"The Moral Leader of our Nation..."











Can't sleep so I thought I'd blog a little. Tomorrow is Martin Luther King day and this is one holiday that I don't take as just another day off from school or work. I assume that it's because I went to schools that didn't take the day off and instead had special days. In elementary school (MLK Jr. Elementary no less) we had to sign up for special classes where we would learn about things that we wouldn't normally learn about in class like natural history or something equally cool. At Greenhills we spent the first half of the day listening to speakers and the second half of the day doing community service. When I was younger, I'm sure I hated it but it was a lot of fun in highschool. In college I always treid to go see a guest speaker as there were many all over campus.

Anyways my point is that if you have the day off you should spend it learning or doing something to better yourself or your community. Unlike Flag Day or President's Day or Colombus Day, MLK Day is one that everyone should feel like it's their duty to do something. He was the antithesis of lazy and it is such an injustice when people spend the day sitting at home watching tv. He is iconic, representing everything good in people. Im not saying that you need to go out and save the world, you don't even need to leave your apartment if you don't want to. Take the time to surf the internet and learn about things you normally wouldn't. Learn about politics and who you want to vote for in the primaries, or about other countries, or go to the amnesty international website and send an email in support of something you believe in. DTN (my old employers) would lead you to believe that MLK day is a good opportunity to make all the leasing agents take property tours of every property they don't work at and take notes. So they make you spend the entire day driving around and wasting your day. I could never bring myself to go, I always made an excuse, but it's thinking like that from redneck self absorbed companies like DTN that is the opposite of what you should spend the day doing. It doesn't really matter what you are doing just don't waste your time, learn something and please don't be lazy.

"I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive."

to see the speech or read it go here
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

-M, p & z

ps - check out these sites
http://www.amnesty.org/
http://www.savedarfur.org/content
http://www.amref.org/
http://www.unicef.org/
http://www.directrelief.org/
http://www.youthnoise.com/
http://www.peta.org/