tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89758354362550228132024-03-18T08:17:12.146-04:00The Irreverent Psychologistmusings about psychology, therapy, and lifeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.comBlogger539125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-32420096302451514122018-04-28T09:50:00.000-04:002018-04-28T09:51:10.403-04:00You’d think it was just about time for love.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://seanlionadh.com/2018/04/11/time-for-love/" target="_blank">The Poem</a>:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">by <a href="https://seanlionadh.com/" target="_blank">Sean Lìondah</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s Glasgow, March and we walk hand in hand in the park.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now it’s 15:13 and I’m late and I have to make a choice.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We’re both boys, you see.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If you were to go back and look, you’d see a hundred eyes hurry to objectify this hand in hand stance.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s a flurried dance of reaction. Some smile, they’re proud and they want me to know.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But there’s a darker shade of brow that balances the books.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The kind of look that challenges, like this is some chess game and I’m in check and I’m second guessing what they might do next.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Point me out to all the pawns in the crowd. Spawn a following whose glowers linger on so that our hands are no longer holding, but dragging glare after glare, snowballing stares, stretching elastic social disgrace through this forbidden space and the scales are well and truly tipped.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now it’s 15:14, Glasgow, March, 2018 and I have to make a choice.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Have you ever wondered how to say goodbye?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You know, to a friend’s Mum. Do you go in for a kiss in the cheek?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To a colleague, neighbour. Do you hug them or shrug them off?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What if that neighbour is your lover? What if there’s no other way to say goodbye than the one you know will send outcry burning through the matchstick men and women who love to strike up ideals.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I´m a walking meal for the mouths of normality.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And what does that mean, exactly?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We´re normal, he says with his frown but under his wife’s dress and flesh is an unborn baby blessed with one more hour of air before she miscarries and they carry that grief with them to the grave and they are not normal anymore, they are changed and aching.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And that old man, I make him sick, but he writes to Japan at the weekend to get a friend to send him the used knickers you can vend from a machine there. For completely normal purposes of course.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">See, normality is a crowd-sourced fantasy but it turns every single silent person in this park into an enemy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Teenage boys blunder ahead. How much thunder are they carrying in their heads? They should probably be at school drawing straight lines. Sprinting in straight lines. Thinking in straight lines. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">When the bell rings, it’s no wonder they want to straighten up anything that curves or bends.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Or her with the roll and chips and the kids. She’d take one salty glance at two guys kiss and be hissing vinegar our way. I´ve got nothing against gays, she´d say, but do you have to do it in front of my kids? And then she runs away. They never do stay long enough to look you in the eyes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And a bible basher rehashing lies about Jesus like how Poundland rip off Mini Cheddars and sell them on as Cheese Savouries. Because it seems to me that Jesus saved a lot of time when he died for all our crimes that he would’ve wasted teaching small minds that love is no sin. See him, he thinks its faith but under all that din, it tastes like cardboard and it smells like hate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I may sound angry, but I’m just scared. Because in the midst of this and this and that, there’s one person I’m not looking at. Because a face looks different in the daylight than in the night where at least there’s no-one staring but you’re always wearing worry lines and looking at the time because the last train home is always waiting.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Because this should be a small choice, and there’s all this noise in my head.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I should be holding a hand and I’m holding shame instead.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But I’m letting it go. No. I won’t keep weighing it up, I’ll put my muscles at ease.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And they’re 30% of my mass by the way. I’m a homosapien.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Elbows. Knees. 60% water flooding, 7% blood rushing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And half a percent beating heart.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So why is a goodbye kiss no walk in the park?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Half a percent doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s 15:15, Glasgow, March 2018 after all.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You’d think it was just about time for love.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-65823463226674612242016-04-03T12:28:00.000-04:002016-04-03T12:28:39.188-04:00All That Fits in 45 Minutes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Writing is a nice medium to communicate. I like the space for long form writing that blogging provides. At the same time, I've found that blogging is a fairly solitary experience: it doesn't provide the interaction and community that I enjoy. <a href="https://twitter.com/jaypsyd" target="_blank">Twitter</a> has ended up being my favorite platform to think, write, complain, and explore. While it's shorter, faster, and more ephemeral, it's also interative, connected, and dynamic.<br />
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That said, you all know I like talking. I think best--and am my best--when I'm talking and interacting with people. When I was writing my dissertation there was a period of time that I really struggled with the process. I discovered the process wasn't a struggle at all if I had someone to talk to about my ideas. Things come alive for me in the <a href="https://youtu.be/wapCTd5fS2Y" target="_blank">space between</a> you and me.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Cranky-Muse-Projects-179483738827546/" target="_blank">Cranky Muse Projects</a></td></tr>
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I've been thinking for a few years about podcasting. It's finally happened.<br />
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I hope you enjoy exploring this new medium with <a href="http://whatashrinkthinks.com/" target="_blank">Martha Crawford</a> and myself.<br />
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Join us on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/allthatfitsin45" target="_blank">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AllThatFitsin45" target="_blank">Twitter</a>. Listen to us on <a href="https://soundcloud.com/all-that-fits-in-45" target="_blank">SoundCloud</a>. Soon you'll also be able to hear us on iTunes and Stitcher.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-9605117934600509132016-01-17T10:57:00.002-05:002016-01-17T10:57:42.298-05:00Not to humiliate, but to win over<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The Power of Non-violence<br />Martin Luther King, Jr.<br />June 04, 1957<br /><br />From the very beginning there was a philosophy undergirding the Montgomery boycott, the philosophy of nonviolent resistance. There was always the problem of getting this method over because it didn’t make sense to most of the people in the beginning. We had to use our mass meetings to explain nonviolence to a community of people who had never heard of the philosophy and in many instances were not sympathetic with it. We had meetings twice a week on Mondays and on Thursdays, and we had an institute on nonviolence and social change. We had to make it clear that nonviolent resistance is not a method of cowardice. It does resist. It is not a method of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency. The nonviolent resister is just as opposed to the evil that he is standing against as the violent resister but he resists without violence. This method is nonaggressive physically but strongly aggressive spiritually.<div>
<br />Another thing that we had to get over was the fact that the nonviolent resister does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding. This was always a cry that we had to set before people that our aim is not to defeat the white community, not to humiliate the white community, but to win the friendship of all of the persons who had perpetrated this system in the past. The end of violence or the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community. A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption.<br /><br />Then we had to make it clear also that the nonviolent resister seeks to attack the evil system rather than individuals who happen to be caught up in the system. And this is why I say from time to time that the struggle in the South is not so much the tension between white people and Negro people. The struggle is rather between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory it will not be a victory merely for fifty thousand Negroes. But it will be a victory for justice, a victory for good will, a victory for democracy.<br /><br />Another basic thing we had to get over is that nonviolent resistance is also an internal matter. It not only avoids external violence or external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. And so at the center of our movement stood the philosophy of love. The attitude that the only way to ultimately change humanity and make for the society that we all long for is to keep love at the center of our lives. Now people used to ask me from the beginning what do you mean by love and how is it that you can tell us to love those persons who seek to defeat us and those persons who stand against us; how can you love such persons? And I had to make it clear all along that love in its highest sense is not a sentimental sort of thing, not even an affectionate sort of thing.<br /><br />The Greek language uses three words for love. It talks about eros. Eros is a sort of aesthetic love. It has come to us to be a sort of romantic love and it stands with all of its beauty. But when we speak of loving those who oppose us we’re not talking about eros. The Greek language talks about philia and this is a sort of reciprocal love between personal friends. This is a vital, valuable love. But when we talk of loving those who oppose you and those who seek to defeat you we are not talking about eros or philia. The Greek language comes out with another word and it is agape. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men. Biblical theologians would say it is the love of God working in the minds of men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. And when you come to love on this level you begin to love men not because they are likeable, not because they do things that attract us, but because God loves them and here we love the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. It is the type of love that stands at the center of the movement that we are trying to carry on in the Southland—agape.<br /><br />I am quite aware of the fact that there are persons who believe firmly in nonviolence who do not believe in a personal God, but I think every person who believes in nonviolent resistance believes somehow that the universe in some form is on the side of justice. That there is something unfolding in the universe whether one speaks of it as a unconscious process, or whether one speaks of it as some unmoved mover, or whether someone speaks of it as a personal God. There is something in the universe that unfolds for justice and so in Montgomery we felt somehow that as we struggled we had cosmic companionship. And this was one of the things that kept the people together, the belief that the universe is on the side of justice.<br /><br />God grant that as men and women all over the world struggle against evil systems they will struggle with love in their hearts, with understanding good will. Agape says you must go on with wise restraint and calm reasonableness but you must keep moving. We have a great opportunity in America to build here a great nation, a nation where all men live together as brothers and respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. We must keep moving toward that goal. I know that some people are saying we must slow up. They are writing letters to the North and they are appealing to white people of good will and to the Negroes saying slow up, you’re pushing too fast. They are saying we must adopt a policy of moderation. Now if moderation means moving on with wise restraint and calm reasonableness, then moderation is a great virtue that all men of good will must seek to achieve in this tense period of transition. But if moderation means slowing up in the move for justice and capitulating to the whims and caprices of the guardians of the deadening status quo, then moderation is a tragic vice which all men of good will must condemn. We must continue to move on. Our self—respect is at stake; the prestige of our nation is at stake. Civil rights is an eternal moral issue which may well determine the destiny of our civilization in the ideological struggle with communism. We must keep moving with wise restraint and love and with proper discipline and dignity.<br /><br />Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word. It is the word “maladjusted.” Now we all should seek to live a well—adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic militarism. I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things. I call upon you to be as maladjusted to such things. I call upon you to be as maladjusted as Amos who in the midst of the injustices of his day cried out in words that echo across the generation, “Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln who had the vision to see that this nation could not exist half slave and half free. As maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, “All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth who dreamed a dream of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to go out and change our world and our civilization. And then we will be able to move from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-79814723888474177192016-01-14T08:28:00.000-05:002016-01-14T08:28:08.050-05:00Are you racist? 'No' isn't a good enough answer.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro<br />
by Frederick Douglass<br />
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A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852<br />
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Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: <br />
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He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. <br />
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The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a Fourth of July Oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for me. It is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall seems to free me from embarrassment. <br />
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The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable-and the difficulties to he overcome in getting from the latter to the former are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence I will proceed to lay them before you. <br />
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This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. l am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young.-Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations. <br />
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Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is, that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and title of your "sovereign people" (in which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper. <br />
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But your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would certainly prove nothing as to what part I might have taken had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when, to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did so were accounted in their day plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to proceed.<br />
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Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated, by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back. <br />
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As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of. <br />
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The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present rulers. <br />
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Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. <br />
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Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. <br />
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These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians. <br />
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Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it. <br />
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On the 2nd of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day, whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. <br />
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"Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved." <br />
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Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, there fore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation's history-the very ringbolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. <br />
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Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. <br />
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From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day-cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. <br />
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The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in the munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed. <br />
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Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too-great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory. <br />
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They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. <br />
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They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settIed" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final"; not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. <br />
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How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defence. Mark them! Fully appreciating the hardships to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep, the corner-stone of the national super-structure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you. <br />
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Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. The din of business, too, is hushed. Even mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of a vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal interest-nation's jubilee. <br />
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Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do. You could instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, un folded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. They form the staple of your national po etry and eloquence. <br />
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I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a national trait-perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans and can be had cheap! will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely left in American hands. <br />
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I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine! <br />
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My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and His cause is the ever-living now. <br />
Trust no future, however pleasant,<br />
Let the dead past bury its dead; <br />
Act, act in the living present, <br />
Heart within, and God overhead. <br />
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We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child's share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have "Abraham to our father," when they had long lost Abraham's faith and spirit. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham's great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchers of the righteous? Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout-"We have Washington to our father."-Alas! that it should be so; yet it is. <br />
The evil, that men do, lives after them,<br />
The good is oft interred with their bones. <br />
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Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? <br />
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Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart." <br />
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But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.-The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fa thers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! <br />
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"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." <br />
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Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. <br />
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But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, "It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed." But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They ac knowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may con sent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man! <br />
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For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men! <br />
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Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.-There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. <br />
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What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. <br />
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What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed. <br />
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At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. <br />
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What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour. <br />
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Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. <br />
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Take the American slave-trade, which we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) "the internal slave-trade." It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words from the high places of the nation as an execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the Jaws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our doctors of divinity. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish them selves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon all those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass with out condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable. <br />
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Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and American religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh jobbers, armed with pistol, whip, and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-curdling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the centre of your soul The crack you heard was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow this drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shock ing gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me, citizens, where, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States. <br />
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I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell's Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming "hand-bills," headed cash for Negroes. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners; ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness. <br />
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The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number has been collected here, a ship is chartered for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed. <br />
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In the deep, still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead, heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. <br />
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Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight. <br />
Is this the land your Fathers loved,<br />
The freedom which they toiled to win?<br />
Is this the earth whereon they moved?<br />
Are these the graves they slumber in? <br />
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But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason and Dixon's line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women and children, as slaves, remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the star-spangled banner, and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman's gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moment's warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there is neither law nor justice, humanity nor religion. The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world that in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America the seats of justice are filled with judges who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding the case of a man's liberty, to hear only his accusers! <br />
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In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenceless, and in diabolical intent this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select. <br />
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I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were nor stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.<br />
<br />
At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the "mint, anise, and cummin"-abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from the church demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal!-And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to so licit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox to the beautiful, but treacherous, Queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country (with fractional exceptions) does not esteem "the Fugitive Slave Law" as a declaration of war against religious liberty, im plies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love, and good will towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as "scribes, pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe ofÝ mint, anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith." <br />
<br />
But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines, who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity. <br />
<br />
For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that "pure and undefiled religion" which is from above, and which is "first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and with out hypocrisy." But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation-a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, "Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons, and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea' when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow." <br />
<br />
The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in its connection with its ability to abolish slavery. <br />
<br />
The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that "There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it." <br />
<br />
Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday School, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery, and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds, and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive. <br />
<br />
In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared-men honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter denial of the authority of Him by whom they professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example of the Hebrews, and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, that we ought to obey man's law before the law of God.2 <br />
<br />
My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be supported, as the "standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ," is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn; Samuel J. May, of Syracuse; and my esteemed friend (Rev. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that, upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave's redemption from his chains. <br />
<br />
One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in Eng land towards a similar movement in that country. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and re stored him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. It was demanded in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, the Burchells, and the Knibbs were alike famous for their piety and for their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable instead of a hostile position towards that movement. <br />
<br />
Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from oppression in your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education; yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation-a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen, and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against the oppressor; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a three-penny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe "that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth," and hath commanded all men, everywhere, to love one another; yet you notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred) all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare before the world, and are understood by the world to declare that you "hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain in alienable rights; and that among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, "is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose," a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country. <br />
<br />
Fellow-citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad: it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. it fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement; the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet you cling to it as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation's bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever! <br />
<br />
But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that, the right to hold, and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic. <br />
<br />
Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped <br />
<br />
To palter with us in a double sense:<br />
And keep the word of promise to the ear,<br />
But break it to the heart. <br />
<br />
And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest impostors that ever practised on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape; but I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length; nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq. by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerrit Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. <br />
<br />
Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but interpreted, as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gate way? or is it in the temple? it is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slaveholding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can any where be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a tract of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, commonsense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality, or unconstitutionality of slavery, is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. <br />
<br />
Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. <br />
<br />
I have detained my audience entirely too long already. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion. <br />
<br />
Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. <br />
<br />
"The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from "the Declaration of Independence," the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated.-Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other. <br />
<br />
The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. "Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God." In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it: <br />
<br />
<br />
God speed the year of jubilee<br />
The wide world o'er!<br />
When from their galling chains set free,<br />
Th' oppress'd shall vilely bend the knee, <br />
<br />
And wear the yoke of tyranny<br />
Like brutes no more.<br />
That year will come, and freedom's reign.<br />
To man his plundered rights again<br />
Restore. <br />
<br />
God speed the day when human blood<br />
Shall cease to flow!<br />
In every clime be understood,<br />
The claims of human brotherhood,<br />
And each return for evil, good,<br />
Not blow for blow;<br />
<br />
That day will come all feuds to end,<br />
And change into a faithful friend<br />
Each foe.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-66293889910269953122015-06-22T08:42:00.001-04:002015-06-22T08:42:15.016-04:00Bach: The Well Tempered Clavier<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A <a href="http://bostonsoundlabs.com/about.html" target="_blank">friend of mine</a> recently posted this short film by <a href="http://alanwarburton.co.uk/" target="_blank">Alan Warburton</a> on Facebook. It's a wonderful graphic representation of the structure and code found in music.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/128275855" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br />
<a href="https://vimeo.com/128275855">Bach: The Well Tempered Clavier for Sinfini Music</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/alanwarburton">Alan Warburton</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-51059264780162456522015-06-21T19:50:00.001-04:002015-06-21T23:03:11.212-04:00Father's Day <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JdTBdcx3DTE/VYdG3Sl_WGI/AAAAAAAALKQ/CeuMclZL_MY/s1600/Cave%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bwinds-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JdTBdcx3DTE/VYdG3Sl_WGI/AAAAAAAALKQ/CeuMclZL_MY/s320/Cave%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bwinds-2.jpg" width="221" /></a></div>
It's Father's Day today. It seems like the thing to do is dig through photo albums and post some vintage paternal deliciousness of our childhoods. So dig I did, as I did with <a href="http://irreverentpsychologist.blogspot.com/2015/05/mothers-day.html" target="_blank">Mother's Day</a>, finding some of my favorite pictures of my dad.<br />
<br />
It's a little startling to look back at this pictures. Looking back I'm shocked that I've not ever really noticed how much I look like my father. We aren't doppelgängers, but if I look closely at his hands and arms, or especially his eyes, I can see my own.<br />
<br />
And that hair. That unruly hair. It has been the bane of my existence, requiring highly trained professions to shape and a cabinet full of products to seal in place. Dark--almost black--when I was young and now slowly softening into the same white hair.<br />
<br />
While my mom is outrageous and direct with her humor, my dad has always been a little more on the quiet side. He is the trixter of the family, always seeming to have secret knowledge of what is at hand (or about to be at hand) and engages in some sort of shenanigans behind the scenes.<br />
<br />
Update:<br />
<br />
We all that <a href="http://howwayleadsontoway.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Maggie Russell Berkes</a> to thanks for this little memory. She made me think of it and add it to this blog post. I have a feeling she's a trickster, too. It's why I like her.<br />
<br />
One year my father, sister, and I drove to Florida from our home in Ohio. Normal families might stop somewhere and spend the night. I'd even settle for a semi-normal family that stopped for a civilized meal and restroom break. Things worked differently in the Mihalko family.<br />
<br />
My dad appears to have had a bladder that could make it all the way to Florida. Our rest stops would last only long enough to fuel his car up (the worst trip ever was when we had a diesel car (I think I sustained permeant damage to my pistachio sized bladder). That, however, is a story for another day.<br />
<br />
We were just underway--somewhere in Ohio--and I already had to pee. I was trying to distract myself. I noticed out the window a particular bird that was flying backward.<br />
<br />
"Dad! What kind of bird is that that is flying backward?"<br />
<br />
"It's an Olentangy Bird, son. They are very rare."<br />
<br />
"Wow."<br />
<br />
I believed my dad, of course. I was in grade school and my dad knew everything. My how things change.<br />
<br />
I was in my late 30s when I next thought of the Olentangy Birds. I was driving down the highway looking for a place to stop and pee and noticed some birds flying backward.<br />
<br />
"That god damned trickster."<br />
<br />
I called my dad and probably called him a god damned trickster.<br />
<br />
Profanity is generally accepted in my family and expressed as a sign of love. My mother once called me a little prick. I responded that some day I hoped to be a big prick just like my daddy. Laughter ensued and we forgot whatever it was we were arguing about.<br />
<br />
"You remember those god damned birds that fly backward? Do you have any idea how many people I've told about the birds?<br />
<br />
My dad starts laughing. I could picture exactly how he looks when he laughs. He gets this trickster look in his eyes that is pure delight--his, not necessarily mine.<br />
<br />
"You're just figuring this out now? We were passing over the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olentangy_River" target="_blank">Olentangy River</a> and I saw the sign."<br />
<br />
I wonder what else I'll discover to be another one of my father's jokes?<br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dU8vAZmjVjs/VYdHTeA2M1I/AAAAAAAALPc/tMrqFpcsJwo/s1600/new%2Bborn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="318" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dU8vAZmjVjs/VYdHTeA2M1I/AAAAAAAALPc/tMrqFpcsJwo/s320/new%2Bborn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">welcoming me to the world</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ccbX14547LY/VYdGs6l_RUI/AAAAAAAALI4/gXwdL01c1E8/s1600/9%2Bmonths.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ccbX14547LY/VYdGs6l_RUI/AAAAAAAALI4/gXwdL01c1E8/s320/9%2Bmonths.jpg" width="319" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">shoulder rights are the best--wish I still fit</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-y2VigLGZsCY/VYdGu3rbkGI/AAAAAAAALJc/2ICqF6Ljz3s/s1600/Easter-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="293" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-y2VigLGZsCY/VYdGu3rbkGI/AAAAAAAALJc/2ICqF6Ljz3s/s320/Easter-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">napping appropriate at any age</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g3AwmKlkv_A/VYdHSxbmeZI/AAAAAAAALPM/rjFjFVyPqBE/s1600/Shaving%2Bwith%2Bdad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g3AwmKlkv_A/VYdHSxbmeZI/AAAAAAAALPM/rjFjFVyPqBE/s320/Shaving%2Bwith%2Bdad.jpg" width="304" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">my first of endless shaves....</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QSIbNOPiyQk/VYdHGvU8nJI/AAAAAAAALOI/dfDQ4pOWUF8/s1600/Like%2BFather%2BLike%2BSon-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QSIbNOPiyQk/VYdHGvU8nJI/AAAAAAAALOI/dfDQ4pOWUF8/s320/Like%2BFather%2BLike%2BSon-1.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">getting ready for Niagra Falls</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GjiWDtHC-gs/VYdHFjGMwkI/AAAAAAAALN8/dTwFAsWUJxc/s1600/Gone%2BFishing-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="316" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GjiWDtHC-gs/VYdHFjGMwkI/AAAAAAAALN8/dTwFAsWUJxc/s320/Gone%2BFishing-5.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">gone fishing<br />
(note our complimentary hats)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-54067010077720201672015-05-31T11:41:00.002-04:002015-05-31T11:47:32.460-04:00Happy Pride<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As Pride month begins, social media is filled with images and experiences representing the experiences of [mostly white] LGBT people in the United Sates. I try to spend some time looking outside of our shores to learn about the experiences of LGBT people in other countries, as well as the experiences of LGBT people in the United States that are not often represented in mainstream media.<br />
<br />
It is one way that I remind myself of the richness of our shared human experience.<br />
<br />
This clip comes from <a href="http://pinkdot.sg/" target="_blank">Pink Dot SG</a>. Started in <a href="https://youtu.be/sJ0aPyNbzns" target="_blank">Singapore</a>, Pink Dot festivals are being held through Asia (in in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHve01C0lbI" target="_blank">Toronto, Canada</a>, and <a href="https://youtu.be/CA8DKekewYc" target="_blank">Utah, USA</a>).<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HWFh2begEHM?rel=0" width="640"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-40443239922033441852015-05-29T12:12:00.000-04:002015-05-29T12:12:00.572-04:00I am waiting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I Am Waiting<br />by Lawrence Ferlinghetti<br /><br />I am waiting for my case to come up <br />and I am waiting <br />for a rebirth of wonder <br />and I am waiting for someone <br />to really discover America <br />and wail <br />and I am waiting <br />for the discovery <br />of a new symbolic western frontier <br />and I am waiting <br />for the American Eagle <br />to really spread its wings <br />and straighten up and fly right <br />and I am waiting <br />for the Age of Anxiety <br />to drop dead <br />and I am waiting <br />for the war to be fought <br />which will make the world safe <br />for anarchy <br />and I am waiting <br />for the final withering away <br />of all governments <br />and I am perpetually awaiting <br />a rebirth of wonder <br /><br />I am waiting for the Second Coming <br />and I am waiting <br />for a religious revival <br />to sweep thru the state of Arizona <br />and I am waiting <br />for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored <br />and I am waiting <br />for them to prove <br />that God is really American <br />and I am waiting <br />to see God on television <br />piped onto church altars <br />if only they can find <br />the right channel <br />to tune in on <br />and I am waiting <br />for the Last Supper to be served again <br />with a strange new appetizer <br />and I am perpetually awaiting <br />a rebirth of wonder <br /><br />I am waiting for my number to be called <br />and I am waiting <br />for the Salvation Army to take over <br />and I am waiting <br />for the meek to be blessed <br />and inherit the earth <br />without taxes <br />and I am waiting <br />for forests and animals <br />to reclaim the earth as theirs <br />and I am waiting <br />for a way to be devised <br />to destroy all nationalisms <br />without killing anybody <br />and I am waiting <br />for linnets and planets to fall like rain <br />and I am waiting for lovers and weepers <br />to lie down together again <br />in a new rebirth of wonder <br /><br />I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed <br />and I am anxiously waiting <br />for the secret of eternal life to be discovered <br />by an obscure general practitioner <br />and I am waiting <br />for the storms of life <br />to be over <br />and I am waiting <br />to set sail for happiness <br />and I am waiting <br />for a reconstructed Mayflower <br />to reach America <br />with its picture story and tv rights <br />sold in advance to the natives <br />and I am waiting <br />for the lost music to sound again <br />in the Lost Continent <br />in a new rebirth of wonder <br /><br />I am waiting for the day <br />that maketh all things clear <br />and I am awaiting retribution <br />for what America did <br />to Tom Sawyer <br />and I am waiting <br />for Alice in Wonderland <br />to retransmit to me <br />her total dream of innocence <br />and I am waiting <br />for Childe Roland to come <br />to the final darkest tower <br />and I am waiting <br />for Aphrodite <br />to grow live arms <br />at a final disarmament conference <br />in a new rebirth of wonder <br /><br />I am waiting <br />to get some intimations <br />of immortality <br />by recollecting my early childhood <br />and I am waiting <br />for the green mornings to come again <br />youth’s dumb green fields come back again <br />and I am waiting <br />for some strains of unpremeditated art <br />to shake my typewriter <br />and I am waiting to write <br />the great indelible poem <br />and I am waiting <br />for the last long careless rapture <br />and I am perpetually waiting <br />for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn <br />to catch each other up at last <br />and embrace <br />and I am awaiting <br />perpetually and forever <br />a renaissance of wonder</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-10245432095079988952015-05-17T00:42:00.002-04:002015-05-17T00:42:48.205-04:00Do I listen?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Take a listen to <a href="https://twitter.com/LLAmos" target="_blank">Lalita Amos</a> talk on two radical ideas about listening. She is <a href="https://twitter.com/LLAmos/status/599793676089315330" target="_blank">magical</a>.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"What I figured out is that I had had been bumping up against two broad common listening barriers... That is listening for agreement and listening for threat."</blockquote>
<br />
I hope you take a few minutes to listen to her, and think of the commentary in your mind that creates some of the noise that prevents us from truly listening to the other. You'll learn something--and laugh too. I promise.<br />
<br />
Maybe we can all learn to "squint with our ears to really hear what people are saying by listening more deeply and completely." Make your next conversation one that opens you to a "new future."<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a3EsF1QJG7M?rel=0" width="640"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-18472446416510614092015-05-10T22:50:00.000-04:002015-05-10T22:50:49.057-04:00Mother's Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-htxSCcJbuYk/VVAU6AOVmzI/AAAAAAAALFY/vZg4nt3XW24/s1600/birthday.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-htxSCcJbuYk/VVAU6AOVmzI/AAAAAAAALFY/vZg4nt3XW24/s200/birthday.jpeg" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom and me when I was 12 hours old</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I was looking through Facebook this evening and it was replete of funny, heartwarming, and bittersweet images friends with their mothers. A few years back I took custody of most of my childhood photos when my parents <strike>downsized</strike> and moved into a <strike>smaller</strike> home. My mom thought my Civil War era closet-free home might have more storage options than their new <strike>downsized</strike> home. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I digress.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If we paid attention in high school biology class we know the stuff our bodies and minds are made up of come from the genetic material of our mother and father. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Did you know that the genetic material of a baby <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-childrens-cells-living-in-mothers-brain/" target="_blank">spreads throughout the body of its mother</a> and circulates around her body for the <a href="https://youtu.be/6inwzOooXRU" target="_blank">rest of her life</a>? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Happy mother's day, mom. Is it a surprise that I grew up to become anything other than the irreverent psychologist? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WMqFR5c_KdA/VVAWkpU6J_I/AAAAAAAALFk/pH6MCBU21EM/s1600/clown.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WMqFR5c_KdA/VVAWkpU6J_I/AAAAAAAALFk/pH6MCBU21EM/s320/clown.jpeg" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Halloween with my sister, mom, and unidentified elf.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vH4YTxdQTUM/VVAWoQUjt0I/AAAAAAAALFs/f8qMcqh2RvA/s1600/graduation%2B2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vH4YTxdQTUM/VVAWoQUjt0I/AAAAAAAALFs/f8qMcqh2RvA/s320/graduation%2B2.jpeg" width="308" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My mom graduating from <a href="http://www.bw.edu/" target="_blank">BW</a> with a degree in psychology<br />My dad in all his 70s glory<br />My sister demonstrating her early superiority</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fPJtlIqSJ3k/VVAWs70t9iI/AAAAAAAALF0/UbAwqtOKYk0/s1600/graduation.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fPJtlIqSJ3k/VVAWs70t9iI/AAAAAAAALF0/UbAwqtOKYk0/s320/graduation.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graduating from <a href="http://www.bw.edu/" target="_blank">BW</a> with my degree in psychology</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-77660159379887645352015-03-27T12:09:00.000-04:002015-03-27T12:09:04.578-04:00That's So Gay | The Gay Sweater<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DFTIeEUcRo4?rel=0" width="640"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-38828884703060298272015-02-22T10:01:00.001-05:002015-02-22T10:01:22.969-05:00Do you know Yusor Abu-Salha?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
Take a few moments out of your day to <a href="http://storycorps.org/?p=57033" target="_blank">listen to this heartbreaking interview</a> Yusor Abu-Salha did with her teacher for <a href="http://storycorps.org/" target="_blank">Story Corps</a>. Yusor, if you don't know, was recently murdered in North Carolina. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A man "<a href="http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2015/02/21/5530144/for-years-craig-stephen-hicks.html#.VOnsi1ripYs" target="_blank">upset about parking</a>" stormed into her apartment and murdered Yusor along with her husband, Deah Shaddy Barakat, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are so many senseless murders. Every day, more happen, and we lose more voices as the death toll adds up. Take a moment to learn what the world lost <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/13/yusor-abu-salha-more-than-a-victim-of-the-chapel-hill-shooting" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/02/13/385846609/chapel-hill-shooting-victims-were-radiant-teacher-says" target="_blank">here</a>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From the <a href="http://storycorps.org/?p=57033" target="_blank">Story Corps interview</a>:<br />
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; height: 1px; margin-top: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px;">
<br style="margin-top: 0px;" />
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2015/02/21/5530144/for-years-craig-stephen-hicks.html#storylink=cpy</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
"I would like people to know and remember her as a practicing Muslim, as a daughter, and above all, as a good human being. When we write our comments on report cards we say they exceeded our expectations. She exceeded our expectations."<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-24896657266153255332015-02-21T10:23:00.001-05:002015-02-21T10:23:35.164-05:00Take the Alan Cumming's Celibacy Challenge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bYXxMO_mTBY?rel=0" width="640"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-35954429087531196072015-02-20T14:09:00.000-05:002015-02-20T14:10:48.811-05:00Gay and Lesbian Senior Citizens Share Some Advice<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Just the other day I was talking to my mother about how damaging it is that gay men lost nearly a whole generation of men who would have been the elders of my community now.<br />
<br />
...and now I come across this video. Take a listen to the touching advice shared by a group of gay and lesbian senior citizens.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jMcFZxGdaV8?rel=0" width="640"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-28046781931068553662015-01-30T08:49:00.000-05:002015-01-30T08:49:04.957-05:00Who can resist baby elephants?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tmHnGvhHq7A?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-90122470957150105382015-01-11T11:20:00.001-05:002015-01-11T11:20:34.988-05:00All the Little Things<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/hIhsv18lrqY?rel=0" width="640"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-48639219309541969212015-01-01T11:05:00.000-05:002015-01-01T11:05:01.096-05:00Given a chance [we all] flourish | Happy New Year <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6T2Ns9Hf-2M?rel=0" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
Thanks for the link, <a href="http://howwayleadsontoway.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Maggie</a>. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-54294739417811929052014-12-14T11:02:00.000-05:002014-12-14T11:02:04.453-05:00You know I'm all about that space.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/kHy08ZPav88?rel=0" width="640"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-40021916423035684712014-11-15T10:12:00.002-05:002014-11-15T10:12:22.331-05:00Language of the Unheard<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="394" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/25837653?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="700"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-74722891749415116082014-11-08T22:58:00.000-05:002014-11-08T22:58:06.974-05:00Love and Rubbish <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
"In the five years I've lived here nothing good has happened."<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="394" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/52681677?byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="700"></iframe><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-83452170971761087442014-11-05T07:35:00.000-05:002014-11-05T07:35:09.677-05:00And you, and you, and you, have got to give them hope<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/X9vol-8HYEc?rel=0" width="640"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-9707888474596590002014-11-02T14:54:00.000-05:002014-11-02T14:54:22.165-05:00My Favorite Picture of You<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/77062487?byline=0&portrait=0" width="700" height="394" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-83628558324735636982014-09-21T07:37:00.001-04:002014-09-21T07:37:54.845-04:00DSM 5 Disco<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This little ditty, which caused me to snort coffee out my nose, comes to us courtesy of the blog <a href="http://www.madinamerica.com/" target="_blank">Mad in America</a>.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0rm5p3DTyE8?rel=0" width="640"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8975835436255022813.post-49929776395339008822014-08-31T14:37:00.000-04:002014-08-31T14:37:31.491-04:00Run José | The True Casualties of War<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/101898193?byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="640"></iframe></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00437830556630350204noreply@blogger.com0