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January 2004

January 31, 2004

Walter Cronkite said it right oh so many years ago:

"As a nation, what are we doing to our children?"

The time for change is now. NOW! Make this country a place worth living in again, a place that aspires to great ideals and a place of compassion and justice. If not for yourself then for the children. They certainly deserve better.

Posted Written at 1:37 AM

January 30, 2004

No. There just isn't sanity in this. There is simply no justification for this fucked up court case. I hope they'll take the damn thing to the U.S. Supreme Court and get this shit settled once and for all. This bullshit of prosecuting gay people differently than straight people is fucking assinine.

Kansas Court Upholds Tougher Sentences For Gay Sex

(Topeka, Kansas) The Kansas Court of Appeals Friday upheld a 17-year prison sentence handed a teenager convicted of having sex with another teen.

Matthew Limon was 18 years old when he was convicted in 2000 of having consensual oral sex with a 14-year-old boy at a private group home for people with developmental disabilities in Paola.

Limon never denied the sex nor that it was with a minor. But, that he would have served a maximum of only 15 months in jail under the Kansas law had the other teenager been female.

Because the state's so-called "Romeo and Juliet" law applies only to heterosexuals, Limon was convicted under the much harsher state sodomy law.

The ACLU, which represented Limon argued that the Kansas "Romeo and Juliet" law is similar to the Texas law the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in June in its historic decision in Lawrence v. Texas because the Kansas law treats the sexual conduct of lesbian and gay people differently.

The day after its decision in the Texas case, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated Limon's conviction and instructed the Kansas Court of Appeals to give it further consideration in light of its ruling in Lawrence.

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline in his submission to the court claimed that the state should be able to punish gay teenagers more harshly under the "Romeo and Juliet" law because doing so would encourage heterosexual teenagers to marry.

In a 2-1 decision the state Court of Appeals affirmed the original sentence.

Judge Henry Green Jr. held that the facts in the Texas case differed from those in the Limon case; specifically in not dealing with sex with minors.

Judge G. Joseph Pierron was the lone dissenter, arguing that Kansas law that mandates higher prison sentences for illegal sex acts, based on whether the defendant is the same sex as the victim, was unconstitutional.

"The court's opinion in this case defies comprehension, and we intend to seek an appeal," said Dick Kurtenbach, Executive Director of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri.

"The U.S. Supreme Court ordered Kansas to reconsider this case in light of its holding last summer that the government can't have a different set of rules for gay people than it does for straight people. But the Kansas court's opinion is written as if Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down same-sex-only sodomy laws, had never even happened."

Posted at 11:59 PM

January 29, 2004

It's quite possible that I've written about this before, but it has been on my mind distinctly during the last couple of days.

Have you ever told someone about a problem you have or a fear or a disappointment and then had them tell you: 1) "Oh, everybody feels like that," or 2) "Well that's nothing, let me tell you about how bad things are for me," or 3) "It's not like you're homeless and starving - get over it?" Have you heard anything like these? I have, and let me tell you, this sort of thing doesn't make me feel better, it makes me feel worse. For some reason, people think this helps, and it seems like maybe it does for some people. I guess if you're told that other people are suffering as much or more than you that you're supposed to be gleeful that they're more fucked than you or that you aren't alone in your suffering. To me, that just means that most people must not have much sympathy for their fellow man, and I can't feel any better knowing any of that.

I can't deny that my troubles and mistakes and all of the things that make me depressed and upset are probably trivial in the eyes of many people, but they are troubling and painful and depressing to me, regardless of what anybody else may think. And to have somebody tell me how other people have the same troubles or fears or sadnesses just hurts me; if I have so much pain from my own troubles, knowing that other people, even just a single other person, go through the same things makes me sad. "All sorts of people lose really close friends when they come out as being gay. It's no big deal." Wrong. It is a big deal. The fact that it happens to a lot of people doesn't make it better or easier to accept, it makes it worse, and passing it off as unimportant means that it will continue to be a problem for people for years to come. "Yeah, so your dad sexually molested you over and over as a kid; it's not like you're dead. Get over it. Move on. Forgive him and get on with your life. Other people are raped or beaten all of the time; it's not like you had it that bad." Oh, well thanks, but it's you're a fucking moron. How about I find a couple of marines to threaten you and fuck you whenever they feel like it over three or four years with you never knowing when it will come and with the overhanging threat that if you tell anybody they'll kill you with their sniper rifles when you least expect it. Then lets see how great you feel in fifteen years. You'll forgive 'em, right? You'll just forget all about it, right? It's not like they killed you or anything. I could go on with examples (believe me, I could write pages and pages in this regard), but I'm hoping that you get at least some sense of what I'm talking about.

I greatly appreciate when people try to make me feel better if I'm feeling down, but this method of comparison with others does nothing but make me feel worse. The world is a horrible, pain-filled place, and the last thing I need to hear is how others are suffering. My own problems and fears and sadness are really more than I can handle as it is. Thanks for trying, but I don't want or need to hear any more. It's too much for me to deal with just about any given day, and I don't need to be reminded that our reality revolves around pain and sadness, even though it doesn't need to be that way. If this is the only way that somebody thinks they can help, then I wish they would just remember the old adage, "If you don't have anything nice to say then shut your fucking hole."

Posted Written at 12:10 AM

January 28, 2004

I was supposed to meet with Phil today to discuss my thesis and to wrap up my Modern Fiction class that he had run independently for me last semester; unfortunately, Phil wasn't there, having cancelled his office hours, so I ended up being on campus early. What to do? Being depressed, tired, and frustrated, only one thing seemed appropriate - see Peter Pan.

I've been wanting to see the new live-action Peter Pan movie for months, since I first stumbled upon the film before it even had finished being edited. I had planned to see the movie over winter break, but that just never happened with everything I tried to do and with the thesis that didn't get done. I had even planned to go to the movies during the first week or two of classes this semester, before things got too busy. That didn't happen either. But hell, with as shitty as I've been feeling lately, I needed this to pick me up.

I wasn't disappointed, either. It was a fantastic movie. Very true to the original book (and stageplay), and with fantastic special effects and great performances by the actors (who were beautiful boys (and girl), so that helped shape my opinion, too, I'm sure), I was really just thrilled. My biggest complaint would be pacing; the director made sure to put everything from the bok into the movie, and that's great, but he moved quickly from one scene to the next and quickly within scenes. Even if he had allowed just the slightest bit more time in each scene, it would have made the movie flawless. As I say, I loved it as it was, but if the pacing had been drawn out a bit better, in such a way as to better develop suspense and trension, it would have been utterly amazing. As it is, some of the really amazing parts of the movie will probably be missed by most people because they were artistically stylistic aspects that were on and off the screen in a matter of seconds (for instance, when we first see Neverland, it comes to life out of frozen darkness, and the colors that spreadd across the trees and rivers and such are like they are being colored in and then turning into more vivid, realistic imagery; or, as another example, when we catch a glimpse of the sun in the corner of the screen as it's rays melt the frozen seas around Captain Hook's ship, the sun in this brief moment, if you catch it, is an older man's godlike face, suffused in fire as he blows a hot wind against the ice). IT was an amazing movie, and it really touched me. I think it is more than a fitting tribute for the 100th anniversary of the story of Peter Pan, which happens later this year. It will be interesting to see the film Neverland later this year (starring Johnny Depp as J.M. Barrie, the creator/author of Peter Pan in a story of Barrie's life).

The one thing that was really missing for me when seeing this movie was someone to see it with. I very rarely go to movies by myself. I just don't enjoy films or plays or anything like that as much as I do if I can share it with someone. While I loved this movie, I would have been even happier if someone had been there with me. Chris (if he weren't in New Zealand) would love this movie, too, and he would have appreciated all of those little artistic details that I found so wonderful. Hopefully he'll see it sometime, too. Maybe the next movie I see will be with somebody. I certainly hope so. But in the meantime, this was good for me to experience. I'm still depressed and tired and frustrated, but I'm a bit more content. That's something, at least.

Posted Written at 1:19 AM

January 27, 2004

I really love my friends, and I miss them. Chris is now in New Zealand; Sarah is still in Washington D.C., as is Christiana; Chip is in Lafayette, Indiana; Steve is in Toledo; Heather (not that she contacts me at all) is in Pittsburgh; Kristina is in Chardon, Ohio; Eric is in Ithaca, New York; Doug(even though we're still barely talking since re-finding each other) is in Indianapolis; and Greg (who I haven't talked to for months now) is in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Yes. Laura is in Bowling Green, but I never see her. Other people, like Drake, have completely vanished from m y life, even though I've tried to make contact. And then there are the people I "used to think of as friends." Even as much as I resent those people, I somehow miss them as well. The bottom line, though, is that I'm very distinctly alone, and I just don't do well with it.

My grandmother is wonderful, and I love being here with her and spending time listening to her memories and talking to her about different things, but it's not the same as talking to someone closer to your age, who really is into interesting things or knows about pop culture or has wild stories to tell about recent events in and around their lives. Maybe I just want too much from people, but I miss having close friends (or loves) that I can talk to on a daily (or close to daily) basis. Even just nonessential stuff about what has happened in their day or what has transpired in mine is enjoyable stuff to talk about. It's not just having the company and companionship (although that's a big part of it), it's the connection with someone, the sense of involvement, of worth.

Laura and I (and Laura's friend) had a nice time at Big Boy last Thursday night, but it just wasn't the same as having more people. And heck, I'd be kidding myself if I didn't say that a large part of what wasn't the same was that Chris wasn't there, and I really missed having close contact with him. He's a real keeper if anyone ever catches his interest, but he's thousands of miles away now, and I'm sure he's having a grand time discovering new things down under (and more power to him; I hope that he enjoys every second of his stay).

Am I selfish that I want more? Maybe I am. Everybody else my age has gotten married and pretty much abandons their friends in order to devote time to "the homw life," and many of my younger friends are spending their time with their boyfriends and girlfriends. Maybe the fact that I'm just alone <i.e. loser> cuts me out of this transition into pairing up that seems to happen as people get older. I'll tell you, though, I much prefer the old way of things where you hung out with your friends all of the time and your best friend was just about constantly by your side, wherever you were. Those were great times, and I don't know where that stops being so wonderful for everybody else.

Getting old has sucked in so many ways, but this is, I think, the worst result of all, worse than just about any combination of the other negative aspects of aging. I miss my friends, and I miss being close to them. It's tough to be alone.

Posted Written at 1:19 AM

January 26, 2004

It occurs to me that there's not really any chance that I'll find (or be found by) a great boyfriend for a lasting relationship (or even for a cheap one-night stand, for that matter). I'm more adjusted to this idea than in the past (simply because I've been facing it so long), but I find myself realizing that even the little hope that I had was something. At least I had a sliver of a possibility, and that gave me a reason to live, even if everything else screamed to me that life was just too painful and frightening to keep facing.

Now I'm realizing the complete futility of doing anything at all. If I didn't have a responsibility to take care of my grandmother, I doubt I'd get out of bed at all. This has, consequently, made schoolwork progress at a snail's pace. Part of me is bothered immensely by that, but another part just doesn't give a fuck. I'm not really sure which part of me will win out in this situation, and it's hard to say if it makes any difference - it's not like I'll be happy, one way or the other.

The old phrase comes back to me once again: Exist to die.

Posted at 10:32 PM

January 25, 2004

Oh ... uh ... yeah. I guess you're looking for a Journal entry or something. That means I have to write something interesting, doesn't it. Fuck.

Uhhh ... well fuck it. I'm not good for anything today, so you'll just have to get your blogging fix elsewhere. Sorry.

Posted at 12:05 AM

January 24, 2004

"Happy birthday dear Mac-cie, Happy birthday to you!"

The Apple Macintosh turned 20 years old today. I realize that most of you who will read this are using something other than a Mac - some of you may even see Apples as nowhere near as good as a PC (and even though you're fucking ignorant and wrong, you're entitled to your own opinion =] )- even though most of you won't be Mac users, everyone should appreciate what Apple and the Mac have done for the computer industry since those early days. The mouse, the desktop, the PDA, the laptop, graphic design programs, media players, Firewire, wireless internet, - and style ... just to mention a very small few; all of these things were pioneered on the Mac and then copied by the rest of the industry. For me, seeing the Mac turn 20 is a great moment. The Mac has been a big part of my life, and I can honestly say that many of my rare moments of happiness have involved a Mac.

So whether you use one or not (or even like Macs) please at least join me in wishing the Mac a happy 20th. It's a great day.

Apple's Core: The Mac Turns 20

Twenty years ago, on January 24, 1984, Apple Computer launched the Macintosh. It contained virtually unknown features, including simple icons, and an odd little attachment called a mouse.

Many newspaper stories at the time had to include a definition. Silicon Valley's newspaper The San Jose (California) Mercury News, for example, described the mouse as "a handheld device that, when slid across a table top, moves the cursor on the Mac's screen."

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dubbed the Macintosh "the people's computer." Jobs and business partner Steve Wozniak -- a math and computer junkie -- had sold their first computer, the Apple I, in 1976. They had put it together in a garage.

"The Mac's a symbol of a whole revolution, and most of us that participated in it from the beginning and believed in it bought into these new ideals of computers to really help people, and not something that you had to fight, memorize and learn," Wozniak told CNN. "That whole revolution just continues in our hearts to this day."

With such an innovative and intuitive product, then why is Apple's market share just 3 percent to 5 percent, with Microsoft Windows claiming more than 90 percent worldwide?

"What Apple does so well is to focus on research and design to produce the most intuitive device and the most elegant device," communications professor Ted Friedman of Georgia State University said.

"The problem has always been that Apple was first but other companies have been able to come in and undercut them on price, and gradually appropriate all the features that made Apple special," Friedman explained.

Still, Apple computers have come a long way since their introduction, when IBM's machines, not Microsoft, were the standard. Back then, people who operated computers were part of an elite club: either hobbyists who built their own, or folks in lab coats who worked on mainframes.

Friedman said the point-and-click Macintosh was destined to make both technological and cultural history.

"This was the product that inspired people in graphic design, and students, and other creative people. It was the whole idea of computers not just being something you would see in the office," Friedman said.

Competing in a PC-dominated world, Apple has had its ups and downs.

Techies trace that change in thinking to a TV ad that teased the Mac's debut during the 1984 Super Bowl. Even today that ad is considered one of the best ever produced.

"It was a pivotal moment in the history of computers and the history of advertising," said Friedman, whose book "Electric Dreams," on the cultural history of personal computers, is due out soon.

In the commercial a female athlete dodges storm troopers and throws a hammer to smash a giant authoritarian figure, who's ordering drone workers to conform and obey. Her message of power and autonomy, says Friedman, reflected Apple's belief that computing was more than mindless numbers crunching. It actually could fuel the creative process.

Jobs, Apple's CEO, was perhaps a good forecaster of the ubiquitous laptops, desktops, and personal digital assistants of today, when he predicted two decades ago that Macs would not be just an office tool.

"People are going to bring them home to work on something Sunday morning, they're not going to be able to get their kids away from them, and maybe someday they may even buy a second one to use at home," Jobs said, the day he introduced the simple beige box back in 1984.

But internal dramas at Apple also contributed to its notorious ups and downs. Jobs left the company in a power struggle in the late 80s. The firm floundered in a PC-dominated world.

But Jobs' star continued to rise. He joined the enormously successful animation studio Pixar, makers of hits such as "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo." Jobs returned to Apple in the '90s as the visionary savior, and the company returned to making products considered ahead of their time: the iPod music player, iTunes song download service, and the iMovie video editing software to name just three.

Known in tech circles as "The Wizard of Woz," Wozniak never formally left Apple, but he's only involved in a few consulting projects at the company these days. The former Hewlett-Packard engineer spends most of his time working for his firm "Wheels of Zeus," which is expected to launch some products later this year.

" It was just a little bit disappointing that Apple kind of got itself into the situation where they didn't so much own what they had really brought to market," he said.

In a legal fight through much of the 90's, Apple accused Microsoft of ripping off Macintosh interfaces in Windows. The case was settled out of court in 1997. But despite his frustrations with the outcome of the case, Wozniak is proud of being part of a revolution that started in a garage.

"Macintosh users tend to be a very independent type, and they tend to be very loyal to their product," Wozniak said. "They've been threatened with [Apple] going out of business and being put out of their schools and out of their companies, and they've got to fight. There's so much passion for it."

Posted at 11:38 PM

January 23, 2004

So I imagine you're getting sick of reading articles that I've been posting, even if they are rather interesting. That means that I have to blather on to you about my miserable life and hope that you don't get so disgusted with the mindnumbing vacuousness of my Journal entires that you stop visiting this website altogether.

What can I tell you? I run through periods in my life, unfortunately enough, where my luck (which even at the best times is not very positive) just gets completely fucked and everything thqat can go wrong will - not in massive events that might hospitalize me or something but a combination of small and mid-range sized things that come one after another to add up to a massive conglomeration of absolute compounded misery. Sure, getting more assignments in classes than I can accomplish in my available time (even if I don't sleep decent hours and if I do nothing to relax like watch tv) may not be enough to make me spiral into a deep depression. Having a car that slides all over the road with even a single drop of precipitation shouldn't be enough to give me migraines. Getting my first speeding ticket in five years shouldn't be sufficient to make me hate being alive. But these and dozens of other things put together, all while I'm feeling really lonely when I look around campus (and my classes) at soooo many beautiful guys that I'll never even get to talk to let alone get to know well or come to love ... well, there's just too much bad shit without even a single hint of anything good happening, all combined with a lack of any faith or hope that things will ever change or get better.

Do I sound whiny and bitchy and selfish and childish? Very likely, but that doesn't make me any less depressed or despondent. It's tough to find any value in logic when nothing really seesm to matter anyhow, and I'm really just tired of trying to do anything. There's just not really any point, you know?

So that's why you get stuck with crappy song lyrics and copied articles instead of real Journal entries. Yes, I do see value in sharing teh articles with those of you out there, but it's also easier for em to post something like that than to try to figure out what to write without it all just sounding like variations on the theme of "Woe is me; let it end." In the long run, you're probably not any better of reagrdless of what I do - one way or another, you're stuck with some complete pile of shit that has no value for you in reading it. I guess I should say I'm sorry for that, but what does that really mean, anyhow, when it's all part of this depressing little missive anyhow?

So, my apologies for the mindless, depressing drek here. If I can lose my migraine and pull out of my depression I will, and the sooner the better, but in the meantime there may be many more articles coming to this Journal, whether either of us likes it or not.

Posted at 12:46 AM

January 22, 2004

This article was printed for a December 10th posting, over a month and five weeks before Emperor Bush's frightening State of the Union address where he made a decidedly clear statement that he supports the bigoted ideas behind anti-gay marriage amendments in states and even to the U.S. Constitution. Hopefully Andrew Sullivan is right and this will be an issue that will alienate gay people from the Republican party for decades. That would be about the only good thing that could possibly come out of all of this, as I see it.

Bush and Marriage
A Middle Way?

It has become almost a cliche that the issue of marriage rights for gays is a wedge issue for Republicans. It divides Democrats, the argument goes, because they don't want to endorse marriage for gays but equally can't afford to alienate their gay base. It unites Republicans, it is claimed, and helps them win over some conservative Democrats who aren't too comfortable with homosexuality. There's some truth to this, but it's a largely dated analysis. Since the last major battle - over the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 - the country has changed and so have the issues. People are far more comfortable with gay neighbors, friends and family than they were seven years ago. The culture has moved on from fear to almost excessive interest. The result is that the issue of same-sex marriage - most specifically the issue of a Constitutional Amendment to ban it - is now dividing Republicans while uniting Democrats. That's one good reason the president hasn't endorsed it so far. And if he's sensible about maintaining his own electoral coalition, he won't.

Here's why. Polls show the public much more evenly divided now than they once were on marriage for gays. In Massachusetts, the most recent polls even show a majority for it: 50 - 39 percent. Nationally, 39 percent now support it, with 59 percent against, acording to a recent ABC News poll. But when you ask the 59 percent opposed whether they would go so far as to amend the Constitution to ban such marriages, only 36 percent of them say yes. That amounts to 20 percent of the entire electorate. Most Constitutional Amendments fail even with overwhelming public support. What chance is there for one to succeed with a mere 20 percent?

Worse, many leading conservatives oppose the amendment. George Will, for example, opposes it because he shares many conservatives' view that the Constitution should be amended only very sparingly - and certainly not to resolve a contentious social issue on which public opinion is in flux. David Brooks opposes it because he wants gays to be included in societal norms of monogamy and fidelity. Former congressman Bob Barr opposes it because his own Defense of Marriage Act already prevents one state from forcing another state to recognize a same-sex marriage. House speaker Dennis Hastert has argued that DOMA needs to be tested in the courts before he is ready to press forward with an amendment. Conservative activist David Horowitz sees amending the Constitution as an opportunity for the radical left to try to amend the Constitution in turn, bringing the unifying founding document into disrepute. Others, such as vice-president Dick Cheney, have said they believe that marriage should remain a state matter, as it always has been.

And even among the hard right that supports an amendment, there is no consensus about what should actually be in it. Some have argued that a simple statement reserving marriage for a man and woman is enough. But others are concerned that this simply protects the word "marriage" while allowing civil unions - the equivalent of marriage in all but name - to be enacted. That's why the most cited version of the amendment wouldn't simply ban marriage to gays but all "the legal incidents thereof," i.e. even civil unions or domestic partnerhips. Yet another faction wants to allow civil unions - but only if they don't explicitly involve sex. One version of the amendment puts the word "sexual" in the Constitution for the first time - and not in a good way.

These are just some of the many rifts within the Republican coalition. On the Democratic side, there are no such rifts. Every single candidate opposes the Constitutional Amendment. And most leading candidates oppose gay marriage, but endorse civil unions. So raising the amendment issue actually divides Republicans, while uniting Democrats. And the Democrat position is more appealing to most of the country, which is not anti-gay, has few qualms about civil unions, but still gets queasy about full marriage rights.

If the president were to endorse the amendment, the Republican splits would widen. It would make the position of gay Republicans essentially untenable and Bush would lose almost all the million gay votes he won in 2000. The Republican Unity Coalition, founded to make sexual orientation a non-issue in the G.O.P., would fold. The Log Cabin Republicans would refuse to endorse the president. And such a position would be an enormous gift to the Democrats, as gay money, enthusiasm and anger would rally behind their candidate. The Amendment would do to the gay community what Proposition 187 did to Latinos in California: alienate them from the GOP for a generation. And it would send a signal to other minorities: that the Republicans, at heart, are the party of exclusion, not inclusion.

That's why the president has remained so quiet on this subject. Any decision he takes could tear his coalition apart. He does have one viable option. He could restate his personal view that civil marriage should remain exclusively heterosexual, while also saying that the states should decide for themselves. As a last resort, he might even endorse an amendment that would simply reiterate the Defense of Marriage Act, and ensure that states wouldn't be forced by courts to recognize gay marriages from other states. The genius of federalism, after all, is that social change can be tried out in one state before it is enacted elsewhere. Will the president follow this middle, conservative course? For the sake of Republican and American unity, let's hope he will.

Posted at 1:45 AM

January 21, 2004

As if things weren't already bad enough in my life, the state of Ohio manages to become even more bigoted and evil.

Ohio Bans Gay Marriage

(Columbus, Ohio) The Ohio Senate Wednesday passed one of the most severe anti-gay pieces of legislation in the country. The bill, which has already passed the House, declares same-sex marriages are against the "strong public policy" of Ohio.

The state already had one law to prevent same-sex marriage, but the new legislation, which passed 18 - 15, goes further, preventing courts from recognizing marriages or civil unions from outside the state, and preventing the state from offering health and pension benefits to unmarried partners.

The author of the bill, Rep. Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati) said it will tighten loopholes and prevent "anyone slipping through."

Ohio is the second state, after Nebraska, that would prohibit benefits for state employees' unmarried partners. A total of 37 sates bar same-sex marriage.

A handful of Senate Democrats spoke against the bill.

"We are appalled that at this time in the history of the state of Ohio when we need to be as welcoming as we possibly can ... that we would put a sign on our door that says, 'We don't want you here,'" said Sen. Eric Fingerhut (D-Cleveland).

Sen. C.J. Prentiss (D-Cleveland) said the bill reminded her of the days in the United States when lawyers would defend laws that said black citizens were inferior and didn't deserve the same rights as whites.

Gov. Bob Taft said he would sign the bill into law as soon as it reached his desk.

Posted at 2:03 AM

January 20, 2004

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?

- from "Somewhere Over the Rainbow,"
lyrics by E.Y. Harburg

Posted Written at 2:12 AM

January 19, 2004

If you've been reading my Journal for very long (or if you've delved into the Archives to any great extent), you'll realize that I have a great respect for the words and works of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his life. With very few ideological differences, Dr. King and I would have been quite similarly-minded. I mean all of this not simply in terms of the need for universal equality but in many other ways.

Today, on the federal holiday that honors Dr. King's birthday, I would like to focus on one of his less-known but no-less-important speeches. This speech came near the very end of his life and spoke of his opposition to the war in Vietnam. While the problems of Vietnam and the United States government that supported it have long since passed, the lessons that Dr. King tried to teach are still incredibly applicable, in this case in regards to the U.S. war in Iraq.

As has been said many times, "we must learn from history or we will be doomed to repeat it." The lessons of Vietnam were not learned well enough, it is clear, because Emperor Bush has drawn our country into the same horrible actions for pretty much thye same horrible reasons. Dr. King's words were not only perfect for his time but for ours as well. This particular speech is a bit longer than many of his others, but it contains many very valuable ideas.

The war in Iraq must stop, and since Emperor Bush cerrtainly has no intention of stopping it, we the people of this great country must step forward and stand for peace, freedom, and life, none of which are being supported by the current U.S. activities in Iraq. Celebrate the words of Dr. King today; act upon them tomorrow. Together we can make a difference and remake this country into a safe, sane, and respectable nation. It's up to us.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
by Rev. Martin Luther King
04 April 1967

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
5. Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War

Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

Posted at 8:34 PM

January 18, 2004

I hate shoveling snow, and the winter has barely begun. An hour and a half of back-breaking scraping and hacking to break up the ice sheet that was the driveway and sidewalks - it was not the way I wanted to spend a large part of my morning. It's done, though. It's not supposed to snow again until Thursday, and hopefully that snowfall won't amount to much.

Although the shoveling tired me out, I have had a lot of reading to do for classes, so I've been plunked down on my couch and my bed most of the day reading history books, short story anthologies, and fiction writing guidebooks ... and I still have a lot left to read, let alone the short paper and the workflow projects that are left to do by Tuesday morning. Yeah.

My grandma and I had nice talks over lunch and dinner. She obviously had a great time visiting with my sister and the family, but it's also clear that she was getting to a point of missing her house and her routine and her more quiet, sedate life here in Sandusky. I can understand - my sister is incredibly busy between work and her doctorate and the activities she keeps with the kids, the kids are both very energetic and active, and my brother-in-law practices his trumpet at least three hours a day. Even a simple day at home, without the activity of a dinner out or a movie or shopping, would be very full and tiring for my grandma, and while I am sure she enjoyed it for quite a while, she is used to a much more quiet and leisurely life. Already, after just a day's rest, she is happy and relaxed here in her home. She certainly keeps me busy, but I'm glad I can be here for her. Let's hope I can be all that she needs for a long time coming.

Posted at 10:31 PM

January 17, 2004

My grandma is home, finally. I had my doubts at some points because the weather was so bad that I wondered if I'd even make it to the airport. This car sucks so bad on any slick surface, and the roads were in horrible shape, even on the Ohio Turnpike, which is pretty much the best-maintained road in all of the state. On top of that, the snow and salt that was thrown up from the roads made a mess that alternately froze or turned white on the windshield, making visibility nearly impossible. There was talk of closing the airport when I got inside and to the ticket counter, but my grandmother's flight fortunately came in on time.

I took my time driving the roads on the trip back to Sandusky, and the roads continued to be horrible. It's not a good sign of things to come this winter when I have to drive back and forth to Bowling Green for classes. I hope I don't ever have to drive in crap this bad, but it's really just inevitable.

It's nice to have my grandma back, though. I'll certainly be a lot more busy with her here, having to run her to appointemtns and erradns and fix meals for her and such, but it's still nice to have her back - that is what I'm here for, after all.

Posted at 10:57 PM

January 16, 2004

This is so disappointing. I've been so pleased with so many of the Supreme Court's decisions in recent times that I suppose I can allow for one bad decision, but this particular case is one that is clearly gerrymandering and therefore unconstitutional. I'v efollow the case of redistricting in Texas over the past nearly two years of the struggle, and it galls me that the Republicans will manage to gain six seats in the federal Congress simply because nobody can stop them from making unlawful and immoral decisions.

If the Republicans are so great then you'd think that they could try to win on their own credentials and not have to rig elections so that they can win. Hell, Texas is already strongly Republican, and the campaign contributions far outweigh what the Democrats get. How crappy are they as candidates if they have to rig the elections to win?

Supreme Court Refuses to Block Texas GOP Redistricting Plan

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court refused Friday to block a hard-fought Republican redistricting plan in Texas that could cost Democrats as many as six seats in Congress.

The justices will announce later this year whether they will consider an appeal from congressional Democrats and others who claim the map dilutes minority voting strength. In the meantime, they rejected an emergency appeal that sought to stop the state from using the new boundaries in this year's elections.

The districts were approved by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature in a special session following months of partisan bickering, highlighted by two out-of-state walkouts by Democrats.

Republicans contend they could capture 22 of Texas' 32 seats in Congress, up from the present 16, under the map, which was upheld last week by a federal panel.

The three-judge panel said critics failed to prove boundaries were unconstitutional or illegal, but noted they were not ruling on the "wisdom" of the plan.

"We know it is rough and tumble politics, and we are ever mindful that the judiciary must call the fouls without participating in the game," the judges said.

Challengers of the plan asked the Supreme Court for a stay of that decision, but Texas argued it would unsettle the upcoming election and confuse voters because candidates are already campaigning in the new districts.

The Supreme Court action, done without comment, came as candidates were re-qualifying under the new districts for the March 9 primaries. Candidates originally filed to run under court-drawn districts because the federal panel had not yet signed off on the GOP map.

The Texas Legislature approved the districts during a special session last fall. Democrats claimed a Republican "power grab" waged from Washington was behind the effort.

"The consequences of an erroneous denial of a stay here are severe: Applicants and millions of other Texans would suffer a needless deprivation of their federal constitutional and statutory rights," attorneys representing critics of the plan told the Supreme Court.

The case is Jackson v. Perry, 03A581.

Posted at 1:12 AM

January 15, 2004

Well, today simply proved that I wasn't being paranoid and overly concerned on Tuesday - I will definitely have way too much work due in my Advanced Technical Writing class, and the semester would keep me quite busy all by itself, even if I didn't have the thesis still needing to be finished. Ah, the fun just never ends ...

Tonight was the first of the Poetry and Fiction Reading series for the semester, this time readings by two MFA students who were truly horrible. I am so disappointed in what I see from almost all of the Masters students (not just this semester but for all the years I have been going to these readings), and it makes me think that the MFA program must really be shit if they all suck so badly. And just think, I have to sit through fourteen more of these just this semester (well, actually it's just like nine more MFA readings and some guest poets and the BFA Senior readings to make up the full fourteen). It would be nice to actually enjoy some of these things every once in a while ...

Enjoyment has been limited, though. I had a great conversation with Christiana as I drove back to Sandusky, but my migraine has been building back again as the day progresses, so I was pretty pained and drained by the time we said our goodbyes. This migraine thing is really sucking. For the last few days, my head feels a lot better in the morning, but the pain just gets worse and worse as the day progresses until it's really throbbing by the time I'm ready to go to sleep. It's making it difficult to do just about anything. Chrsitiana and I talked about some interesting ideas she has for applying for a Fullbright Scholarship, and it was intewresting for both of us since it concerns technology and the internet as a main focus. It's hard to concentrate on this kind of stuff, though, as your head pounds harder and harder. Maybe the migraine will break tomorrow. We'll see.

Posted at 2:03 AM

January 14, 2004

It seems that fate is simply twisted, not horrifically mean. After having sat through my first three hour long "Modern Mexico" history class, it doesn't look like it will be as bad as I had feared. Yes, there are six books and we will read them completely, and that will be a whole lot of reading per week, and there will be weekly quizzes and three papers for the class, but the quizzes and papers don't sound too bad, and it's less than I had expected (feared) for this senior-level class. The most amusing thing about all of this is that I had been going into this semester expecting my two history classes to kick my ass and my creative writing class to not be too demanding (and my tech writing class to be tough). Instead, the history classes should keep me busy but not be too hard or overwhelming, my creative writing class will be much more work than expected, and thetech writing class is going to fuck me up, it's so full of shit to do. I guess it all balances out in the end. In fact, if I didn't still have to finish my thesis, I probably wouldn't be too bad off for the semester.

If it hadn't been for the snowfall and the crappy drive to and from Bowling Green, this evening would have been pretty decent since I liked the "Modern Mexico" class so much. Hopefully I won't cut things so tight in the future - I was really pressed for time on the drive in, and the road conditions (due to the weather) didn't allow me to make very good time. And hopefully the stupid fucking county where I live (Erie county, Ohio) will send out at least a single fucking salt truck or snowplow to at least one street in the whole damn city; cutting back on winter street maintenance isn't the smart way to make up for budget deficits as I see it, and if any of the county commissioners had a brain in their head then they would see that, too.

Posted at 12:00 AM

January 13, 2004

Although my migraine was much better this morning, that didn't last long. The stress and tension of the day built to an ugly point, and the drive back to Sandusky was a painful experience between my pounding head and my aching stiff neck. But Nietzche seems to believe that this somehow makes me stronger. Yeah, and pigs can fly, too.

I left early today to run some errands. I got to Bolwing Green and went to see if any of the three books I still needed were available. I got all three (bringing my total book costs to just under $200, which is reasonable compared to my usual costs), and I ended up taking back one copy of a book to the first bookstore I had gone to because I was able to get it cheaper at another bo0okstore. So I did okay. I also got my financial aid disbursement check with ease, only having to wait behind one person rather than the usual lengthy lines of students. In some ways my classes went well, too. I found every classroom and arrived in plenty of time (arriving early enough in my history class that I got a seat, something a half dozen people were too late to do), and all three professors had prepared a complete syllabus listing lectures and assignments for the whole semester. This, by the way, is a big thing. Getting a syllabus on the first day is usually a good thing, but to have an actual outline of assignments is usually a stretch, and having all of the assignments listed for the whole semester is very rare. Hopefully I'll do as well with my other history class tomorrow. That would kick ass.

All of this good stuff came with a bit of bad, though. While my "Slavery in the Americas" history class will be a bit less difficult and less full of projects than I had feared, it will still keep me very busy with reading and writing. My "Advanced Technical Writing" class, which I had expected to be challenging since it's the capstone class for the program, will be fucking unbelievable, requiring as many projects as I've had in three other Tech Writing classes. On top of that, the professor is said to be really good but incredibly demanding and I've been told he'll regulalry overwhelm the class with all that he wants. Joy. Rounding things out, my "Fiction Workshop," which I had looked forward to as a little less difficult than my other classes will, in fact, be keeping me busy with a lot of reading and writing projects based on technical aspects of writing rather than on actual creative fiction. While we'll still write stories and workshop them, there will only be two stories each that we get to do (as opposed to a usual three to five stories), and the other stuff will demand the rest of the time. I'm disappointed in this that I'll only be workshopping two stories and not more, but I'm also not too happy that I'll have all sorts of reading and analytical-type writing in a class that is supposed to focus on fiction. I do like the idea of studying the writing process, but we are covering old stand-bys like character and setting, and I think we could all benefit from advancing a bit to technique and style issues. We'll see how this goes.

There are a few people I know in my classes but nobody I know well enough to talk to much other than Sara. She's in my "Fiction Workshop," and that's where I know the most people (about three people out of fifteen). On the plus side, there's a really good-looking guy in each class for me to stare at (and I have no idea how I'll take notes in the history class since I'm sure I'll never be able to take my eyes from this gorgeous guy). I ran into Laura late in the day and got to say, "Hello," and see how things were for her (and I bitched about my day a bot, too), but we only had time to talk for a few brief minutes. Mostly, the day was pretty devoid of human contact since I ran into nobody betweeen classes that I know. I'm not sure if things will always be that way, but we'll see.

All of my good and bad issues for the day can be set aside, however, because today is a significant, happy day. Today marks the third anniversary of my official launch of theDreamworld. Three years ago today I wrote my first Journal entry and uploaded everything that made up the site, all for the first time I had made a presence on the web. My goal had been to launch on the 1st of 2001, but I was still working out bugs in the files that compose th website. On the 13th, though, everything worked and I was on my way.

Back then, when I first launched the site, I would have been shocked if you had told me that I would have had visits by 18,000 different people. You'll see on my hit counter that we're just short of that number, by about 200 counts, but this counter only got started on October 1st of that first year, so I had nine and a half months of visists before that. Granted, not many people would have been visiting during those first few months, but I think we can account for maybe 200. The interesting thing about these numbers, though, is that the number of unique visitors averages out to 500 per month over the past 36 months (which obviously means that there are a lot more new visitors than that per month now as opposed to back in the early days). In fact, I'm getting between 700 and 900 new visitors every month now, and that's really just amazing to me. Even better, though, is that people come back. A lot of people come (remarkably) every day to read my Journal. Some people check back once a week or so. In any case, the activity of people viewing this site is much higher than my hit counter makes apparent. Last year, different people surfing my site visited the various pages 73,833 times. That's twice the number of page-views from the previous year, and it already looks like the numbers may double again this year if not even triple. All of that,even though I'm incredibly slow at posting new stories or poems for people to enjoy. YOU have made this possible, each one of you reading this site, and I thank you deeply. Writing every day and posting new stories and poems here ahs given me a sense of purpose and a feeling that I'm not alone. That has been wonderful for me. A small few of you even e.mail me, and we have learned a bit more about each other, even though we are all very far apart geographically.

Three years have passed, but this is just the begining. I have plans for improving the site, plans for adding stories and poems, and plans for expanding the exposure of this site. One small thing I have already done is that I have purchased the registry for theDreamworld.net in addition to thedreamworld.org. I even tried to make a deal with the owner of theDreamworld.com to get control, but he still wanted rights to that URL (even though he hasn't done anything with it for five years). Thank you all for visiting a reading, and I hope that I will be bringing enough new and interesting things to the site to make you want to come back. I want to see this site grow tremendously, make a community here where we can get to know each other and be here when we each need someone. That was my goal all along, and that is coming together more each and every day, slow as the progress may be. I hope you'll be reading this Journal for the fourth and fifth and tenth anniversaries of this site as well. It would be a great thing. Thanks for helping me make it to three full years of operation. It's been great.

Posted at 1:35 AM

January 12, 2004

Oh the pain, the pain. Dr. Smith (from Lost in Space) had nothing on me; this migraine is killing me. It's hard to sit up; it's hard to lay down; it's hard to move with any speed. It just sucks. The stiff pain in my neck isn't all that great either, but it is insubstantial compared to the pain in my skull. Hopefully this will go away by tomorrow. Otherwise, my first day of classes is just going to be really un pleasant.

On a somewhat up note, Sarah called me tonight and we talked for a little while. She made me feel a bit better about my unfinished thesis (and about the fact that it's ... well ... not finished), and she made me feel a little better about the problems I'm facing with writing this thing and the delays I've been having. She sounds very happy and relaxed, and I'm glad to hear it. Sarah is such a great person; she deserves all of the happieness she can get.

Tomorrow's a big day, and not simply because it's my first day of classes for the new semester. Be sure to check back tomorrow and see what the hell I'm talking about; it's big stuff.

Posted at 11:49 PM

January 11, 2004

I have had a headache and a stiff neck for most of the day, and it simply isn't pleasant. I think it has to do with the fact that my thesis is still not done and doesn't look to be done anytime soon.

Ah stress - what a pain in the neck. Somebody just cut my head off, would ya?

Posted at 9:55 PM

January 10, 2004

Books. Many, many books. I drove to Bowling Green today and bought books for the classes that start next week. Two books I already had (as luck would have it), and one class has no texts listed (although I suspect it will use the Chicago Manual of Style, which I already have), but my two history classes are chock full of reading. One class, the "Slavery in the Americas" class, has three very large books (one of which is still unavailable, but I saw a single very tattered used copy, so I already know how thick it is). The other class, the "Modern Mexico" class, has six books; two of those books aren't available at any of the bookstores, but the other four in themselves are a mountain of books. I had to go to all three bookstores to get what I did, and even then I stil wound up three books short because not everything is yet available.

While it looks like I'll be reading until my eyes bleed, there is good news. I only spent about $135 today, saving a good bit by already having a few books), and the three books I need look like they'll run about another $55-$65, so I'll come out with books only setting me back about $200. Granted, they're just about all used copies rather than new - new books would have been significantly more - but I found fairly pristine used copies as I always do. That's the advantage of going in just a bit early.

I talked to Christiana on my drive into BG, and she seems to be doing great, finally getting things set up for this coming semester (her advisor has been useless, and Christiana finally became frustrated enough to take matters to the next level). Christiana and I haven't talked in over a week, so it was good to catch up with each other. I imagine we'll get back to talking very regularly every week as classes resume, and I look forward to that.

But, as has been the case all week, everything comes back to the evil Thesis. I'm beginning to wonder if this thing will ever be done, but somehow I'll keep myself working at it with a fervor over these last couple of days before I go back to class. Oh joy.

Posted at 10:40 PM

January 9, 2004

As I've said not too many weeks ago, the court system is the only sane branch of the government and likely our only hope for retaining freedom in the face of the fascist Bush regime. This isn't a strike against Emperor Bush, but it is indeed a strike against conservative bigots, and that's just about the same thing after all.

San Diego Settles in Boy Scout Dispute

The city of San Diego settled a lawsuit with the ACLU in federal court Thursday by agreeing to cancel a controversial lease on city parklands with the Boy Scouts of America, and to pay almost $1 million in legal fees.

The settlement, approved by a majority of the City Council, also stipulates that the city will no longer defend the Boy Scouts' use of city lands. The Scouts, however, have vowed to continue fighting for their right to receive city subsidies for the parklands they use.

Filed in 2001, the suit focused on an 18-acre area of Balboa Park, known as the crown jewel of San Diego's park system. That land had been leased to the Boy Scouts for $1 per year since 1957. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the Scouts could legally exclude gays and atheists, the ACLU sued the city on behalf of two boys, one with lesbian parents, one being raised agnostic. The suit sought to sever the leases between the city and the Scouts for Balboa Park and a second site used by the Scouts, Fiesta Island.

Thursday's ruling resolves the Balboa Park lease, but the Fiesta Island lease remains in dispute.

"The city could see the writing on the wall and decided its best interest was to let go of the battle," said M.E. Stephens, an attorney with the San Diego chapter of the ACLU.

"The court sent a very clear legal message that cities cannot do favored business with the Scouts," Stephens told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network.

"Organizations such as the Scouts that hang on to these kinds of discriminatory membership policies are increasingly out of step with the world we live in, and they're being passed by," said Jordan Budd, legal director of the San Diego chapter of the ACLU, in a prepared statement.

Since the Supreme Court ruling, numerous cities have severed their legal and financial ties with the Scouts because of the organization's discriminatory policies. "San Diego was one of the last, very few municipalities that had been willing to do business with the Scouts," said Stephens. "Our city was a holdout, until yesterday," she said.

Posted at 12:01 AM

January 8, 2004

I'm sure that anybody who's reading this would like for me to write something interesting or funny or strange; I could tell you that I was sitting here typing this with my toes while eating pickles and laughing at George Bush massacre the English language on CNN, but all of that would be a lie.

Sadly, I'm still a long way from getting my thesis even near completion, and I'm burned out and tired. Sorry I don't have anything better to offer. Check back later. Sooner or later the thesis will be done.

Posted at 12:32 AM

January 7, 2004

Thesis = Hell.

'Nuf said.

Posted at 12:25 AM

January 6, 2004

Right. And you thought this would be easy ...

Posted at 11:45 PM

January 5, 2004

I was reading my friend Chris' website today (as I do every day (or at least I check for something to read every day)), and he had linked to this amazingly interesting and focused article from the Fast Company. It's about Wal-mart's selling strategies and how Wal-mart has been bot incredibly good and horribly bad for America, American companies, and the individual consumer. The article says things I've been saying for years, but this author in this case has facts and research to back up what he says.

Unlike my usual method of providing an article, I won't be copying the text of the document into this Journal entry. I usually do so just in case the article is moved or deleted at a later date from its source; that way my readers always have a copy of the article to reference. This time, though, it's quite a lengthy article, and it would take up huge amounts of space. I do encourage you to follow the link and read it, though. It's very enlightening.

Posted at 3:18 AM

January 4, 2004

Neverwinter Nights has been a nice change for me. I've just let myself go and played the game for hours straight, and I'm kicking ass in the game. Tomorrow I will be putting my time into working on my Thesis, and I'll admit that a huge part of my wants to blow it off. The sooner I focus on getting it done, though, the sooner it will indeed be finished. Hopefully that will leave time for a little more recreation and entertainment for me, but the Thesis has to come first from now on.

Boo.

Posted at 12:57 AM

January 3, 2004

This article needs no introduction from me. I hope you laugh as much as I did.

Botched Operation Left Him 'Gay'

(London) He went in for a heart operation and came out 'gay' a Leeds area man claims.

The patient, whose name was not released, entered Leeds General Infirmary for a heart-by-pass operation. During the surgery doctors had to take out part of a large vein in his leg to replace a section of blocked artery in his chest.

To get to the vein, the surgeons made an incision in his leg, but failed to notice the tattoo the man had on the leg, according to the London tabloid The Daily Mirror.

The tattoo said "I love women".

As he came out of the anesthesia, the heart operation a success, he noticed the scar on his leg.

When doctors had sewn it up, the inadvertently left out two letters on the tattoo. It now says "I love men".

The paper reports the man almost had another coronary. He has consulted his lawyers and is planning to sue the hospital and the doctors involved in the operation.

He says he's now too embarrassed to wear shorts in public.

Leeds General Infirmary has admitted it made a mistake, and the British Medical Journal has issued a warning to doctors to be careful when sewing up tattooed skin.

Posted at 2:36 AM

January 2, 2004

I've been catching various interesting news articles over the past few days, but two stand out - each for very different reasons.

One article is a CNN investment thing, which I would normally care nothing about, but it concerns the recent purchase of my old employers, Kinko's, buy Federal Express for $2.4 billion. That sale price, by the way, may seem like a steal when you cpnsider that Kinko's haas revenues of over $2 billion a year, but keep in mind that those are just revenues not profits. Kinko's has been having hard times for a few years, so this is a good deal for them, and FedEx got a good deal because this was not only a steal for overall price, but it allows FedEx a great number of instant locations and a huge new market to expand into. Considering how successfully that FedEx did when it bought RPS (Rapid Parcel Service, more recently renamed FedEx Ground), it may very well be able to reorganize Kinko's and make it efficient and cutting edge. I actually think this will be great for both companies and for the market in general, but I am amused to see that Kinko's, who had tried desperately to make a public offering on the stock exchange as a way to secure it's solidity, was bought out for a song. It's funny to me.

Oh, and as a side note, the little 'factoid' in this article that says that Kinko's had grown to 1200 stores from about 127 outlets since the investment by Clayton, Dubilier and Rice - that's wrong. At a minimum, it is misleading. Kinko's in 1996 brought in Clayton, Dubilier and Rice as an investment firm whose inflow of cash would pay off all of the owners of the various partnerships of which Kinko's was composed - 127 partnerships, to be exact, some as small as having only two or three stores and some having a couple hundred stores. In total, Kinko's had about 1200 stores in 1996, and the fact that they have 1200 stores now is not growth by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I distinctly remember chuckling about the company slogan of 1997, the year I left Kinko's, of "2000 by 2000," referring to the intention to expand the company to 2000 locations by the new millenium. Making their existing stores more profitable would have been a better plan.

FedEx to buy Kinko's for $2.4B

The purchase will allow FedEx, the world's largest overnight package deliverer, to offer shipping services in all 1,200 Kinko's stores. FedEx, Kinko's shipping provider since 1988, now operates counters in 134 Kinko's stores.

"The purchase allows each company to expand in the other's areas of strength," Donald Broughton, transportation analyst at A.G. Edwards in St. Louis, who has a "hold" rating on FedEx shares, told Reuters. "It should be a good marriage."

FedEx's acquisition follows UPS' (UPS: Research, Estimates) purchase of shipping and copy chain Mail Boxes Etc. in a move to better target consumers and small businesses. UPS expanded that chain to more than 4,000 stores and is rebranding it.

With about $2 billion in annual revenue, Kinko's has grown from about 127 outlets when Clayton Dubilier first invested $220 million in it in 1996. Its stores are company-owned, in contrast to the mostly franchised Mail Boxes.

FedEx (FDX: Research, Estimates) said the deal will add to earnings with the fiscal year that starts June 1, 2004 but its stock fall Tuesday.

FedEx, which operates in 215 countries, said it "plans to significantly expand" the global reach of Kinko's stores and offer "new or expanded" shipping options at Kinko's stores.

"The Kinko's acquisition will help diversify the FedEx revenue base, driving better value for our shareholders," said FedEx Chief Financial Officer Alan B. Graf Jr.

"That UPS Store really has been very successful; it put UPS closer to individual consumers and small-to-medium business consumers," said Arthur Hatfield, an analyst with Morgan, Keegan & Co. "FedEx really needed to be closer to the consumer in that way, and I think this deal is in response to that."

Neither Hatfield nor Morgan Keegan own any shares of FedEx, and the firm has no banking relationship with FedEx.

Earlier this month, several analysts downgraded FedEx shares after the company reported fiscal second-quarter earnings that missed Wall Street estimates, and some analysts cited concern about FedEx losing shipping business to UPS.

Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan advised Kinko's in the deal, while Merrill Lynch advised FedEx.

jThe second article is actually a column from CitiPages.com. It is an assessment of Howard Dean's Democtratic presidential candidacy and his chances against George Bush and against insders from his own party who don't like him because he doesn't tow the line. While Carol Mosley Braun is still my favorite current candidate, it is clear that she stands no chance of winning the primaries. My second favorite candidate is, and has always been, Howard Dean. Personally, I would like to see Dean take some hard stances and not do the typically Democratic party thing and try to ride the polls and stay very centrist. Dean has the opinions and the presence to pull off chanllenging the establishment not only of the current administartion but of his own party, and I for one think that he will be strongest when he shows c learly what he is made of and what he stands for, even when he knows those things won't be quite popular. He may be brash, but his decisions are sound and fair. This article has some good advice for Howard Dean to consider.

The Accidental Populist

On December 7, Howard Dean delivered an amazing and almost universally ignored speech on race, money, and American politics to a gathering in Columbia, South Carolina. Dean was on hand for two reasons--to atone for his suddenly notorious offhand remark that he wanted to be "the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," and to seek a primary-season coup in the backyard of rival John Edwards, whose campaign sputters more with each passing day. What he offered up was an obvious but officially verboten blueprint for a different kind of national political campaign:

In 1968, Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it in a shameful way--by dividing Americans against one another, stirring up racial prejudices, and bringing out the worst in people.

They called it the "Southern Strategy," and the Republicans have been using it ever since. Nixon pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan perfected it, using phrases like "racial quotas" and "welfare queens" to convince white Americans that minorities were to blame for all of America's problems.

The Republican Party would never win elections if they came out and said their core agenda was about selling America piece by piece to their campaign contributors and making sure that wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few. To distract people from their real agenda, they run elections based on race, dividing us, instead of uniting us....

In America, there is nothing black or white about having to live from one paycheck to the next. It's time we had a new politics in America--a politics that refuses to pander to our lowest prejudices. Because when white people and black people and brown people vote together, that's when we make true progress in this country.

A year from now, any number of things may have happened. Howard Dean, or some other Democrat, may have swept W from office owing to circumstances still unforeseeable from here. More likely, Democrats and the pundit class will be busy invoking empty, age-old clichés to explain the latest electoral train wreck. In the not-unlikely event that Dean's campaign is brought to ruin, part of the key to the tale will lie forgotten in the Columbia speech, which helps explain why he finds himself in the unfortunate position of running against both major parties. If you like what Dean had to say, savor it now, because you aren't likely to hear it on the stump next fall even if Dean is the nominee.

The grand irony in the case of Howard Dean vs. the Democratic Leadership Council is that it's not at all clear that Dean ever seriously meant to take on the Democratic party establishment, or that he will even carry through with the battle. He talked a tough anti-establishment line out of the gate, yes, but that was the smart outsider play, and Dean's candidacy had struck party sultans as a bit of trivia from the start. As governor of Vermont and already as a presidential aspirant, Dean has tended to speak boldly first and tack practically to the right when under fire. It isn't hard to imagine his fashioning a rapprochement with the party elite as his campaign flourished.

If he had been allowed to, that is. But the party blew it. The DNC's controlling junta--the Clinton/McAuliffe New (business) Democrats--consistently underestimated Dean's appeal and treated him with such raw contempt as to make an alliance impossible in the near term. They tried very hard to derail him instead, which is why so many party regulars have labored to breathe life into the listless, late-entry bid by Wesley Clark. (Gore Vidal on Clark: "I don't like these men of great accomplishment who've accomplished nothing, and who mean nothing.") And for what it's worth, the DLC's principal attack hound, Tailgunner Joe Lieberman, has shown no signs of relenting in his verbal assaults. In one of those bits of doublespeak for which Democrats are rightly as cherished as Republicans, Lieberman decreed that Dean's opposition to the war and to Democratic complicity in it proved him a "divisive" force in politics.

Dean, meanwhile, has conducted a back-channel outreach to many prominent Democrats, resulting most famously in his December 9 endorsement by Al Gore. The question of the hour is whether Dean is trying to wrestle the party into embracing him or to take it over. He is on record loudly intimating the latter, but--well, this is American politics, and people say a lot of things. More tellingly, perhaps, there are many in and around the national Democratic fold who really do believe that Gore and Dean have it in mind to take the party away from the DLC once and for all. It's far too early to tell whether this is true in any meaningful sense (it's one thing to really mean it in December, another to stake your future on it in July), but a couple of observations may be safely made from here.

First, a serious run at taking over the party machine would oblige Dean to keep running against his own party not just through primary season but the general election as well. In that sense it would be very much like McGovern and '72 all over again--remember "Democrats for Nixon" and the more sub rosa means the Democrats used to undermine McGovern? To have any hope at all of winning such a race, Dean would have to take his Columbia speech on economic justice for all and make it the holy writ of his campaign. He would have to break the first covenant of our dysfunctional political family, which is never to involve outsiders in family business. The dirty little secret of the me-too Democrats is that they are really no more keen on appealing to "nontraditional voters" (traditional nonvoters, that is) than Republicans. And according to the Washington Post, Republican functionaries are beginning to grow scared of Dean's capacity to do just that.

Second, you can probably forget nearly everything in the foregoing paragraph, because the chances that Dean will pick such an audacious course and stick to it are surpassingly slim. The presumptive philosopher king of Dean's epic confrontation with the DLC, after all, is Albert Gore Jr. It's not hard to believe that Gore would like to seize the party apparatus from Clinton & Friends, but why should anyone get excited about the prospect of what he might do with it?

A few eternally masochistic Democrats are trying to make out that they finally have the new Al Gore they were promised for so long. One of the smartest consultants I know recently told me that Gore finally seems to have come into his own. "He seems to be at his best when he's had a chance to go away and just think," the politico said hopefully. "Like when he wrote his book." But the mirage of a bearded, far-seeing Gore foraging for nuts and berries with Tipper at his side faded after a mere few seconds. "Of course," my acquaintance said, "he had a populist revelation in the 2000 campaign, too, which is when his numbers finally jumped a little bit. It lasted about a week."

Optimists will correctly point out that Dean has yet to prove himself as craven as Gore. I'll go further than that: If Dean actually ran a campaign predicated on the values of his December 7 speech in South Carolina, he would have a plausible chance to win. As of this moment, he still could be either the next FDR or the latest Al Gore. But the whole corpus of conventional wisdom in American politics will continue pressing him back toward the fabled "center" and the Democratic fold. And if he goes there, the race will be entirely Bush's to win or lose.

Posted at 9:24 PM

January 1, 2004

I'm actaully somewhat light-headed after playing Neverwinter Nights for so long. I got up a little late (around 10 AM) and checked out stuff on the net and around the house. I didn't start playing right away, having a liesurely lunch and such (and lunch was wonderful - this new chicken chili that Tony Packo's has made is fabulous). I started playing at around 3 PM, and while I didn't intend to play until even Midnight, I only just closed things down and decided I had to sleep - and it's after 6 AM already!

I must admit that I like the mode of play better in Baldur's Gate as far as role-playing games go, but Neverwinter Nights is indeed a close second, and I've been having lots of fun playing around and figuring things out. After just these two days of play, I've finished the whole first 'chapter' of this game, complete with al of the areas to be explored and the quests to be completed. I've done quite well, too - fighting strong in combat but not doing so well that it isn't challenging. It's all good.

I spoke to my sister, mother, grandma, niece, and nephew for a little while in the evening, wishing everybody a happy new year, and that was a nice break. I never would have guessed at that time (about 7 PM) that I would still be up almost twelve hours later, but here I am.

So I'm ready to drop into a dead sleep. My head feels like it's stuffed with cotton or something, and I can tell that sleep will take me quickly. That sounds good.

Posted Written at 6:27 AM

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