When they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
January 22, 2008 - 12:27 a.m.
I’m really tired and I should get to bed early tonight so I’m guessing this will be a short entry. Of course sometimes they just take on a life of their own. Let’s see what my fingers have to say tonight.
Today I played bridge with Roy. As is our Martin Luther King Day tradition we played in the District 3 Winter Regional at the Rye Town Hilton in Rye Brook New York. As the name suggest there are often weather issues at this tournament. Once I was playing with Andrew who lived nearby and stayed with him for the entire tournament. There was a blizzard and we had to dig the car out to get to the hotel. I’d never have attempted going if it wasn’t a short drive from Andrew’s house. This year the only problem was cold. It was 15° this morning with a windchill of 0°. I got nice and bundled up and wore my new Andean alpaca wool hat. It wasn’t really necessary as Roy picked me up and his car was already warm when I got in it. I did appreciate it walking from the car to the hotel.
We had our choice of playing in the pair event or the bracketed compact knockout teams. We decided to see if we could find teammates to our liking and if we couldn’t we’d play the pairs. We found a nice pair and played with them. The format was in each session you’d play two 12 board matches against another team. The winner of the first moves on and the loser plays a consolation game against another losing team. We played both our morning matches handily. There was only a short break for lunch so we raced over to the Pizza and Brew. When we got there we thought we were at the wrong place as it didn’t say “Pizza and Brew.” It ended up it was the same they just changed the name. Roy suggested that we split a large pie. I thought that was too big but went along with him. He was right. We had not trouble finishing it.
In the evening session we once again won the first round easily. The bracket started with 16 teams so after winning three rounds we were down to the final, we were guaranteed to come in no worse than second. I felt good about each of the earlier rounds, knowing that we did well at our table and that as long as our teammates held our own we’d win. I was not so sanguine after the last round. I knew we had one really bad board and felt that we might have been nickel and dimed in a few others. We didn’t do anything brilliant or lucky to make up for it. Well I was in a sense wrong. The disaster was not a disaster as our opponents missed the same slam we did. On the other hand our teammates missed bidding a game and that cost us the match. So we came in second. Considering how rarely Roy and I play and that we were playing with pick up teammates that was great. I can’t complain. I pretty much always have a great time playing bridge.
I listened to WFUV this morning and heard that John Stewart died. Don’t worry Daily Show fans, it wasn’t that John Stewart. This is the singer/songwriter member of the Kingston Trio best known for writing the Monkees’ hit Daydream Believer. WFUV played John’s version of the song with the lyrics to the last chorus altered to:
A daydream deceiver and a old closet queen.
Claudia Marshall, the DJ, made no note of the altered lyrics. Was Stewart gay? There is no mention of it in his Obituary. Maybe it was just a joke. In any case I totally love it as a throwaway line.
I usually end my entries by playing What’s in my CD changer but I’m going to throw in it here today.
- Willie Nile – Streets of New York
- Live at the World Café vol. XX
- Live at the World Café vol. 21: In the Cards
- Ralph Stanley – A Distant Land to Roam
- The Late Bloomers – The Late Bloomers
Today is Martin Luther King Day. It always bothers me when people belittle the holiday. Dr King was a person worth remembering. His ideals are worth reflecting on. Every year I try to do my part in helping my readers remember the holiday’s meaning. We have come a long way since that dark day in April 1968 when he was martyred at the age of 39. We still have a long way to go. I could quote statistics to you. Despite very similar rates of drug use blacks are something like 7 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes than whites. The war on drugs is all to often a war on blacks. The infant mortality rate for blacks is twice that of whites. I could go on but I won’t. I shouldn’t need to. Just observe those around you and you’ll find racists attitudes. You might even find some in yourself. As for his legacy of non-violence we have a long way to go to live up to his ideals.
In previous years I’ve posted the text of his I Had A Dream speech. Last year I posted his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. This year I’m going to let Doctor King speak for himself. This is the last speech he ever made. It eerily spoke of his death at the hands of those who hated what he stood for. Don’t do me a favor but do yourself a favor and spend the next eight minutes listening to it. It will do your soul some good.
Against The Gods Intelligence Itself Contends in Vain. - July 02, 2008
Lies My Ego Told Me - June 30, 2008
Don't Believe Everything You Read; Not Even Here - June 28, 2008
Red Molly and Sinatra;, Together Again - June 27, 2008
Adventures in Adventures - June 25, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile January 22, 2008
