Martin Luther King Day

I've been away for a while because I had a heart attack on Christmas Eve and once I got back into my routine more or less after that I had to take care of some other things. I'm not going to write much about this because it actually was not much of an event. My chest hurt for a few hours but not in any kind of extreme or obviously life-threatening way--I thought I had heartburn or acid reflux, and when I went in to the doctor's to get a prescription for Christmas they sent me to the emergency room, where they determined that one of my arteries was blocked and they put a stent in, after which I felt perfectly normal again almost immediately. It's possible I could live a good many years in a relatively healthy state, though my body appears to be starting to fall apart, and who knows what will transpire next apart from a heart condition. Of course there is a lot of food I am not able to eat anyone. The obviously bad stuff--soda, donuts, fried chicken, etc--is not that hard to do without since I'm afraid of eating anything like that now anyway, but I'm not supposed to eat anything that has very much salt in it at all, which eliminates most things that taste good (to me). Since going out to eat was one of the main "fun" things I had left in my life that I looked forward to, even though I haven't able to do much of it during all these years when I had little children, I still always thought whenever I was walking around some posh area in Boston or Maine or wherever, someday we'll be able to go into one of these places, and maybe I still will be able to, but everybody acts like I'm going to have to let go of these desires. Certainly my days of eating at the likes of Buffalo Wild Wings appear to be over, though if I need a jolt of that particular environment I suppose I can go to the bar, since I am actually still allowed to drink alcohol, in moderation of course.



Today is Martin Luther King Day. I had to work. I wish I had some heartfelt, righteous things to say to commemorate the day, maybe even with an accusatory tinge to my sentiments aimed at those I know to not be fully on board with the goals of equality and justice, but I don't, or at least not any that I perceive to be needed. In keeping with modern American tradition, Martin Luther King, while undoubtedly a great figure in our history and a proper hero who was the face behind really remarkable social change, is controversial enough to not be considered a hero by a substantial segment of the population, joining George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Columbus, Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and pretty much everyone else with some claim to iconic status. Overall, Martin Luther King probably has one of the higher approval ratings with the public nowadays among the higher echelon of Americans who have ever been regarded as great. It is obviously difficult even for the admirers of such people to try to live up to what they represented as they go about their own lives, and as Martin Luther King is the nearest to us in time of these lionized figures, his principles and causes are the ones we are most frequently exhorted to live up to, and are perceived to be the ones which we are falling short of the most constantly. To me, the point of having such national holidays is foremost to remember monumental accomplishments and events and hard-gotten wisdom that have contributed positively to what we are as a society now. That our society is still not what we would like it to be or is even regarded as a disaster by many is in some sense our particular problem and will probably require the emergence of other great leaders and figures to produce another shift in the consciousness or spirit in the people.


This is a rather rough sketch of what I think about this holiday, but the subject kind of demands that it be posted tonight. Anyway, I want to get the blog going again, hopefully this will be a more productive year than I have had lately.