The year is still young and a few of us are barely clinging to our resolutions. Whether we vowed to be more active, eat healthier or drink more water, there’s a variety of things to keep track of (and make us feel bad about ourselves). Are you using …
Just last week we had heard the rumors that Samsung was planning on acquiring BlackBerry. The rumors were later refuted by BlackBerry themselves who claimed that there were no such talks taking place. However a recent report from The Wall Street Journal has revealed that Samsung and BlackBerry are in talks, just not about an acquisition.
Instead it seems that both companies are talking about possibly extending their partnership. In the report, Samsung Mobile boss J.K. Shin revealed, “We want to work with BlackBerry and develop this partnership, not acquire the company.” This follows a partnership from back in November of 2014 where both companies would team up to offer end-to-end security via tools such as BES 12 and Samsung KNOX.
In fact in the interview, Shin was quoted as saying, “We are satisfied with the progress of Knox, including the quality of security and protection that it enables, and remain committed to Knox over the long term.” That being said it is unclear as to what the extension of their partnership could mean.
Could it be that Samsung plans to use more of BlackBerry’s technology in future handsets? Either way this isn’t the first time we’ve heard that Samsung might be interested in BlackBerry, so perhaps official statements from both companies should help put the rumors to rest.
Samsung Clarifies BlackBerry Acquisition Rumors , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Earlier today we reported that according to a rumor, the Samsung Galaxy S6 could feature a glass and metal design. Now there have also been rumors that Samsung is planning on launching two phones. One would be the Galaxy S6, and the other would be a variant of the Galaxy S6 where both edges of the phone would feature a curved display.
This is basically like the Galaxy Note Edge, except that instead of one side, both sides will be curved. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of this rumor, but thanks to the folks at SamMobile, they have more or less “confirmed” that this will indeed be the case. The upcoming Galaxy S6 Edge (or whatever it will be called) will feature the same display technology found on the Galaxy Note Edge.
This also means that it will come with the same features as the Galaxy Note Edge, such as the ability to display panels from Yahoo! Finance, news, sports, a briefing panel, and even a pedometer panel. It will also display favorite apps, contacts, and more specially designed apps will be created and available for download via Samsung’s app store.
The edges can also be customized and users can choose which panel they would prefer as their main, depending on which hand they tend to hold their phone in. The edge can also light up when a call or notification is received, and users will also be able to customize their contacts and assign to them individual colors. In any case take it with a grain of salt for now, but check back with us later for the details.
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge To Sport Dual Edge Displays [Rumor] , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Chrome OS has seen some interesting new features of late. Remote Desktop sharing finally hit Chrome, and you can now run Linux in a window without leaving Chrome. Though both are still works in progress, they signal a new direction for Chrome OS wherein the “browser OS” gets a bit more desktop. There may be another cool feature rolling in, … Continue reading
This piece comes to us from Harold Pollack, a professor at the University of Chicago and a writer at the blog SameFacts.com.
I wonder what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would think about the current health reform debate. OK, I don’t really wonder. Here, for example, are his comments, apparently made here in Chicago:
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
Martin Luther King supported health care as a human right. He also knew how far we had to go as a nation in making that right a reality.
King was the energizing force behind the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). I suspect he would be both ashamed and unsurprised to see his home region so resistant to the basic expansion of health insurance coverage to Americans with incomes below the poverty line. To some extent, the extent of southern resistance is obscured by maps such as this one, that display which states have rejected the Medicaid expansion around the country:
Many of the shaded states such as Wyoming and Montana are huge but sparsely populated. Others such as Wisconsin have small populations left uncovered for other reasons.
Harvard post-doctoral researcher Laura Yasaitis is an expert at drawing different kinds of maps. At my request, she made me a map in which the size of every state was proportional to the number of people who landed in the “Medicaid gap.” (She couldn’t quite do that, since states such as California and New York would simply vanish. We drew each of these states as if they had shut out 2,000 state residents instead of zero.)
When we did all that, here’s what the U.S. map would look like if it were scaled by the number of affected people in each state:
Yeah, it looks a bit different, doesn’t it? Nearly 90 percent of U.S. adults who fell in the Medicaid coverage gap live in the south.
These states have chosen to shut their poorest residents out of Medicaid. They have chosen to do so despite 100 percent federal subsidies (tapering down to the scandalously low level of… 90 percent) for such expanded coverage. Two border states have rejected this hard-line approach. Arkansas reached a challenging compromise with the federal government. So did Kentucky. These states displayed the nation’s largest declines in their proportion of uninsured residents.
Meanwhile, the biggest southern states with large, poor, non-white populations have conspicuously demurred — despite ample evidence that the Obama administration is willing to make significant compromises with conservative governors and Republican legislatures across the nation to make this work.
Why have southern states have taken such a hard line that punishes so many people? I suspect the best explanation is complicated. Political party, the region’s historic legacy of racial inequality, the limited political influence of poor people –not least the word Obama in Obamacare — all surely play a role. Whatever the explanation, millions of the nation’s poorest people are locked out of basic health coverage.
If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, I am confident that he would be supporting causes such as North Carolina’s Moral Mondays movement, which is working to expand Medicaid. I wish they had more company. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has recently announced that poverty reduction would be a major theme of his potential 2016 presidential run. He didn’t earn much credibility on this subject last time around. If Romney is looking for his own “Sista Souljah moment” to confront his party’s excessively conservative base, he might start by urging Republican colleagues across the south to address this disgraceful situation.
This year the Oscar nominees were announced on January 15, which happens to be the actual birth date of Martin Luther King Jr., so what could be more appropriate than a Best Picture nod for Selma, the stirring civil rights drama that features him? The movie’s script did not get nominated, however, and perhaps this is related to the controversy swirling around its portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson.
A top Johnson aide has called on people to stay away from the film altogether, even as some of its defenders charge that such powerful (white) men cannot stomach a project by an African American woman, one that privileges grassroots agency over the perspective of official Washington. So with Selma having opened nationwide recently, let us take stock of the ongoing debate.
As a historian devoted to chronicling history from the “bottom up,” I found Selma to be great in dramatizing this saga of civil rights activists putting their bodies on the line for the sake of democracy’s bedrock principle: the right to vote. Director Ava DuVernay draws us — hurls us — into that time, having us accompany Martin and Coretta Scott King to Oslo for his Nobel Peace Prize, only to have have a bomb blast interrupt our reverie, murdering four little children on their way to Sunday School. That this tragedy in fact took place the previous year does not matter, for the dramatic license serves the historical truth, with so many African Americans — including King and his family — in constant danger of racist attacks.
In this and countless other scenes the director conveys the emotional reality of the movement without sacrificing historical nuance: no mean feat. Indeed, when the estate of Martin Luther King refused to allow DuVernay to quote from his talks, she brilliantly utilized her invented speeches to relay historical factors that furthered the storyline. Thanks to the film, my students will grasp the deep significance of this totemic civil rights event.
But alas the film’s LBJ piece is inaccurate in a fundamental way, leaving the impression that Johnson supposedly was not a fan of voting rights legislation — had to be convinced — when that is not true. Selma does present the real enemies of voting rights as being Alabama Governor George Wallace and Selma Sheriff Jim Clark, but it leaves the impression that the president basically saw the voting rights bill as an impediment to his anti-poverty program, when in fact he wanted to introduce the voting rights measure as soon as it would be likely to pass.
The film has the civil rights leaders, not the White House, drafting the bill and also cuts out the central Johnson administration role in the crucial court ruling that protected the marchers from the Alabama state police. Worse, Selma has the president ordering the FBI to spy on King at that time, when it was the FBI Director who considered him a menace and wanted to weaken the voting rights movement by harassing its leader. As the historical record makes clear, LBJ was in favor of voting rights, and MLK knew it, with any disagreements purely tactical ones.
Selma’s distortion with regard to LBJ is a shame, given that overall the film is so fine. And, yes, this motion picture is itself historic, as the project of an African American woman. But what a scandal that such a turn of events should still be historic in 2015. And what a scandal that the Voting Rights Act itself has been eviscerated by the Supreme Court: the same court that has sanctioned the outsized influence of money in the political process.
“It is important for the people to remain vigilant and struggle against these new devices. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, nothing can stop the power of a determined people committed to make a difference,” Congressman John Lewis reminds us. This year, as we mark the fiftieth anniversary of those voting rights actions in which Lewis almost died, let us redouble our efforts against the threats to our democracy.
Napoleon Bonaparte has a lot to say about Sunday’s improbable NFC Seahawk victory over the Green Bay Packers that sent Seattle to its second consecutive Super Bowl.
As in, “If courage is the first characteristic of the soldier, perseverance is the second.” My home team offense stunk for 55 minutes of a 60-minute game, but gosh darn it, they did hang in there.
And, “Great men are rarely known to fail in their most perilous enterprises. Is it because they are lucky that they become great? No, being great, they have been able to master luck.”
Napoleon was not a member of the Twelfth Man but he did have a lot of experience with success and failure. He’s a recurring character in my Ethan Gage series of historical novels, and I’ve compiled many of his maxims for a book I’m preparing called Napoleon’s Rules: Life and Career Lessons from Bonaparte.
Think of the parallels. A surprising rise: the Corsican loner, and Seattle’s roster of unheralded draft picks. An average height quarterback: Napoleon was 5-6 in American inches, normal for his time, and Russell Wilson is 5-10. Numerous comebacks: Napoleon from disaster in the Holy Land and Russia, the Seahawks from that 3-3 start.
So what advice would Napoleon have for the ‘Hawks?
On game referees: “Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.”
On Wilson’s famous game preparation: “Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.”
On getting fit: “I have destroyed the enemy merely by marches.”
On noise at Century Link Field: “Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.”
On coming from behind: “To have a right estimate of a man’s character, we must see him in misfortune…True character stands the test of emergencies.”
On controlling the game: “Circumstances? What are circumstances? I make circumstances.”
On coach pep talks: “It is not that speeches at the opening of a battle makes soldiers brave. The old veterans scarcely hear them, and recruits forget them at the first boom of the cannon. Their usefulness likes in their effect on the course of the campaign, in neutralizing rumors and false reports, in maintaining a good spirit in the camp, and in furnishing matter for campfire talk.”
On sportswriters: “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
On team spirit: “The moral is to the physical as three to one.”
On game preparation: “All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.”
On game gumption: “He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”
On winning the Super Bowl: “Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.”
Late 2014 and we are in a space of reflection, the subject of which is everyday life in the African metropolis, that cultural ‘elsewhere’ which the discipline of art history usually shrouds in mystery and myth.
We see a giant bicycle, fashioned out of ropes and wood; a miniature kaleidoscopic city crafted from cardboard and paper and a series of intricate drawings, offering dystopian visions of a post-apocalyptic future sketched out in remarkable detail. And in various corners sit several examples of anthropomorphic sculptures, transforming waste and weapons into objects of art.
What is missing, of course, is that enduring image of traditional African art: the tribal mask that long ago served as inspiration and the currency of cultural renewal for the twentieth century’s European avant-garde. And what is singularly absent too is the continent’s ubiquitous synecdoche so beloved by cultural tourists: exotic figures with elongated limbs, hand-carved or painted against orange sunsets, complete with wildlife, and luscious fauna.
Luminós/C/ity.Ordinary Joy: From the Pigozzi Contemporary African Art Collection, the inaugural exhibition recently presented at Harvard University’s new Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at the Hutchins Center in Cambridge, Mass., offered a compelling and eclectic assemblage of different artistic approaches, loosely structured around the theme of the African city.
Photo by Dean Kaufman.
A much welcomed and highly anticipated addition to Harvard University’s long established gallery and museum circuit, the gallery’s self declared remit is to create a space – the first on any US campus – where, to paraphrase the Hutchins Center founding director Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.: “the art and artists of the African Diaspora are at home and in constant movement, where voices are heard in both startling clarity and productive cacophony”.
Conceived by Professor Gates and designed by British Ghanaian architect David Adjaye, the Cooper Gallery opened its doors to critical acclaim in September last year, and the inaugural exhibition reflected this unique mission in interesting and surprising ways. While it provided a sense of place for a diverse body of artistic practices from the continent rarely seen in the US, it also spoke confidently to the conundrum of collecting and exhibiting African artworks, and to the critical question of how these works translate and resonate in environments far removed from their indigenous context.
Complex questions without doubt, and guest curators David Adjaye and Mariane Ibrahim-Lenhardt – working in close collaboration with gallery director Vera Grant – have eloquently mastered the challenging task by choosing a fine and thought-provoking selection from a fascinating collection historically steeped in controversy.
The 98 artworks by twenty-one artists were chosen from several thousand pieces assembled by Italian businessman and philanthropist Jean Pigozzi and associates for his private collection, The Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC). Since its inception in the late 1980s the collection has been the subject of the most extraordinary set of claims and counter claims; not in small part due to its original, arguably somewhat limiting if not primitivist, collecting criteria: eligible artists had to be black, live and work on the continent and ideally ‘untainted’ by formal art education.
So how does one then select respectfully, responsibly and strategically from such a vast repertoire of visual stimuli, all subject to the aforementioned claims? And in a way that does not appear reductive? How does one link art works by more than mere shared geographies and subvert stereotypes rather than confirming them, whilst preserving the ‘quirk’ and idiosyncracy of each? And how does one avoid the dangers of isolating artistic practice originating from one place on our planet from the wider discourse of art?
One very remarkable and thought-provoking way of meeting this challenge of re-assembling the collection in a way that is meaningful to a new audience, was to invite David Adjaye – the architect tasked with transforming the former commercial space into an avant-garde gallery complex – to also curate the first exhibition. This is a radical and interesting proposition because it is one that opens up a unique dialogue between art and environment, via eight discrete curatorial spaces, painted in deep charcoal tones, of different heights and configurations. Intriguingly, Adjaye designed the exterior façade of the Cooper Gallery to represent a Kumasi forest, inviting passers-by to glimpse inside through its wooden beams and glass panels, enabling the inside to speak to the outside, and vice versa.
Considering the distinct architectural lens applied to this curatorial exercise, it is of no surprise that Luminós/C/ity.Ordinary Joy opened with an intricate architectural sculpture, the work of Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez. Meticulously crafted, the artist’s vision of a brilliant African city encapsulated the exhibition’s premise beautifully: Kingelez’ post-modernist buildings fabricated from cardboard and other found materials are fueled by the desire to create different, new and necessary worlds; to become active agents in the process of shaping the future – an aspiration shared by many of the artists and protagonists represented throughout the exhibition.
Image: Bodys Isek Kingelez, Kimbembele Ihunga, 1994. Photo by Dean Kaufman.
Utopian and fantastic at first glance, these miniature model cities also point towards another darker reality, namely the deeply problematic building projects frequently to be found throughout the African megalopolis: excesses of urban planning, fairytale monuments financed by World Bank loans impossible to repay or complete: shattered dreams of development manifest as half-finished ruins of modernity amidst chaos, corruption and post-colonial disillusionment.
Yet it is precisely within these spaces of turmoil that the artists – and the curators – seek moments of ‘ordinary joy’. This is brilliantly illustrated in the exhibition’s numerous examples of aspirational street and studio photography: the ‘dream-factories’ where artists become ‘merchants of illusion’, transforming their clientele into modern citizens of the world, posed against elaborately painted backdrops that feature contemporary interiors, opulent furnishings and Manhattan skylines (courtesy of Ghanaian artist Philip Kwame Apagya). In the grand portraiture of Malian pioneers Seidou Keita and Malick Sidibé, or the joie de vivre documentary images captured by renowned Congolese photographer Jean Depara, we encounter in its most pristine, original form, beautiful people in hedonistic moments of self-fashioning, members of an emergent cosmopolitan class in the decades leading up to independence, and later in the post-colony.
The art of recycling and assemblage emerges as another recurring leitmotif in the city: reclaiming discarded objects to transfigure Europe’s waste into Africa’s growth, conceptual artists Romuald Hazoumé, Calixte Dakpogan and Concalo Mabunda endow miscellaneous items of rubbish and discarded weapons with cubist-like human faces. Gasoline canisters with eyes made of mobile phones and mouths created from tinned fish cans eerily resemble traditional African masks, the quintessential signifier and product for consumption of Africa in the West. Collectively, they evoke centuries of European powers stripping the continent of its natural resources: canned sardines become synonymous of human cargo and the sinister horrors of contemporary migration and human trafficking, discarded mobile phones recall the ongoing and brutal mineral extraction in the Congo.
Image: Installation view, showing the work of Chéri Samba, Gonçalo Mabunda (centre), and Kudzanai Chiurai. Photo by Renée Mussai.
Playful, cynical and uncanny, these global junk artworks offer damning socio-political commentary on the legacies of cold-war politics, and a subtle critique of our capitalist, exploitative consumer cultures, as well as the market place associated with contemporary art practice.
One of the exceptional charms of Luminós/C/ity.Ordinary Joy is its power to offer its audience different experiences and sensations as one moves from one exhibition chamber, alcove or corridor to the next, owing much to Adjaye’s intuitive gallery design which offers multiple points of engagement and pathways for discovery.
A chilling sense of unease accompanies Kudzanei Chiurai’s post-modern rendition of the Last Supper morphing into a tableaux of violence, or Nandipha Mntambo’s looped video of a lone bullfighter locked in a process of endless sublimation between public spectacle and private self, masculine and feminine, past and present. These challenging and historically laden contemporary moving image works are quickly diffused by the lighthearted humour inherent in exhibits such as Samuel Kane Kwei’s elaboratively decorated Mercedes-shaped coffin-car, produced in the artist’s family carpentry business in Ghana in the early 1990s.
Image: Installation view, showing Mercedes (1993) by Samuel Kane Kwei in the centre. Photo by Dean Kaufman.
J.D. ‘Okhai Ojakere’s portraits of extraordinary Nigerian hairstyles, organzsed in a large grid, again reveal a distinctive architectural sensibility, that echo in their taxonomy the industrial buildings projects of German artist duo Bernd and Hilla Becher. The final room dominated by a series of intricate drawings by Abu Bakarr Mansaray threatened to envelop the visitor in disturbing visions of a dystopian future, infused with a dark militarism and epic fantasy – only to be rescued by the sheer scale and fun of Titos Mabota’s colossal bicycle sculpture installed at the far end of the gallery.
Image: Installation view, showing Titos Mabota, Rural Bicycle (1998) and Abu Bakarr Mansaray, Sinister Project (2006). Photo by Renée Mussai.
At times, one is overcome by the multiplicity of themes and genres on display: the sense of ‘everything and nothing’ that inevitably accompanies the bricolage of curating out of large, mixed media collections, and the feeling of dislocation that ensues. The curators’ decision to adopt the theme of the African city as the over-arching narrative served as a useful means for the difficult task of extracting multi-faceted cultural meaning from the pantomime of pre and post-colonial history: the tension created between exuberant articulations of urban city life, the formation of new subjectivities and performative selves, somber reflections on violence, destruction and death, apocalyptic visions of state surveillance and civil chaos, utopian fantasies and sharp environmental critique – all mediated via the many transitory spaces between the private and the public.
Encompassing five decades of drawing, installation, photography, painting, video and sculpture in Africa, Luminós/C/ity.Ordinary Joy was a triumphant and bold inaugural offering from a distinctive gallery space that promises to its local community – both inside and outside the academy – many transformative encounters to come.
Renée Mussai
London, January 2015
Luminós/C/ity.Ordinary Joy: From the Pigozzi Contemporary African Art Collection was on display at the Hutchins Center’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., between 21 September 2014 – 8 January 2015. The accompanying catalogue (edited by Vera Grant and featuring 97 image plates and several contextual essays) is available from the Cooper Gallery, and Harvard University Press.
TLC fans have never been too proud to beg for new music from the legendary R&B girl group, and now T-Boz and Chilli are answering the call.
TLC has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $150,000 from fans to fund the group’s fifth and final album. The Kickstarter page explains that the money will go toward an in-studio writing session, and fans who contribute can claim a number of rewards, including autographed lyrics, concert tickets and even a TLC slumber party.
Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas spoke with HuffPost Live’s Caitlyn Becker on Monday about the upcoming album and what fans can expect. According to Chilli, the idea for new music got serious after VH1 produced “CrazySexyCool,” a film about TLC’s career.
“Once the movie came out — our biopic — we had so many fans asking us to do more music,” Chilli said. “They almost feel like they’re already invested in us. They’ve sent us ideas … and it’s crazy, because we’ve been doing this since our ‘FanMail’ album — we had names of all of our fans inside of the CD.”
The new album will be the group’s second without Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, who died in a car accident in 2002. The pair discussed their “new normal” as a duo after Left Eye’s death. Lopes will forever be part of the group’s music, T-Boz said, and that will continue with the potential upcoming records.
“She’s always incorporated no matter what, but we’re coming up with how to do that. But, you know, she lives within us every time,” T-Boz said. “This is TLC, even though she’s not here.”
Chilli added that news of a new album would make Left Eye as happy as anyone.
“She would want us to keep moving on like this,” Chilli said. “It helps to keep her memory alive, and we always say TLC is meant to be, TLC is forever. We have to keep it going to make that possible.”
Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with TLC here.
Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live’s morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!
*Dove of Peace sitting on a ledge in NYC, January 18th 2015
Photo Credit: Pierre Hauser
“We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.”
Martin Luther King – Strength to Love
It is always such a gift to have the opportunity to start my blog for the New Year with a post on our holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose all-too-brief life and leadership reflect not only our nation’s founding ideals of equal justice, but also the transformational power of love. Two years ago, one month after the tragic violence in Newtown, I wrote an open letter to President Obama suggesting that we could try and emulate Dr. King and make something of the darkness and transform the grief into gold by taking action. Last year, my MLK Day post was an anecdote of a surprising gift of loving generosity that I received from a man who was living on the streets of San Francisco.
At the Flawless Foundation, we are launching into 2015 with the theme of Flawless Conversations and these conversations are not always easy ones to have. Today on the remembrance of the birth of our beloved civil rights icon who was himself cut down so young by violence and hate, we must dig deep to reflect and ponder what he might be thinking these days. Over the past few months our nation has confronted anew painful questions of whether equal justice is possible, especially in those fraught moments when law enforcement officials and citizens come face to face, so often in fear and mutual mistrust. In holding space to heal that still-open wound, I share two hopeful interactions I have witnessed involving police officers and community members that have touched me deeply. They were moments that combined the elements of “the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove” and reveal how the light of human love can illuminate the shadow.
A few years ago, the City of Portland, Oregon was under federal investigation for police brutality, especially in their handling of people who have mental illness. New training was instituted and radical change occurred. It was a soul stirring privilege to bear witness to this change during a sad, dangerous incident on the street with a man who was in the throes of a psychotic episode. Being a mental health advocate, I always stop to analyze the way the police interact with people on the street. On this miraculous day I was inspired to see human connection and respect as three police officers stood steady and strong in holding a safe space for this man who was in crisis. They looked at him through the eyes of love and compassion which wasn’t easy as this man was screaming, hallucinating and taking his clothes off in the middle of the street. One of them spoke quietly at the perfect moment and the man surrendered gently into the police car. It was a moment that ended in peace because of an act not only of professionalism, but of simple, human grace.
This poignant brand of human respect was present again the other day when I was in a taxi in New York City. The driver, an African-American man who was probably in his 70s seemed frail and had an air of deep fatigue about him. In fact, it crossed my mind that he might be feeling ill. As we were stuck in traffic on the West Side Highway, he rolled down his window in the freezing cold to get some air. At the same time,a young, white police officer next to us rolled down his window and made strong eye contact with the driver from the elevated position in his official tank like vehicle. The two of them started to commiserate about the traffic and the weather; the police officer was incredibly sweet and tender in his interaction with the cab driver. He started the conversation with, “Hey buddy, you look tired?” “This traffic is brutal for us all” and as the two engines revved to go through the now green light, he said, “God bless you buddy — take care!”
Seemingly small acts — shining light into the darkness. But on this day when we honor the power of nonviolence to change hearts and minds, is it too much to believe that such compassion, connection and love can define the relationship between citizens of every race and mental condition and the police officers who bravely dedicate themselves to protect and serve our communities? And not just between police officers and the people who they are serving but between us all. Can we connect as members of the human family like this not just today but everyday?
I believe we know Dr. King’s answer. In his sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on February 2, 1968, Dr. King preached to the congregation ” Don’t give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.”
Today, on this sacred day when we remind ourselves of Dr. King’s confidence that the arc of history may be long, but it bends towards justice, let’s create and acknowledge acts of love that reflect his enduring spirit. Let’s be generous, let’s be love. Use these illuminating stories of human connection to inspire and then add to the list. Let’s remind ourselves that it isn’t easy to combine a tough mind and a tender heart; it takes determination and commitment, both in our own lives and as a society.
The other day I noted to my son that his teacher’s birthday was the first day back to school after the holiday vacation and that everyone forgot to celebrate her birthday. My son said to me, “Ok Mom, let’s get Ms. Nelson a present and be the light in the dark on that one.” We can even add an “apple for the teacher.” Around the country today, there will be large ceremonies and community service projects honoring Dr. King’s birthday. In our family, we have our own moment of honor planned, including a small act of individual kindness. On this day of love, of moral excellence and of generosity, for us it is birthday gift delivery and an apple for the teacher. What will it be for you?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
