Archives for October 2005

I don’t know about you but I am quite excited to go see the new Harry Potter Movie which is scheduled to open here on November 18.

It is the state or condition of not caring if your blog is updated. Be careful blogapathy is highly contagious.

Many have blogged about her and done a far better job than I. However I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Rosa Parks and the role she played in helping to bring civil rights to the forefront. Rest in Peace.

(CNN) — Rosa Parks, whose act of civil disobedience in 1955 inspired the modern civil rights movement, died Monday in Detroit, Michigan. She was 92.

Parks’ moment in history began in December 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.

Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system by blacks that was organized by a 26-year-old Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.The boycott led to a court ruling desegregating public transportation in Montgomery, but it wasn’t until the 1964 Civil Rights Act that all public accommodations nationwide were desegregated.

Facing regular threats and having lost her department store job because of her activism, Parks moved from Alabama to Detroit in 1957. She later joined the staff of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat.

Conyers, who first met Parks during the early days of the civil rights struggle, recalled Monday that she worked on his original congressional staff when he first was elected to the House of Representatives in 1964.

“I think that she, as the mother of the new civil rights movement, has left an impact not just on the nation, but on the world,” he told CNN in a telephone interview. “She was a real apostle of the nonviolence movement.”

He remembered her as someone who never raised her voice — an eloquent voice of the civil rights movement.

“You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene — just a very special person,” he said, adding that “there was only one” Rosa Parks.”

I love playing basketball. If I could I would play every day, or at a minimum four days a week. Unfortunately little things like my job and family get in the way of doing that so I have found that I can almost always get two days in, three if I am lucky.

The challenge is to get to the gym and get in as many games as possible before I have to run home because if I come home too late I miss having dinner with my children and it is important to me to eat as a family.

In order to save time I will occasionally skip showering at the gym and go straight home. Last night was one of those nights in which I chose to do so.

When I got home I shouted hello at everyone and immediately stepped into the shower. Three minutes later I was soapfree and on my way to the bedroom to change into my evening lounge attire and that is when it happened.

I had just taken off my towel when my 15 month old daughter reached up and found a new handlebar to hold on to. You’d think that after Trep’s post on a somewhat similar incident I might have been prepared for it, but I wasn’t.

That little girl ambushed me and then pulled with all her might so that she might swing like Tarzan on a vine. I don’t know if I squawked, squealed or screamed, but I do know that whatever I did made her laugh, hard. And because I am a quick learner I made sure to remove her hand and move out of her reach because I knew that she would try to see if she could make her father make the funny noise again and I wasn’t having any part of it.

All I know is that if I were made of the same material as Stretch Armstrong I would be able to wear that thing as a belt or necktie.

To add insult to injury my son saw the whole thing and also laughed with glee yelling “daddy got yanked.” This commentary brought up other issues so I sat down with him that evening to discuss what happened and to hopefully make sure he doesn’t run around telling everyone he sees that “daddy got yanked” because I can only imagine what kind of chaos that would cause.

At the moment I am midway through

The Jew in the Lotus : Poet’s Re-Discovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India

I have found it to be very interesting and enjoyable. Here is a sample of what is waiting to be read by me:

Gettysburg

Straken (High Druid of Shannara, Book 3)

A Game of Thrones

The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution

That really is a partial list. I have more books than time but I do plan on getting through them. Prior to my kids being born I read voraciously, there were months in which I might consume 7 or 8 books, but these days I have slowed down exponentially.

Unless it really grabs me I find that it takes me quite some time to finish a book, but I still very much enjoy it.