given to the financial institutions in the midst of crisis be repaid by a special tax on large banks. It’s a good start, but only a start. What matters is how this plays out over the next few weeks and whether or not it catches on. Less obvious, however, is that support of this approach is going to be good politics for everyone as we head into an election year, Democrats and Republicans alike.
Haiti
Powerlessness. Helplessness. What can you do? I’ve been writing about the feeling and how people respond to it lately, trying to get at the root of what people don’t really talk about when they dance their way around the issues of the day. Little did I realize that events would conspire to make me feel terrible for even bringing it up.
Act of Destruction
“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
– Pablo Picasso
Long ago, artists were called on to, more or less, represent the world around them in some form that ennobled the subject at hand. In the Baroque Era, paintings usually depicted either the ruling class or the saints in ways that made mythologies of power real. Music was used to provide dignity to a setting or to magnify the glory of God himself to every heart that pounded along with the moment. Not today.
An artist today is supposed to be someone who pushes the boundaries of our world by creating a new understanding of what it means to be human. The mythology is something otherwise dormant within us. That makes the statement by Picasso, a creator and master practitioner of this view of art, even more troublesome.
The Great Vowel Shift
How did spelling in English get so messed up? If you have a child who is learning to spell, you may have taken the approach that I have – there’s no rhyme or reason to how it happened so you simply have to memorize it. It turns out that there is a reason, if a bit convoluted, that is often hidden in the rhyme. It’s a small comfort for the many people around the world, young and old alike, that have to learn how to write the most popular language, but it’s at least a great story.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 