Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

The followers and enablers of Trump have contributed to the heartbreaking division of this country. I believe we are as deeply divided as we were at the time of the Civil War, and while I am hopeful that the Biden administration will provide some services for some people, I sit with these words of the man some of us remember today: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
—A Time to Break the Silence: April 4, 1967

My daughter tells me that the school where she works, in a little town called Needville, Texas, is so deeply racist that it does not even name this day. The school calendar says simply January 18: student holiday. In many Texas towns, there are no educational programs, posters, movie showings, or events to teach people about the Rev. Dr. King. Many people will not even speak Dr. King's name. 

Here in Portland there is a march in his memory, and I was invited to come as a photographer. Knowing sadly that physical distancing is impossible in a march, and because of the Covid spike, I stayed home. 

Staying home, enjoying the glorious sunshine, I took a walk around my neighborhood and spotted this pierced "heart" of moss. I had just read this brilliant book review by Peter Conrad that includes this paragraph: "The British, wanting to look aristocratically nonchalant, claimed they acquired their empire in a fit of absent-mindedness. Americans hid their scheming behind sanctimonious cant about freedom and human rights: they dreamed up the United Nations but have consistently flouted its principles, no longer even pay it their annual dues and carry on regardless with their godly mission to Americanise the rest of the world, by force if necessary." It ends, "Trump, we can now see, is America’s revenge on itself."

The review is brilliant. Read it if you have time.