Archive - 2008
August 28th
A Moment in History
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/28/2008 - 18:37I remember about seven years ago my wife gave me a call from the obstetrician’s office. She was due in about three or four weeks. As she was arranging her next checkup, she looked up at the television in the doctor’s office and saw a plane fly into the World Trade Centers.
That afternoon, I sat down with my two older daughters. One was eleven the other was eight. I told them that something very bad had happened. I told them that this was a day which people would look back to, the way people look back to when JFK was shot. Where were you when…
Where were you when Martin Luther King proclaimed his dream? Where were you when a man first set foot on the moon?
There are rare times in our lives that we participate in a moment in history. Fiona, who was born a few weeks after September 11th wants to stay up this evening, and I will have a similar discussion with her, as I did with her older sister seven years ago, about the historical significance of the day.
A New Mourning in America
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/28/2008 - 09:59The playwrite proclaims, “We are born astride the grave”, and each night the evening news echoes the refrain. We respond with various stages of grief and working out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
We do this individually and we do it communally. I remember when Kim’s mother died, and the grief that each of us had. I remember how we banded together and held each other up. I remember 9/11 and friends that were in the Trade Centers when they came down, and friends that through some fortunate circumstance weren’t at work when it happened. We remember 9/11 as a nation as well.
As a nation, we have acted out the anger stage of our grief by pursuing those who perpetrated the attack and then lashing out at another country as well, and we continue to mourn.
Yet it is time for A New Mourning in America. It is time to take our grief and mingle it with the struggles people growing up on the South Side of Chicago, with the grief of a father who loses his wife and one of his children in a car accident just before Christmas. It is time to recognize the grief that we have caused the families of young men and women that have died because of our senseless attack of another country.
So, we have people show up on a stage in Denver to tell their stories, to provide a catharsis and to help us move beyond our anger and fear, to help us take up the role of the returning hero to share the bounty of the hero’s struggle and journey.
We weep as we hear their stories, and we rejoice at their victories. It is a reminder that we all must keep pressing on and that we all may share in bounty of the successful heroes.
Yes, it is time for A New Mourning in America.
Recent ma.noglia bookmarks
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/28/2008 - 02:57Here are pages I've recently bookmarked with ma.gnolia:
Featured Videos | dotSUB
A long time ago, I stumbled across dotSUB. I've been trying to find the link again for a long time, and have finally found it.
Twitscoop - Search twitter, see what's hot right now
August 27th
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 08/27/2008 - 10:37
Role Models
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 08/27/2008 - 10:17Today, as I was surfing EntreCard, I came across Regina’s blog post about Michelle Obama’s speech the other night. She was effusive about the wonderful speech and others were adding their comments.
Here is what I wrote:
Yesterday, as I drove to the train station to pick up my daughters, I saw young black women on their way to work or school. My thoughts went back to Michelle Obama's speech, and I wondered, how many of these young women could be the next Michelle Obama? How can we work together to help some of these young women attain such a lofty goal?
I hope that Michelle Obama's speech will help her become our next First Lady. Yet I have higher hopes. I hope that her speech will cause more people to stop and think about how they can help all of the youth of our nation, black or white, male of female, to become closer to the sort of person that Michelle Obama is.
I went on to think about Michelle Obama as a role model for my daughters. Yet in the media cycle, Michelle Obama’s speech is already old news. The talk of the day is Hillary Clinton’s excellent speech. She, too, provides an excellent role model for young people today.
So, I hope we look beyond the immediate political aspects of the convention and beyond November. My mind goes back to when Gov. Dean was running for President. He often said, “The biggest lie people like me tell people like you, is that if you vote for me, I will solve all your problems. The truth is, you have the power.”
The problem is that we don’t know what to do with our power. How do we use that power to help make a better world? Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton help us understand that power and provide role models in how to use it.
We need Barack Obama as our next President, as a leader that can help us return to the values that have made our country strong. We also need great people around him, like his wife, and like Hillary Clinton to be role models for us as each one of us owns our own power and takes a more active role in living out our great values.
