A Quick Holiday Quiz

How can you tell that Christmas is coming?

1) Colder temperatures.
2) Carols playing over the piped-in music at the mall.
3) Starbucks starts using the red cups.
4) You hear oboes playing "Deck the Halls" in the adjacent practice room.
5) All of the above, but you'd prefer to avoid #2 and #4 as much as possible.

Thanksgiving Greetings

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I may not have been able to post every day about the things for which I'm thankful, but I'll do it now: Family. Friends. Friends who are as close as family. And of course to my Sinfonian brothers, who are such a big part of my life, whether I've known you for my entire time in the brotherhood or whether you were just initiated in the past week.

And music. One of the finer gifts from God--a wonderful form of expression, an uplift of the spirit, and the literal soundtrack of our lives. Also, the chance to teach and play it every day and actually make a living doing so, while working with the most wonderful people (students and teachers alike) in the process.

May you and yours have a blessed day!

Some Great Words from MLK About Jazz

Happy MLK Day! Dr. King was a big jazz fan, and he wrote some program notes for the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival. He had some great things to say about our wonderful art form. Here's my favorite quote:

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

This is triumphant music.

As always, read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Kurt Elling's Facebook page.)

Just Enjoyed a Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner...

...of oysters, Belgian waffles, and bacon.

(As well as turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, etc. We are at the neighborhood country club, where those first three items were part of the buffet. I had to try them, just because...)

Giving Thanks

SUGAR LAND--I'm thankful for a lot of things today:

Good health, a lot more students than a year ago, my whole family in the same location for the holiday, great friends, a wonderful brotherhood in Sinfonia, and the gift of music--not only for the enjoyment of playing it and listening to it, but the ability to teach it for a living.

What are you thankful for today?

Happy Fourth!

As always, enjoy the fireworks, especially if burn bans have canceled them in your area. (I"m glad that's not the case here, though it's certainly been very dry recently.)

I usually offer a few random thoughts on this holiday; some of them may be reruns, but I think they've held up pretty well since a year ago:

• On this day, I'm decked out in one of those Old Navy flag T-shirts, as I have been every year on this day since 1999, when I celebrated in Switzerland atop Rochers-de-Naye, the tallest mountain in the Montreux area. (I still get a kick out of thinking about all the schoolkids back in '99 who, when they found out I was spending my first Fourth out of the country that summer, asked me if "they have the Fourth of July in Switzerland." Their calendars, I'm happy to report, don't exactly skip from 3 to 5 or anything...)


• While it might seem appropriate to have the Fourth fall on a Monday (like pretty much every other holiday), the day when local cities decide to do their fireworks displays still varies wildly from place to place. Many places (including Rowlett just down the street from me, as well as Addison's well-known "Kaboom Town") were last night, while a lot of other places, including Richardson and Plano, are waiting until tonight. Just wait till next year, when, thanks to a leap year, the Fourth will be on a Wednesday. Five-day weekend, anyone?


• I usually post links to some inspiring essays on this day. This year, I've found some reflections on liberty by Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, a fine essay by blogger "Teresa in Ft. Worth" (including embedded videos of many of our great patriotic songs), and another great piece of writing by the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby on the philosophies behind the Declaration of Independence.


• Two years ago, I noted that there are a lot of people out there today who love their country but are extremely frustrated with their government. As we celebrate 234 years as a nation, we must never forget the principles of freedom and limited government on which this nation was founded. There are plenty of people in power at the moment who would prefer to use that power to their own ends, rather than what is best for the nation as a whole, and it is up to us as citizens to speak out against such things and show the most grievous offenders the door via the ballot box at the next available occasion.

Despite her faults, America is still the greatest nation the world has ever known. May you celebrate this day in whatever way you see fit.

Is Mah Birfday...

...where are caek?. (I love this lolcat picture, and it was even more amusing to me when it was first posted at ICanHasCheezburger.com the day before "mah birfday" in '07.

One thing about being on Facebook is the sheer amount of greetings you tend to receive. It's not quite noon, and I've already gotten wishes from nearly 100 people. Thanks to all who have sent things my way!

Erin Go Blog

Happy St. Patrick's Day to my Irish friends (and that casts a pretty wide net right now; as I told someone on Facebook, I think that most of us of Irish ancestry are more than willing to give pretty much anyone a free one-day membership pass into our club today).

Some things remain unchanged from last year at this time:

Not only am i wearing green, but the green in question is a T-shirt that came from Ireland itself, when Mom and Dad went there a few years ago (Mom and Dad went to Ireland, and all I got was a pretty cool T-shirt...and some Guinness, though I would have enjoyed the factory tour they took even more). My T-shirt says Sláinte!, which is an old Irish toast roughly meaning "good health." As I noted a few years ago, it was a popular slogan for the Bennigan's restaurant chain, which lost its good health a few years ago.

But other than the wearin' o' the green, along with a certain odd-colored beverage in my near future, this has been a pretty relaxing day thus far. As I've noted in the past, ever since St. Patrick's Day became part of Spring Break, we've lost a lot of the amusement that goes along with seeing kids either try to pinch each other at school or seeing how little green one can wear to be immune from same. (My all-time favorite was the kid who pinned a leaf to his shirt.)

May the luck o' the Irish be with ye today!

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I wonder how many of the people that say they're Irish today will say they're Mexican on May 5th."--my fraternity brother Sam R., on Facebook. (Hey, I assume they hand out day passes just like we do...)

Spring Has Sprung...

...and break has broken, and it couldn't have come at a better time. After a nice visit with my parents the past few days, it's time to settle down for some serious relaxation. (I'll get stuff done over the break, of course, but I won't keep getting behind-er with any extra things piled on top of what I already had to do.)

And I start out this break with a call for advice: Anyone ever dealt with a strained/sprained toe before? It's the second toe on my right foot--not the same limb that was so messed up a few years ago, but it's making me gimpy all the same. There's no displacement or discoloration, so I'm not imagining anything is fractured. I experienced a little foot pain for a few hours a few weeks ago when I played a gig in my dress shoes without putting the cushion-y insoles in them, and since then, there's been some occasional soreness at the end of the day, but it's just been in the past day or so that things have gotten pretty painful.

Anyway, I've been experimenting with buddy splinting, and I'll try ice. I won't have to walk as much with the week off from teaching, so that should help. Anything else I'm forgetting? Let me know in the comments.

Let There Be Even More Lights

I'm back from my trip to Houston (in record time, mind you; I can't believe I made it back from the old neighborhood in three and a half hours while maintaining the speed limit, but I guess that's what stopping only one time will do) and will save a bigger post for later, but I had to make a quick addendum to my annual holiday lights review. Tonight, I checked out the nearby neighborhood Woodbridge, which encompasses parts of Sachse and Wylie. In the Sachse portion, just off Country Club Drive, check out Hillview Lane, where the first- and second-place winners in the lighting contest are right across the street from each other. The first-place house has its lights synced to music, and its neighbor's lights appear to at least partially go in time to the music as well. If you're in that part of town, it's well worth a look.

Christmas Greetings

SUGAR LAND--Merry Christmas to all! I'm chilling with the whole family this year, though that means I'm typing this from the quiet comfort of my hotel room. (As I noted on Facebook and Twitter, when my sister and her family are down, I get to spend Christmas as a sort of reverse Nativity scene; there's no room at the house, but there is room at the inn. And the inn is very quiet.)

I hope you get to spend today with family and/or friends in as relaxing a way as possible. And as always, I salute those who aren't able to have the day off today--public safety and emergency personnel, a few in retail and broadcasting, and of course those on active duty in the armed forces. Have a blessed day!

Tour de Lights

Now that I've finally had some time off, I've been able to enjoy one of my favorite holiday traditions: Going out to see some of the amazing light displays that are found all over the DFW area. That means it's also time for Kev's Annual Lights Post*, where I run down a list of my favorites:

• Deerfield in Plano: For my money (which pretty much involves only the gas to get there), this is the best all-around neighborhood in the area for lights. It has a wide variety of streets that are easy to traverse once you've done it a few times, most of the neighborhood participates (there were fewer "Scrooge" houses this year than before), and now it features the Zephries house on Old Pond Drive, which now has 104,000 lights synchronized to music. There's also the Gordon Lights on Quincy at the north end of the subdivision that has a very nicely-synchronized display as well. (Both the aforementioned houses also serve as drop-off points for various charities, so, if the spirit moves you, bring a new unwrapped toy for Toys for Tots or a non-perishable food item for the North Texas Food Bank to the Zephries display, or cash/gift cards for Operation Homefront to the Gordon display.) The carriage and limo rides make this area an even bigger attraction, and I've always thought it would be cool to park nearby and do a walking tour like many of the neighbors do. (When I went Monday night, the weather would have been great for that, but I thought I was short on time. Hats off to the homeowners for keeping everything on well past ten.


• Frisco Square: Although it's a newcomer in comparison to the other sites mentioned here, Frisco has become one of the top attractions in the area, with even more lights to its amazing display from last year (among the highlights for me are the lights that go across the two main buildings, which totally surrounds the viewer with light). As before, everything is synchronized to music, which can be heard either from a low-powered FM radio broadcast or from speakers near the buildings. (For some pictures of last year's display, go here.)
  
  And if you make it to Frisco, be sure and drive a few miles east to see the Trykoski house, where the designer of the Frisco Square lights calls home. This year, they have 85,000 lights in their display, which is also synchronized to music. (And I probably don't need to point out that nearly all of the displays with synced music include the song that's become the unofficial theme of such displays: "Wizards in Winter" from this CD by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I think the entire genre started with Carson Williams in Ohio, whose display became the subject of a beer commercial a few years ago.) Incidentally, the Trykoskis are collecting canned goods for Frisco Family Services.


• SpringPark in Garland/Richardson: The classic neighborhood of mostly cul-de-sacs, each with a different theme. Among my favorites are the displays on Silver Maple and Buckethorn, as well as the continuous train motif along Lake Shore Drive, and Debra Court was full of win this year with its "12 Days of Redneck Christmas" theme (though they should have gone in reverse order like the song does; you'd have to drive on the wrong side of the road to sync with the song. Quite a few of the streets were more sparsely lit this year, which has been a trend for a while now; I wonder if I was just there on a night when a lot of people were on vacation.


• Interlochen in Arlington: I haven't been here in a few years (though I'll try this year, as it's been extended through Dec. 31), but this neighborhood is unique in that several streets back up to a large canal, so the backyards as well as the fronts are decorated. This area is not too far from Six Flags, and, like the amusement park, there are signs along Randol Mill Road listing estimated times until you get to the lights. I need to make this one again soon. (And check out this heartwarming story about the generosity of UTA professor Allan Saxe, whose generous donation allowed the lights to go on when the city could no longer afford to pay police officers for traffic control.)


• There are also two houses in Rowlett worth seeing: One on Dogwood Trail that's all done up in neon (evidently, the homeowner also owns a neon sign company) and the Belcher house on Faulkner Drive; there's also a perennial favorite in Carrollton on Timberline at High Sierra that always goes all out, even decorating the garage as a Santa's Workshop.

As always, if I've missed anything, please let me know in the comment section. I'm a big fan of Christmas lights, so I'd always be interested in seeing something new.

*I discovered when searching for some of the old text to copy and paste that I actually forgot to do the 2009 post. D'oh!

UPDATE: A few days after Christmas, I discovered some more cool houses in the Sachse/Wylie area.

Thankful

Here are just a few things that I'm thankful for today:

• My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ; I wouldn't be anywhere without Him.


• Family. My parents just left for a long-awaited trip to Germany, but I get to spend Thanksgiving with my sister and her family. And it's great that all of us are within a short day's drive of each other and don't have to mess with flying, buses, etc., to see each other.


• Friends. I have some of the greatest friends that anyone could ever want. Even though we're getting a bit more far-flung now (I'm pretty sure that, for two of them, this is the first Thanksgiving they won't be spending at home with their families), we're always in each other's hearts, and when we get together next, it will be like no time has passed at all. (And a special shout-out to my brothers in Sinfonia, an amazing extended family from coast to coast.)


• Health. A lot of people I know have had various health challenges this year; I'm grateful not to be one of them, since I spent a bit too much time in doctor's offices in '09.


• Mobility. A year ago, I was five months out from my knee surgery, having ditched the cane and brace and finished physical therapy. But I was still a little gimpy for a while, and I'm happy to have regained my full stride and to even be able to run if I needed to do so.


• Music. Few other things have the ability to uplift the spirit the way that music does. And I get to play and teach it for a living!


• America. With all her faults, she's still the greatest nation that's ever been in existence. Where else would you want to live?

May this be a blessed and joyful day for you and yours.

Let's Tell a Scary Story Again

It's easy to indulge in reruns on holidays (somewhat like they do on TV), but what could be better on Halloween than to post the one ghost story with which I'm intimately familiar?

So if you haven't seen it yet--or simply want to revisit it, much in the way that people will watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on an annual basis--please direct yourself to The Legend of Smith Hall. And happy 41st birthday to KNTU, the last entity to call the haunted house its home.

Happy Fourth!

Once again, some random thoughts on a quiet holiday:

• On this day, I'm decked out in one of those Old Navy flag T-shirts, as I have been every year on this day since 1999, when I celebrated in Switzerland atop Rochers-de-Naye, the tallest mountain in the Montreux area. (I still get a kick out of thinking about all the schoolkids back in '99 who, when they found out I was spending my first Fourth out of the country that summer, asked me if "they have the Fourth of July in Switzerland." Their calendars, I'm happy to report, don't exactly skip from 3 to 5 or anything...)


• By the way, this year's shirt feels softer and fits better than any of the ones from previous years. My hat is off to whomever made that decision.


• Can't make it to a fireworks display tonight? As always, you can make your own right there on your computer screen.


• One thing that's weird about having the Fourth on a Sunday is that nobody's quite sure when to do the celebration. A lot of area cities (including Richardson and Plano around here) went ahead and scheduled their displays tonight, figuring that a lot of people will have tomorrow off, but many others (including Firewheel down the street from me, as well as Addison's well-known "Kaboom Town") were last night. And Dallas itself is doing one tomorrow.


• I didn't get to see the local 'works last night, as I had a gig--a wedding reception held at a very cool venue, the repurposed Filter Building on the shores of White Rock Lake. Though the weather moved everything inside last night, the area still looked gorgeous; check out the photo album at the link for an amazing sunset picture.


• A year ago, I noted that there are a lot of people out there today who love their country but are extremely frustrated with their government. As we celebrate 234 years as a nation, we must never forget the principles of freedom and limited government on which this nation was founded. There are plenty of people in power at the moment who would prefer to use that power to their own ends, rather than what is best for the nation as a whole, and it is up to us as citizens to speak out against such things and show the most grievous offenders the door via the ballot box in November.

Despite her faults, America is still the greatest nation the world has ever known. May you celebrate this day in whatever way you see fit.

UPDATE: I usually add some inspiring words from others on this day; here are some from my city councilman, Douglas Athas.

In Every Medium, Dads Rule the Day

While my own dad might be out of range of a phone call, you can find plenty of things about dads on this Father's Day no matter where you look:

• Newspapers. The Dallas Morning News' Jeffrey Weiss remembers his father:

  ow I finally understand the words of the traditional Jewish mourners' prayer: "May his memory be a blessing." Among those most blessed memories are ones about how he firmly set my moral compass. Not that he was perfect – he was messy, not particularly tactful and had a grumpy bark that was always worse than his bite. But in a world filled with bad examples, he was my single best and shining good example.
  
  He had been an honor student, a teenage steelworker, a young lawyer, a decorated soldier, a successful merchant. A devoted youngest son, loyal brother and loving husband. But in his final days, the role he talked about most was "father." "I tried to be a good daddy," he said.
  
  That he was.



• Magazines. Harlan Coben* of Parade** remembers his dad as well:

  So here’s the uplifting part: It’s okay to feel this pain. In fact, when you’ve been as lucky as I was in the father department, it would be an outrage not to cry. You can’t have an up without a down, a right without a left, a back without a front—or a happy without a sad. This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments—and you get the tears at the end, too.
  
  My father, Carl Gerald Coben, is worth the tears. I hope that one day, to my children, I’ll be worth them, too. And if your father is worth them, let him know.



• Websites. From the Power Line blog, the story of a father who used his body as a human shield to protect his daughter when tornadoes rolled through Minnesota last week, making the ultimate sacrifice in the process.

But it's not all about bittersweet remembrance, of course; many of us still have our fathers, and some of us are lucky enough to consider that a plus. As I noted above, Dad's out of earshot right now (which is hard to do with all of today's communications options); he and Mom are in Nova Scotia, so the best I could do was send an email greeting. (Why, oh why did Apple have to discontinue the iCards a few years ago? They were the only e-cards that didn't have bad animations, cheesy music, and virtually no chance of being some sort of scam.)

While Dad and I may have had our differences over the years, there's no doubt in my mind that today, he stands tall as an example of a truly good man, one whose accomplishments--not the flashy things, but in everyday life--I can only hope to approximate.

Happy Father's Day, Dad--to you and all the other dads out there.

*I had to do a bit of research to realize that Harlan Coben, author, is not the same guy as Harlan Cohen, advice columnist. I thought it was impossible that I'd been reading Cohen's name wrong all that time that he was in the local paper.

** (Obscure Family Guy reference alert) Sorry, Stewie, but I do read Parade Magazine.

Once Again Laying Claim to the Day

Today is mah birfday, and I have to say that it's a lot more normal of a day than either of the past two years. In '08, I began my special day in the air, on the rather turbulent tail end of a flight back from Vermont. Last year, I was staring knee surgery in the face. The first half of today has be much more normal, and I expect that the rest of the day will follow suit.

I know some people who don't make a big deal about their birthdays, but--even though I'm not usually one to blow his own horn, except in a literal sense--I'll make an exception for today. As I wrote last year,

Some say that birthdays lose their meaning after a certain number of years, but not for me; with 365 days in a year, it's cool to be able to claim one of them as your own. (And I may not be getting "caek" today, but I've been enjoying free food all week, thanks to being on so many restaurants' email lists. Most of them send out other stuff during the year, but this week is when everything comes pouring in.)

There is one different twist to this year, as I have a gig this evening, come out to the DMA for a celebration that's not really about me at all, save for the fact that I'll be one of 15 people on stage and doing what I love to do.

Take a Moment to Remember

It's easy for the true meaning of Memorial Day to get lost in all the barbecues and "first day of summer" celebrations (even if the latter's not true anymore here in Texas, thanks to the state-mandated later start to the school year). But we need to remember that we wouldn't have the freedom to chill out today if a whole lot of people hadn't made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf.

Ironically, some of the people who best understand the solemnity of this day are those who make their living as humorists for most of the rest of the year. Dave Barry links to both a set of instructions as to how to properly celebrate Memorial Day and a good collection of Memorial Day quotes. Let me share a few of the latter:

I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day. I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it. We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did. — Benjamin Harrison

The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree. — Thomas Campbell

The Flag still floats unblotted with defeat!
But ah the blood that keeps its ripples red,
The starry lives that keep its field alight.
– Rupert Hughes

And James Lileks, who hasn't had any family members who died in service, posts a picture of the closest thing: The man on whose former farm Lileks' house was built (he didn't die right away, but was seriously wounded for a time).

It's still possible to properly observe this day amidst the cookouts, of course. A White House decree from 2000 explains how to participate in a National Moment of Remembrance today:

Encouraging individual department and agency personnel, and
Americans everywhere, to pause for one minute at 3:00 p.m.
(local time) on Memorial Day, to remember and reflect on the
sacrifices made by so many to provide freedom for all.

It's nearly 3:00. Will you stop and remember?

Erin Go Blog

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my fellow Irish, and anyone else who feels like being Irish for a day (as I noted on Twitter, a "day pass" is free). Not only am i wearing green, but the green in question is a T-shirt that came from Ireland itself, when Mom and Dad went there a few years ago (Mom and Dad went to Ireland, and all I got was a pretty cool T-shirt...and some Guinness, though I would have enjoyed the factory tour they took even more). My T-shirt says Sláinte!, which is an old Irish toast roughly meaning "good health." As I noted a few years ago, it was a popular slogan for the Bennigan's restaurant chain, which lost its good health a few years ago. (UPDATE: Someone at a place where I ate later in the day saw the shirt and immediately asked me if it came from Bennigan's. Heh.)

Once again, it's spring break, so I don't get to see the amusement that takes place when the kids at school who forgot to wear green find creative ways to avoid being pinched (safety-pinning a green ribbon to one's shirt--or even a piece of green construction paper--was a popular avoidance technique). But I imagine that there will be a lot of green to be seen when I'm out and about later in the day.

So what do you plan on doing to celebrate the day today? As I've said before, I'm not a big fan of group identity politics or anything of the sort, but I'm perfectly happy to spend one day a year celebrating the most outward portion of my heritage (I'm only a quarter Irish, with the rest being English and French, but my name is pretty much all Irish, all the time).

Another celebration of Green: Best of luck to the men's basketball team from my alma mater, North Texas, which is playing Kansas State in the first round of the Big Dance tomorrow. It'll even be on TV locally, at the expense of the Baylor game that's slated to tip off around the same time. Kudos to CBS 11 for realizing who the "home" team is between the two.

Today, I'll Let Others Do the Talking

Being a holiday for some (mostly, for me, though I taught a bit here at home), and having seen a video of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech for the first time in a while, yesterday in church, it seemed only fitting to devote today's blog post to him. But what should I say? To start things out, I defer to the wisdom of two people whose words I encountered today, who state their case in a far more eloquent manner than I probably could. On a national level, here's Scott Johnson at Powerline:

When Martin Luther King, Jr. brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor's Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow. In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community. In April 1963 King answered the call to bring his campaign to Birmingham. When King landed in jail on Good Friday for violating an injunction prohibiting demonstrations, he took the opportunity to meditate on the counsel of prudence with which Birmingham's white ministers had greeted his campaign. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" was the result.

[...] n addition to King's witness, King's prophetic call permeates the "Letter." Why did King presume to come from Atlanta to Birmingham? King writes:

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

King's prophetic call must have been both a source of strength and of concern. His strength was manifest; he rarely let his concern show. Perfection is not a condition of the prophet's call, and King was both imperfect and aware of his imperfections. His unbending strength is all the more remarkable.

And much closer to home, here's Garland city councilman Douglas Athas:

I think too often King is remembered as a man that fought for the civil rights of black people. But I don't remember him that way and don't read that message in his speeches. Certainly the crowds that gathered for his speeches were heavily black but his words were always to a broader audience, the audience of all people, and his message was of freedom and equality for all people.

He knew that inequality for any man meant there could be inequality for all men and, also, that what we openly grant to all others, we preserve for ourselves.

On this day that we celebrate his birth, I wish to recognize the huge gift that he secured for all people in this country and for so many across the planet.

I know he did see the promised land, and, by the power of his message, he took many to view the promised land. Our journey since his death has taken us closer to the promised land. We have not arrived but we are closer than we have ever been in history. If we keep our path forward to the promised land, we shall arrive. We, as a people, will get to the promised land.

I'm proud that the vision and promise that Martin Luther King, Jr, shared with all of us is closer to reality today than ever before. I'm not worried—we will get there.

I believe that as well. My only editorial comment today would be that there are plenty of people out there who are ready, willing and able to judge people not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character, and it's a shame that some people try to perpetuate the former for their own political gain.

I'll let words from Dr. King himself close out this post:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Words to remember. Rest in peace, Dr, King, and may your dream live on.